at we owe our knowledge of the condition of island affairs
at this time. The colonists whom Ovando had brought out had come very
much in the spirit that in our own day characterised the rush to the
north-western goldfields of America. They brought only the slightest
equipment, and were no sooner landed at San Domingo than they set out
into the island like so many picnic parties, being more careful to carry
vessels in which to bring back the gold they were to find than proper
provisions and equipment to support them in the labour of finding it.
The roads, says Las Casas, swarmed like ant-hills with these adventurers
rushing forth to the mines, which were about twenty-five miles distant
from San Domingo; they were in the highest spirits, and they made it a
kind of race as to who should get there first. They thought they had
nothing to do but to pick up shining lumps of gold; and when they found
that they had to dig and delve in the hard earth, and to dig
systematically and continuously, with a great deal of digging for very
little gold, their spirits fell. They were not used to dig; and it
happened that most of them began in an unprofitable spot, where they
digged for eight days without finding any gold. Their provisions were
soon exhausted; and in a week they were back again in San Domingo, tired,
famished, and bitterly disappointed. They had no genius for steady
labour; most of them were virtually without means; and although they
lived in San Domingo, on what they had as long as possible, they were
soon starving there, and selling the clothes off their backs to procure
food. Some of them took situations with the other settlers, more fell
victims to the climate of the island and their own imprudences and
distresses; and a thousand of them had died within two years.

Ovando had revived the enthusiasm for mining by two enactments. He
reduced the share of discovered gold payable to the Crown, and he
developed Columbus's system of forced labour to such an extent that the
mines were entirely worked by it. To each Spaniard, whether mining or
farming, so many natives were allotted. It was not called slavery; the
natives were supposed to be paid a minute sum, and their employers were
also expected to teach them the Christian religion. That was the plan.
The way in which it worked was that, a body of native men being allotted
to a Spanish settler for a period, say, of six or eight months--for the
enactment was precise i