Irving's Works Author:Washington Irving Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H. KIBCOKDUCT OF DON PEDRO MAROARITE, AMD HIS DEPARTURE FROM THE ISLAND. [1494.] T will be recollected, that before departing on his voyage, ... more »Columbus had given the command of the army to Don Pedro Margarite, with orders to make a military tour of the island, awing the natives by a display of military force, but conciliating their good-will by equitable and amicable treatment. The island was at this time divided into five domains, each governed by a cacique, of absolute and hereditary power, to whom a great number of inferior caciques yielded tributary allegiance. The first or most important domain comprised the middle part of the royal Vega. It was a rich, lovely country, partly cultivated after the imperfect manner of the natives, partly covered with noble forests, studded with Indian towns, and watered by numerous rivers, many of which, rolling down from the mountains of Cibao, on its southern frontier, had gold-dust mingled with their sands. The name ofthe cacique was Guarionex, whose ancestors had long ruled over the province. The second, called Marien, was under the sway of Gua- canagari, on whose coast Columbus had been wrecked in his first voyage. It was a large and fertile territory, extending along the northern coast from Cape St. Nicholas at the western extremity of the island, to the great river Yagui, afterwards called Monte Christi, and including the northern part of the royal Vega, since called the plain of Cape Francois, now Cape Haytien. The third bore the name of Haguana. It extended along the southern coast from the river Ozema to the lakes, and comprised the chief part of the centre of the island lying along the southern face of the mountains of Cibao, the mineral district of Hayti. It was under the dominion of the Carib cacique Caon...« less