°hap. xvii.

IN AMERICA.

43

were unavailable to extract much gold by theexterminating degree of labour that was imposedby those rigid governors who had succeeded tothe milder rule of Columbus. In the regionswhere gold was found in the streams, each in-dividual, above fourteen years of age, was requiredto pay, every three months, a Flemish hawk’sbell of gold dust (equal in the present day totwenty shillings in silver); and the caciques werecalled upon to pay a much larger amount—one ofthem, Maniocatex 1 , as much as ten pounds inthree months. This was, however, found to befar more than could be obtained, and the re-quisition was reduced to one half; but even thisdemand produced despair among the natives ; theyabandoned the labour of their fields; a scarcity ofthe means of subsistence soon followed : what littlewas to be found was seized by the Spaniards;great numbers of the Indians were left destitute offood, and thus many of their tribes were thinnedor extirpated by absolute starvation®.

As the possession of Hispaniola produced goldm such small quantities, and as even this was ex-hausted within twenty years after the discovery,in spite of the forced labour of the aborigines,it is not surprising that the expectations of theadventurers of immense mineral wealth should

1 Irving, vol. ii. p. 276.

2 Idem, p. 282.