is chief officers went out of the gate of
the settlement, which had been named for the Queen, at the head of four
hundred men, many of whom were mounted, and all armed with sword,
cross-bow, lance or arquebus. With casques and breastplates shining in
the sun, banners flying, pennons fluttering, drums and trumpets
sounding, they presented a sight which should have brought ambassadors
from any monarch of the Indies who heard of their approach. But although
a multitude of savages came from the forest to see, no signs of any such
capital as that of the Great Khan appeared. At the end of the first
day's march they camped at the foot of a rocky mountain range with no
way over it but a footpath, winding over rocks and through dense
tropical jungles. There appeared to be no roads in the country.

But this was not an impossible situation to the young Spanish cavaliers,
for in the Moorish wars it had often been necessary to construct a road
over the mountains. A number of them at once volunteered for the
service, and with laborers and pioneers, to whom they set an example by
working as valiantly as they were ready to fight, they made a road for
the little army, which was named in their honor El Puerto de los
Hidalgos, the Gentlemen's Pass. When they reached the top of this steep
defile and could look down upon the land beyond they saw a vast and
magnificent plain, covered with forests of beautiful trees, blossoming
meadows and a network of clear lakes and rivers, and dotted here and
there with thatch-roofed villages. Near the top of the pass a spring of
cool delicious water bubbled out in a glen shaded by palms and one tall
and handsome tree of an unknown variety, with wood so hard that it
turned the ax of a laborer who tried to cut a chip of it. Colon gave the
plain the name of the Vega Real or Royal Plain.

Of all the events, exploits and intrigues of those first years in the
Spanish Indies, no one historian among those who accompanied the
expedition ever found time to write. Where all was so new, and every
man, whether priest, cavalier, soldier, sailor, clerk or artisan, had
his own reasons and his own aims in coming to this land of promise,
nothing went exactly according to anybody's plans. The Admiral was soon
convinced that in Hispaniola at least no civilized capital existed. To
their amazement and amusement the Spaniards found that the savages
feared their horses more than their weapons. It was discovered after a
while th