aving twenty-five men to guard their landing place on the
island, the squadron returned to Cuba with the slaves. Havana was the
port to which they were taken; a port which from that time forward
increased rapidly in importance. Before they could all be landed, the
slaves on one vessel mutinied, overpowered the crew, took possession of
the vessel, and sailed back to the Yucatan islands. There the vessel was
run ashore and wrecked, but the slaves escaped from it and, going
ashore, exterminated the Spanish garrison which had been left there. A
relief expedition was hastily sent from Havana, but it arrived too late.
It found only the wreck of the ship, and no trace of the Spanish
garrison. However, it looted the islands and was thus enabled to carry
back to Cuba some 20,000 pesos in gold.

This had a revolutionary effect. Cubans who were becoming dissatisfied
with the scarcity of slave labor and with the waning production of gold
in the island, were roused by the promise of greater riches in the lands
to the westward, and began to plan further adventures in that direction.
In this movement the first important leader was Francisco Hernandez de
Cordova, a wealthy land-holder, planter and miner of Sancti Spiritus. He
with more than a hundred others equipped a squadron of three vessels, to
sail westward, not, however, for slaves but for gold. One of these
vessels appears to have belonged to Velasquez, the Governor, and in
return for the use of it he asked that the expedition should bring him
back a cargo of slaves. This Cordova indignantly refused, declaring that
the slave-trade was offensive to God and man. So, at least, says Bernal
Diaz del Castillo; though there are others who say that slave trading
was the real object of the expedition. However that may be, the
expedition set out from either Havana or Jaruco, near by, on February 8,
1517, piloted by Antonio Alaminos who, as a boy, had sailed with
Columbus on his fourth voyage on which he skirted the coast of Central
America. Columbus had believed that coast to be the Golden Chersonesus,
a land of fabulous riches, and it was with eagerness that Alaminos
guided the Cuban expedition thither.

The Mugeres Islands were the first land reached after leaving Cape San
Antonio, and two days later, on March 4, 1517, they landed at Punta
Catoche--a name said to have been given to it by them because of the
words "con escotoch" which the natives uttered on greeting them upon
their landi