ow openly mutinied and
abandoned itself to the wildest excesses. It became scattered and
disbanded, and little groups of soldiers went wandering about the
country, robbing and outraging and carrying cruelty and oppression among
the natives. Long-suffering as these were, and patiently as they bore
with the unspeakable barbarities of the Spanish soldiers, there came a
point beyond which their forbearance would not go. An aching spirit of
unforgiveness and revenge took the place of their former gentleness and
compliance; and here and there, when the Spaniards were more brutal and
less cautious than was their brutal and incautious habit, the natives
fell upon them and took swift and bloody revenge. Small parties found
themselves besieged and put to death whole villages, whose hospitality
had been abused, cut off wandering groups of the marauders and burned the
houses where they lodged. The disaffection spread; and Caonabo, who had
never abated his resentment at the Spanish intrusion into the island,
thought the time had come to make another demonstration of native power.

Fortunately for the Spaniards his object was the fort of St. Thomas,
commanded by the alert Ojeda; and this young man, who was not easily to
be caught napping, had timely intelligence of his intention. When
Caonabo, mustering ten thousand men, suddenly surrounded the fort and
prepared to attack it, he found the fifty Spaniards of the garrison more
than ready for him, and his naked savages dared not advance within the
range of the crossbows and arquebuses. Caonabo tried to besiege the
station, watching every gorge and 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