between themselves about their ill-gotten spoil, and others were cut off
by the Indians, whom they had so shamefully treated, and who afterwards
pulled dawn and burnt their fort.

The misfortunes which had befallen the Spaniards in the vicinity of
this harbour threw a gloom over the place, and it was considered by the
superstitious mariners as under some baneful influence. The situation
was low and unhealthy, and not capable of improvement; Columbus
therefore determined to remove the settlement.

With this view he made choice of a situation more healthy and commodious
than that of Navidad, and having ordered the troops and the various
persons to be employed in the colony to be immediately disembarked,
together with the stores, ammunition, and all the cattle and live-stock,
he traced out the plan of a town in a large plain near a spacious bay;
and obliging every person to put his hand to the work, the houses were
soon so far advanced as to afford them shelter, and forts were
constructed for their defence.

This rising city, the first that Europeans founded in the new world, he
named Isabella, in honour of his patroness the Queen of Castile.

As long as the Indians had any prospect that their sufferings might
terminate by the voluntary departure of the invaders, they submitted in
silence, and dissembled their sorrow; but now that the Spaniards had
built a town--now that they had dug up the ground and planted it with
corn--it became apparent that they came not to visit the country, but to
settle in it.

They were themselves naturally so abstemious and their wants so few,