st
of the naked and defenceless throng, trampling them under foot, cutting
them down with their swords, transfixing them with their lances, and
sparing neither age nor sex.

Above eighty caziques had been assembled in one of the principal houses:
it was surrounded by troops, the caziques were bound to the posts which
supported the roof, and put to cruel tortures, until in the extremity of
anguish they were made to admit as true what their queen and themselves
had been charged with.

When they had thus been made, by torture, to accuse themselves, a
horrible punishment was immediately inflicted. Fire was set to the
house, and they all perished miserably in the flames.

As to Anacaona, she was carried to St. Domingo, where, after the mockery
of a trial, she was pronounced guilty on the testimony of the Spaniards,
and was barbarously hanged by the people whom she had so long and so
greatly befriended.

After the massacre of Xaragua, the destruction of its inhabitants went
on. They were hunted for six months amid the fastnesses of the
mountains, and their country ravaged by horse and foot, until, all being
reduced to deplorable misery and abject submission, Ovando pronounced
the province restored to order; and in remembrance of his triumph,
founded a town near the lake, which he called Santa Maria de la
Verdadera Pas (St. Mary of the true peace.)

Such was the tragical fate of the beautiful Anacaona, once extolled as
the Golden Flower of Hayti; and such the story of the delightful region
of Xaragua, which the Spaniards, by their own account, found a perfect
paradise, but which, by their vile passions, they filled with horror and
desolation.

After this work of destruction, they made slaves of the remaining
inhabitants, and divided them amongst them, and many of the sanguinary
contests among themselves arose out of quarrels about the distribution.

We cannot help pausing to cast back a look of pity and admiration over
these beautiful but devoted regions.

The white man had penetrated the land! In his train came avarice, pride,
and ambition; sordid care, and pining labour, were soon to follow, and
the paradise of the Indian was about to disappear for ever.

CHAPTER IX.

PARLEY DESCRIBES THE TREES, PLANTS, AND FLOWERS OF THE NEW WORLD.

When once the way had been pointed out, it was easy for other navigators
to follow, and accordingly many Spaniards undertook voyages of further
discovery.

Among others,