CHAP.
II.]
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS.
195
dezvous. Roldan and others of the conspirators drew together there by different routes. No sooner did the veteran Miguel Ballester hear of the arri足 val of Roldan, than he set forth to meet him. Ballester was a venerable man, gray-headed, and of a soldier-like demeanor. Loyal, frank, and virtuous, of a serious disposition, and great simplicity of heart, he was well chosen as a mediator with rash and profligate men ; being calculated to calm their passions by his sobriety ; to disarm their petulance by his age ; to win their confidence by his artless probity ; and to awe their licentiousness by his spotless virtue.* Ballester found Roldan in company with Pedro Riquelme, Pedro de Gamez, and Adrian de Moxica, three of his principal confederates. Flushed with a confidence of his present strength, Roldan treated the proffered pardon with contempt, declaring that he did not come there to treat of peace, but to demand the release of certain Indians captured unjustifiably, and about to be shipped to Spain as slaves, notwithstanding that he, in his capacity of alcalde mayor, had pledged his word for their protection. He declared that, until these Indians were given up, he would listen to no terms of compact ; throwing out an insolent intimation at the same time, that he held the admiral and his fortunes in his hand, to make and mar them as he pleased. The Indians here alluded to, were certain subjects of Guario足 nex, who had been incited by Roldan to resist the exaction of tribute, and who, under the sanction of his supposed authority, had engaged in the insurrections of the Vega. Roldan knew that the enslavement of the Indians was an unpopular feature in the government of the island, especially with the queen ; and the art* Las Casas, Hist. Ind., lib. i. cap. 153.