alue to the two owners of the mine. The jubilant Spaniards used the
nugget, which was shaped like a broad, flat dish, to serve up a roast
sucking-pig at a banquet given in honour of the occasion, saying that no
king ever feasted from such a platter. Las Casas remarks that as for the
miserable Indian girl who found it, we may without sin suppose that they
never gave her so much as a red silk petticoat, and lucky was she indeed
if she got even a mouthful of the pig!

The second piece of glad news the colonists communicated was, that owing
to a recent uprising of the Indians in a certain province, they had been
able to enslave a goodly number of the rebels. Such occasions rejoiced
their hearts, over the profits they thus derived from the struggles of the
unhappy natives to recover their freedom, and it may likewise without sin
be supposed that their ingenuity was not barren in suggesting devices for
provoking such lucrative revolts.

In the instructions delivered to Ovando, as well as in the Queen's verbal
behests to him before sailing, the sovereigns sought to remedy the abuses
under which the Indians suffered. The Queen explicitly laid down the
fundamental principle that "all the Indians in Hispaniola are and should
be free from servitude; nor should they be molested by any one, but should
live as free vassals, governed and protected as are the vassals of
Castile." They were to pay a tribute--all Spanish vassals were taxed--and
they were to work in the gold-mines but for their labour they were to
receive a daily wage. The Queen's obvious intention was that the
government should, in some measure at least, be carried on for the benefit
of the Indians it was instituted to govern. The orders describing the
measures to be taken for the instruction and conversion of the natives
were equally clear and imperative.

Ovando was authorised to permit the importation into Hispaniola of negroes
who were born slaves, belonging to Christian owners. (19) They were
consequently brought to the colony in such numbers that the Governor soon
wrote to Spain, advising that the traffic in African slaves be stopped, as
the negroes constantly escaped and took refuge in the forests and
mountains, taking with them also many Indians. These negroes were for the
most part born in Andalusia of slave parents, who had been brought there
by the Portuguese who had carried on the slave-trade since early in the
fifteenth century.

The first official