cotton they had brought was enough to fill one of their houses. Having
delivered this, they gratuitously offered the Adelantado as much cassava
bread as he desired. The offer was most acceptable in the present
necessitous state of the colony; and Don Bartholomew sent to Isabella for
one of the caravels, which was nearly finished, to be dispatched as soon
as possible to Xaragua, to be freighted with bread and cotton.

In the meantime, the natives brought from all quarters large supplies of
provisions, and entertained their guests with continual festivity and
banqueting. The early Spanish writers, whose imaginations, heated by the
accounts of the voyagers, could not form an idea of the simplicity of
savage life, especially in these newly-discovered countries, which were
supposed to border upon Asia, often speak in terms of oriental
magnificence of the entertainments of the natives, the palaces of the
caciques, and the lords and ladies of their courts, as if they were
describing the abodes of Asiatic potentates. The accounts given of
Xaragua, however, have a different character; and give a picture of savage
life, in its perfection of idle and ignorant enjoyment. The troubles which
distracted the other parts of devoted Hayti had not reached the
inhabitants of this pleasant region. Living among beautiful and fruitful
groves, on the borders of a sea apparently for ever tranquil and unvexed
by storms; having few wants, and those readily supplied, they appeared
emancipated from the common lot of labor, and to pass their lives in one
uninterrupted holiday. When the Spaniards regarded the fertility and
sweetness of this country, the gentleness of its people, and the beauty of
its women, they pronounced it a perfect paradise.

At length the caravel arrived which was to be freighted with the articles
of tribute. It anchored about six miles from the residence of Behechio,
and Anacaona proposed to her brother that they should go together to