would thus be able to obtain such goods as they might stand in need of. It
was upon the same occasion of writing home to Spain that the admiral
strongly urged upon the Catholic Sovereigns that the Spanish colonists
should be allowed to make use of the services of the Indians for a year or
two until the colony should be in a settled state, a proposal which he did
not wait for their highnesses' authority to carry out, and which led to a
new form of the repartimiento. But this brings us back to Roldan's story,
being closely connected with it.


CONTENTION WITH ROLDAN.

After great trouble and many attempts at agreement, in which mention is
more than once made of slaves, the dispute between Roldan's party, rebels
they might almost be called, and Columbus, was at last, after two years'
negotiation, brought to a close. Roldan kept his chief-justiceship; and
his friends received lands and slaves. It brings to mind the conclusion of
many a long war in the old world, in which two great powers have been
contending against each other, with several small powers on each side, the
latter being either ruined in the course of the war, or sacrificed at the
end. The admiral gave repartimientos to those followers of Roldan who
chose to stay in the island, which were constituted in the following
manner. The admiral placed under such a caciqne so many thousand matas
(shoots of the cazabi), or, which came to the same thing, so many thousand
montones (small mounds a foot and a half high, and ten or twelve feet
round, on each of which a cazabi shoot was planted); and Columbus then
ordered that the cacique or his people should till these lands for
whomsoever they were assigned to. The repartimiento had now grown to its
second state--not lands only, but lands and the tillage of them. We shall
yet find that there is a further step in this matter, before the