r given a governorship in the neighbourhood
of the Gulf of Darien; Juan de la Cosa accompanying him as unofficial
partner. Ojeda has no sooner landed there than he is fighting the
natives; natives too many for him this time; Ojeda forced to hide in the
forest, where he finds the body of de la Cosa, who has come by a shocking
death. Ojeda afterwards tries to govern his colony, but is no good at
that; cannot govern his own temper, poor fellow. Quarrels with his crew,
is put in irons, carried to Espanola, and dies there (1515) in great
poverty and eclipse. One of the many, evidently, who need a strong
guiding hand, and perish without it.

It really began to seem as though Roldan, having had his fling and
secured the excessive privileges that he coveted, had decided that
loyalty to Christopher was for the present the most profitable policy;
but the mutinous spirit that he had cultivated in his followers for his
own ends could not be so readily converted into this cheap loyalty. More
trouble was yet to come of this rebellion. There was in the island a
young Spanish aristocrat, Fernando de Guevara by name, one of the many
who had come out in the hope of enjoying himself and making a fortune
quickly, whose more than outrageously dissolute life in San Domingo had
caused Columbus to banish him thence; and he was now living near Xaragua
with a cousin of his, Adrian de Moxeca, who had been one of the
ringleaders in Roldan's conspiracy. Within this pleasant province of
Xaragua lived, as we have seen, Anacaona, the sister of Caonabo, the Lord
of the House of Gold. She herself was a beautiful woman, called by her
subjects Bloom of the Gold; and she had a still more beautiful daughter,
Higuamota, who appears in history, like so many other women, on account
of her charms and what came of them.

Of pretty Higuamota, who once lived like a dryad among the groves of
Espanola and has been dead now for so long, we know nothing except that
she was beautiful, which, although she doubtless did not think so while
she lived, turns out to have been the most important thing about her.
Young Guevara, coming to stay with his cousin Adrian, becomes a visitor
at the house of Anacaona; sees the pretty daughter and falls in love with
her. Other people also, it appears, have been in a similar state, but
Higuamota is not very accessible; a fact which of course adds to the
interest of the chase, and turns dissolute Fernando's idle preference
into