azar, in company with whom he stocked the island with
cattle; but it seems that Boriquen did not offer sufficient scope for
the gallant pilot's ambition, for we find him between the years 1506
and 1508 engaged in seeking new conquests on the continent.

As far as Columbus himself is concerned, the island was certainly
forgotten amid the troubles that beset him on all sides almost from
the day of his second landing in "la Espanola." From 1493 to 1500 a
series of insurrections broke out, headed successively by Diaz,
Margarit, Aguado, Roldan, and others, supported by the convict rabble
that, on the Admiral's own proposals to the authorities in Spain, had
been liberated from galleys and prisons on condition that they should
join him on his third expedition. These men, turbulent, insubordinate,
and greedy, found hunger, hardships, and sickness where they had
expected to find plenty, comfort, and wealth. The Admiral, who had
indirectly promised them these things, to mitigate the universal and
bitter disappointment, had recourse to the unwarrantable expedients of
enslaving the natives, sending them to Spain to be sold, of levying
tribute on those who remained, and, worst of all, dooming them to a
sure and rapid extermination by forced labor.

The natives, driven to despair, resisted, and in the encounters
between the naked islanders and the mailed invaders Juan Ponce
distinguished himself so that Nicolos de Ovando, the governor, made
him the lieutenant of Juan Esquivel, who was then engaged in
"pacifying" the province of Higueey.[8] After Esquivel's departure on
the conquest of Jamaica, Ponce was advanced to the rank of captain,
and it was while he was in the Higueey province that he learned from
the Boriquen natives, who occasionally visited the coast, that there
was gold in the rivers of their as yet unexplored island. This was
enough to awaken his ambition to explore it, and having asked
permission of Ovando, it was granted.

Ponce equipped a caravel at once, and soon after left the port of
Salvaleon with a few followers and some Indians to serve as guides and
interpreters (1508).

They probably landed at or near the same place at which their captain
had landed fifteen years before with the Admiral, that is to say, in
the neighborhood of la Aguada, where, according to Las Casas, the
ships going and coming to and from Spain had called regularly to take
in fresh water ever since the year 1502.

The strangers were hospit