VOYAGES
278
AND
DISCOVERIES
OF
mere act of justice due to them, but was not intended as a cen sure upon his conduct, and that means should be sought to indem nify him for the loss of his command. By the time that the governor and his lieutenant reached the island, Juan Ponce had completed its subjugation.
The death of
the island champion, the brave Agueybanà, had in fact been a deathblow to the natives, and shows how much, in savage warfare, depends upon a single chieftain.
They never made head of war
afterwards ; but, dispersing among their forests and mountains, fell gradually under the power of the Spaniards. quent fate was like that of their neighbors of Hayti.
Their subse They were
employed in the labor of the mines, and in other rude toils so re pugnant to their nature that they sank beneath them, and, in a little while, almost all the aboriginals disappeared from the island.
CHAPTER VI. JUAN
PONCE
D E LEON AND
JUAN
PONCE
D E LEON
with tolerable grace.
HEARS
OP A
MIRACULOUS
WONDERFUL
COUNTRY
FOUNTAIN.
resigned the command of Porto Rico
The loss of one wild island and wild gov
ernment was of little moment, when there was a new world to be shared out, where a bold soldier like himself, with sword and buckler, might readily carve out new fortunes for himself. Be sides, he had now amassed wealth to assist him in his plans, and, like many of the early discoverers, his brain was teeming with the most romantic enterprises.
He had conceived the idea that
there was yet a third world to be discovered, and he hoped to be