diligence," to the Governor at
Panama, that the four galleys were granted to him "within few howers."
The story is not corroborated; but Oxenham was very human, and Spanish
beauty, like other beauty, is worth sinning for.

A year or two later, Captain Andrew Barker of Bristol, while cruising
off the Main, captured a Spanish frigate "between Chagre and Veragua."
On board of her, pointing through the port-holes, were four cast-iron
guns which had been aboard John Oxenham's ship. They were brought to
England, and left in the Scilly Islands, A.D. 1576.

_Note._--The story of John Oxenham is taken from "Purchas his
Pilgrimes," vol. iv. (the original large 4to edition); and from
Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 526. Another version of the tale is given in
Sir R. Hawkins' "Observations." He is also mentioned in Hakluyt's
account of Andrew Barker.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SPANISH RULE IN HISPANIOLA

Rise of the buccaneers--The hunters of the wild
bulls--Tortuga--Buccaneer politics--Buccaneer customs

In 1492, when Columbus landed on Hayti, he found there about 1,000,000
Indians, of a gentle refinement of manners, living peaceably under their
kings or caciques. They were "faint-hearted creatures," "a barbarous
sort of people, totally given to sensuality and a brutish custom of
life, hating all manner of labour, and only inclined to run from place
to place." The Spaniards killed many thousands of them, hunted a number
with their bloodhounds, sent a number to work the gold-mines, and caused
about a third of the population to commit suicide or die of famine. They
discouraged sensuality and a distaste for work so zealously that within
twenty years they had reduced the population to less than a twentieth
part of its original 1,000,000 of souls. They then called the island
Hispaniola, and built a city, on the south coast, as the capital. This
city they called Nueva Ysabel, in honour of the Queen of Spain, but the
name was soon changed to that of St Domingo.[3]

[Footnote 3: See particularly Burney, Exquemeling, Edwards, and Hazard.]

Those Indians who were not enslaved, retired to the inmost parts of the
island, to the shelter of the thickest woods, where they maintained
themselves by hunting. The swine and cattle, which had belonged to their
fellows in their prosperous days, ran wild, and swarmed all over the
island in incredible numbers. The dogs of the caciques also took to the
woods, where they ranged i