e, which Las Casas named Casaharta on account of the abundance of
excellent provisions they received there; these seem to have consisted
principally of parrots, of which the Spaniards consumed no less than
10,000 beautifully plumaged birds in the brief period of fifteen days they
stopped there. Indeed, the amount the Spaniards ate amazed the frugal
natives, for it took more to feed a soldier for one day than an Indian
family required in a month, At this place there arrived one day a canoe,
in which were two Spanish women, in the costume of Mother Eve, one of them
about forty years old and the other eighteen. They were the prisoners
sent back from Havana by the cacique who had meanwhile received the magic
paper ordering their release. They described the slaughter of some
Spaniards upon their arrival at the port which, since that time, has
consequently been called Matanzas; several had managed to defend
themselves but had afterwards been hanged by a cacique on a ceiba tree,
leaving only the two women, whose lives were spared. This news so
irritated Narvaez that he ordered eighteen caciques who had come in
response to Las Casas's papers, bringing food for the Spaniards, to be put
in chains, and but for the priest's threat that he would have him severely
punished by Velasquez, and even report the case to the King, he would have
hanged them. Las Casas, by his vigorous and menacing attitude, secured
the immediate release of all the caciques but one, who was kept a prisoner
until Diego Velasquez joined the expedition and released him. (25)

At another village, a Spaniard, also a survivor of the Matanzas massacre,
was brought forward and delivered to the Spaniards by the cacique, who
declared he loved him and had treated him as his own son. Great rejoicing
celebrated the finding of this man, and both Las Casas and Narvaez
embraced the cacique with fervour. The Spaniard had nearly forgotten his
mother-tongue and was in all respects so entirely like the Indians in his
manners and ways that every one laughed a good deal at him. Little by
little he recovered the use of his Spanish and was able to give much
information concerning the country.

Upon the arrival of Diego Velasquez, whose bride had died very shortly
after her marriage, a town was founded on the banks of a large river,
called by the Indians the Arimao, where very rich gold-mines were
discovered. In this newly founded town of Xagua, as it was named, Las
Casas re