n some cowering group was surrounded and kept from breaking away,
when Alonso de Ojeda or another leaped from steed to earth, from earth
again to steed, they moaned with astonishment and some relief. But the
horses, the horses--never to have seen any great four-footed things,
and now these that were proud and pawed the earth and neighed and--De
Ojeda's black horse--reared, curvetted, bounded, appeared to threaten!
The eyes, the mane, the great teeth!--There grew a legend that they were
fed upon men's flesh, red men's flesh!

How many red men were in Quisquaya I do not know. In some regions they
dwelled thickly, in others were few folk. In this wide, long, laughing
plain dwelled many, in clean towns sunk among trees good to look at and
dropping fruit; by river or smaller stream, with plantings of maize,
batata, cassava, jucca, maguey, and I know not what beside. If the
stream was a considerable one, canoes. They had parrots; they had the
small silent dogs. In some places we saw clay pots and bowls. They wove
their cotton, though not very skillfully. They crushed their maize
in hand mills. We found caciques and butios, and heard of their main
cacique, Gwarionex. But he did not come to meet us; they said he had
gone on a visit to Caonabo in Cibao. They brought us food and took our
gifts in exchange; they harangued us in answer to our harangues; they
made dances for us. The children thronged around, fearless now and
curious. The women were kind. Old men and women together, and sometimes
more women than men, sat in a council ring about some venerable tree.

There was no quarrel and no oppression upon this adventure. I look back
and I see that single journey in Hispaniola a flower and pattern of what
might be.

They gave us what gold they had--freely--and we gave in return things
that they prized. But always they said Cibao for gold.

We rode and marched afoot, with many halts and turns aside, five leagues
across plain. A large river barred our way,--the Yaqui they called
it. Here we spent two days in a village a bowshot from the water. We
searched for gold, we sent from Indian to Indian rumor that it was the
highest magic, god-magic that of all things in the world we most desired
and took it from their hands, yet still we paid for it in goods for
which they lusted, and we neither forced nor threatened force. And
though we were four hundred, yet there might be in the Royal Plain forty
thousand, and their hue and their econ