the end of the century the Guinea trade fell to secondary importance, but
it was by no means discontinued.

Of the negroes carried to Portugal in the fifteenth century a large
proportion were set to work as slaves on great estates in the southern
provinces recently vacated by the Moors, and others were employed as
domestic servants in Lisbon and other towns. Some were sold into Spain
where they were similarly employed, and where their numbers were recruited
by a Guinea trade in Spanish vessels in spite of Portugal's claim of
monopoly rights, even though Isabella had recognized these in a treaty of
1479. In short, at the time of the discovery of America Spain as well as
Portugal had quite appreciable numbers of negroes in her population and
both were maintaining a system of slavery for their control.

When Columbus returned from his first voyage in the spring of 1493 and
announced his great landfall, Spain promptly entered upon her career
of American conquest and colonization. So great was the expectation of
adventure and achievement that the problem of the government was not how
to enlist participants but how to restrain a great exodus. Under heavy
penalties emigration was restricted by royal decrees to those who procured
permission to go. In the autumn of the same year fifteen hundred men,
soldiers, courtiers, priests and laborers, accompanied the discoverer
on his second voyage, in radiant hopes. But instead of wealth and high
adventure these Argonauts met hard labor and sickness. Instead of the rich
cities of Japan and China sought for, there were found squalid villages of
Caribs and Lucayans. Of gold there was little, of spices none.

Columbus, when planting his colony at Isabella, on the northern coast
of Hispaniola (Hayti), promptly found need of draught animals and other
equipment. He wrote to his sovereigns in January, 1494, asking for the