s of gold of considerable size: one
was Bobadilla's lump, found, during his government, at Bonne Aventure,
which was worth thirty-six hundred _castellanos_, or $19,153. This was
lost at sea on the way to Spain. The finding of pieces in the River
Yaqui weighing nine ounces was occasionally recorded, and pieces of
pure gold, without the least mixture, more than three inches in
circumference, in the River Verte: they were undoubtedly found much
oftener than recorded. Good authorities, writing at the close of the
last century, declare that the mines of Cibao alone furnished more gold
than all Europe had in circulation at that time. All the larger streams,
and the basins near their sources, furnished gold.

Bobadilla's lump was found by a slave of Francisco de Garay, afterwards
Governor of Jamaica. He and the famous Diaz worked a mine together in
San Domingo. His slave was poking about with a pike in the shallows of
the River Hayna, when the head struck the metal. Garay was so rejoiced
that he sacrificed a pig, which was served upon this extemporaneous
platter, and he boasted that there was no such dish in Europe. Twenty
other ships with gold on board went down in the storm which swallowed up
Garay's waif.[E]

[Footnote E: Great quantities of gold were embezzled by the Spanish
officials. Las Casas in his lively arguments with the Council of State
in behalf of the Indians, always insisted that his plan for controlling
them would be more profitable as well as humane. He promised large
increase of treasure, and showed how the royal officers appropriated the
gold which they extorted from the natives. Piedro Arias, for instance,
spent six years at Castilla-du-Oro, at a cost to the Government of
fifty-four thousand ducats, during which time he divided a million's
worth of gold with his officers, at the expense of thousands of natives,
whose lives were the flux of the metallic ore, while he paid only three
thousand _pesos_ for the king's fifth.--Llorente: _Oeuvres de Las
Casas_, Tom. II--p.472.]

Many French writers have maintained that the Indians procured their
golden ornaments from Yucatan and other points of the main-land, by way
of traffic. But they had nothing to barter, and their ornaments were
numerous. Besides, the Spaniards found in various places near the rivers
the holes and slight diggings whence the gold had been procured. It is
said that the Haytian natives only washed for gold, but the Caribs had
frequented the i