CHAP.
III.]
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
23
disciplined force, yet they took sanguinary vengeance on them whenever they met with small parties or scattered individuals, roving about in quest of food. Encouraged by these petty triumphs, and the impunity which seemed to attend them, their hostilities grew more and more alarming. Guatiguana, cacique of a large town on the banks of the Grand River, in the domin ions of Guarionex, sovereign of the Vega, put to death ten Spaniards, who had quartered themselves in his town, and out raged the inhabitants by their licentiousness. He followed up this massacre by setting fire to a house in which forty-six Span iards were lodged.* Flushed by this success, he threatened to attack a small fortress called Magdalena, which had recently been built in his neighborhood in the Vega ; so that the commander, Luis de Arriaga, having but a feeble garrison, was obliged to re main shut up within its walls until relief should arrive from Isa bella. The most formidable enemy of the Spaniards, however, was Caonabo, the Carib cacique of Maguana. With natural talents for war, and intelligence superior to the ordinary range of savage intellect, he had a proud and daring spirit to urge him on, three valiant brothers to assist him, and a numerous tribe at his comm a n d . †He had always felt jealous of the intrusion of the white men into the island ; but particularly exasperated by the establish ment of the fortress of St. Thomas, erected in the very centre of his dominions. As long as the army lay within call in the Vega, he was deterred from any attack ; but when, on the departure of Margarite, it became dismembered and dispersed, the time for striking a signal blow seemed arrived. The fortress remained isolated, with a garrison of only fifty men. By a sudden and * Herrera Hist. Ind., decad. i. lib. ii. cap. 16.
† Ibid.