ts more like an Indian than a Spaniard. According to
his story, he and the two women were the sole survivors of a company of
twenty-six. They had fled from Ojeda's ill-starred settlement at Uraba,
on the Gulf of Darien, and were trying to make their way back to
Hispaniola, but had been driven out of their course around the north
coast of Cuba. Not far from Cape San Antonio they had been shipwrecked
and thence had made their way by land, along the north coast. Most of
them had been killed by natives while trying to cross an arm of the sea,
which has been assumed to have been the Bay of Matanzas, which was so
named on that account.

On the Havana coast the expedition met the vessel which Velasquez had
sent. But leaving it in port there the expedition went across the island
again to Xagua, or Cienfuegos, there to meet Velasquez himself and
another expedition which he was leading, and there to spend with him the
Christmas season of 1513. At the beginning of 1514 Narvaez and a hundred
men returned to Havana and thence marched westward into Pinar del Rio,
the vessel keeping in touch with them along the coast. How far they went
in that province is not now certainly known. Some accounts have it that
they stopped at Bahia Honda and there took ship back for Baracoa, while
others insist that they got as far as Nombre de Dios. All that is
certain is that Narvaez and his comrades visited on this expedition all
parts of the island, and thus completed the nominal exploration and
occupation of Cuba in the early part of 1514.

CHAPTER VI

Velasquez was for a number of years the dominant figure in Cuban
history, and he much more than any other man is to be credited with the
settlement of the island and its social, political and economical
organization. He was married at Baracoa in the early part of 1513 to
Donna Maria de Cuellar, daughter of Christopher de Cuellar, the royal
treasurer in the island, but within a week was left a widower. To find
solace for his grief in action, he threw himself with extraordinary
energy into the work of exploring, pacifying and colonizing the island.

After founding the town of San Salvador de Bayamo he went westward, as
already stated, to meet Narvaez and to spend Christmas at Xagua or
Cienfuegos. Less than a month later he founded La Villa de Trinidad, and
later in the year La Villa de Sancti Spiritus and, finally, Santiago de
Cuba. At all of these places excepting the last named gold was foun