One of the principal caciques, however, not being a correct observer of
the heavenly bodies, took up arms before the appointed night, and was
repulsed by the soldiers quartered in his village. The alarm was given,
and the Spaniards were all put on the alert. The cacique fled to Guarionex
for protection, but the chieftain, enraged at his fatal blunder, put him
to death upon the spot.

No sooner did the Adelantado hear of this fresh conspiracy, than he put
himself on the march for the Vega with a strong body of men. Guarionex did
not await his coming. He saw that every attempt was fruitless to shake off
these strangers, who had settled like a curse upon his territories. He had
found their very friendship withering and destructive, and he now dreaded
their vengeance. Abandoning, therefore, his rightful domain, the once
happy Vega, he fled with his family and a small band of faithful followers
to the mountains of Ciguay. This is a lofty chain, extending along the
north side of the island, between the Vega and the sea. The inhabitants
were the most robust and hardy tribe of the island, and far more
formidable than the mild inhabitants of the plains. It was a part of this
tribe which displayed hostility to the Spaniards in the course of the
first voyage of Columbus, and in a skirmish with them in the Gulf of
Semana the first drop of native blood had been shed in the New World. The
reader may remember the frank and confiding conduct of these people the
day after the skirmish, and the intrepid faith with which their cacique
trusted himself on board of the caravel of the admiral, and in the power
of the Spaniards. It was to this same cacique, named Mayobanex, that the
fugitive chieftain of the Vega now applied for refuge. He came to his
residence at an Indian town near Cape Cabron, about forty leagues east of
Isabella, and implored shelter for his wife and children, and his handful
of loyal followers. The noble-minded cacique of the mountains received him