here in 1509, it was as full of people as a beehive
is full of bees and as beautiful and fertile as an orchard. This
simile and some probably incorrect data from the Geography of Bayaeete
led Friar Inigo Abbad to estimate the number of aboriginal inhabitants
at the time of the discovery at 600,000, a number for which there is
no warrant in any of the writings of the Spanish chroniclers, and
which Acosto, Brau, and Stahl, the best authorities on matters of
Puerto Rican history, reject as extremely exaggerated.

Mr. Brau gives some good reasons for reducing the number to about
16,000, though it seems to us that since little or nothing was known
of the island, except that part of it in which the events related in
the preceding chapters took place, any reasoning regarding the
population of the whole island, based upon a knowledge of a part of
it, is liable to error. Ponce's conquest was limited to the northern
and western littoral; the interior with the southern and eastern
districts were not settled by the Spaniards till some years after the
death of Guaybana; and it seems likely that there were caciques in
those parts who, by reason of the distance or other impediments, took
no part in the uprising against the Spaniards. For the rest, Mr.
Brau's reasonings in support of his reduction to 16,000 of the number
of aborigines, are undoubtedly correct. They are: First. The
improbability of a small island like this, _in an uncultivated state_,
producing sufficient food for such large numbers. Second. The fact
that at the first battle (that of Jacaguas), in which he supposes the
whole available warrior force of the island to have taken part, there
were 5,000 to 6,000 men only, which force would have been much
stronger had the population been anything near the number given by
Abbad; and, finally, the number of Indians distributed after the
cessation of organized resistance was only 5,500, as certified by
Sancho Velasquez, the judge appointed in 1515 to rectify the
distributions made by Ceron and Moscoso, and by Captain Melarejo in
his memorial drawn up in 1582 by order of the captain-general, which
number would necessarily have been much larger if the total aboriginal
population had been but 60,000, instead of 600,000.

* * * * *

The immediate consequence to the natives of the panic and partial
submission that followed the death of their leader was another and
more extensive distribution. The fi