road through which supplies could reach
it, but Ojeda made sallies and raids upon the native force, under which
it became thinned and discouraged; and Caonabo had finally to withdraw to
his own territory.

But he was not yet beaten. He decided upon another and much larger
enterprise, which was to induce the other caciques of the island to
co-operate with him in an attack upon Isabella, the population of which
he knew would have been much thinned and weakened by disease. The
island was divided into five native provinces. The northeastern part,
named Marien, was under the rule of Guacanagari, whose headquarters were
near the abandoned La Navidad. The remaining eastern part of the
island, called Higuay, was under a chief named Cotabanama. The western
province was Xaragua, governed by one Behechio, whose sister, Anacaona,
was the wife of Caonabo. The middle of the island was divided into two
provinces-that which extended from the northern coast to the Cibao
mountains and included the Vega Real being governed by Guarionex, and
that which extended from the Cibao mountains to the south being governed
by Caonabo. All these rulers were more or less embittered by the
outrages and cruelties of the Spaniards, and all agreed to join with
Caonabo except Guacanagari. That loyal soul, so faithful to what he
knew of good, shocked and distressed as he was by outrages from which
his own people had suffered no less than the others, could not bring
himself to commit what he regarded as a breach of the laws of
hospitality. It was upon his shores that Columbus had first landed; and
although it was his own country and his own people whose wrongs were to
be avenged, he could not bring himself to turn traitor to the grave
Admiral with whom, in those happy days of the past, he had enjoyed so
much pleasant intercourse. His refusal to co-operate delayed the plan
of Caonabo, who directed the island coalition against Guacanagari
himself in order to bring him to reason. He was attacked by the
neighbouring chiefs; one of his wives was killed and another captured;
but still he would not swerve from his ideal of conduct.

The first thing that Columbus recognised when he opened his eyes after
his long period of lethargy and insensibility was the face of his brother
Bartholomew bend-over him where he lay in bed in his own house at
Espanola. Nothing could have been more welcome to him, sick, lonely and
discouraged as he was, than the presence