sent back from Havana by the cacique who had meanwhile received the magic paper ordering their release. They described the slaughter of some Spaniards upon their arrival at the port which, since that time, has consequently been called Matanzas; several had managed to defend themselves but had afterwards been hanged by a cacique on a ceiba tree, leaving only the two women, whose lives were spared. This news so irritated Narvaez that he ordered eighteen caciques who had come in response to Las Casas’s papers, bringing food for the Spaniards, to be put in chains, and but for the priest’s threat that he would have him severely punished by Velasquez, and even report the case to the King, he would have hanged them. Las Casas, by his vigorous and menacing attitude, secured the immediate release of all the caciques but one, who was kept a prisoner until Diego Velasquez joined the expedition and released him. (25) At another village, a Spaniard, also a survivor of the Matanzas massacre, was brought forward and delivered to the Spaniards by the cacique, who declared he loved him and had treated him as his own son. Great rejoicing celebrated the finding of this man, and both Las Casas and Narvaez embraced the cacique with fervour. The Spaniard had nearly forgotten his mother-tongue and was in all respects so entirely like the Indians in his manners and ways that every one laughed a good deal at him. Little by little he recovered the use of his Spanish and was able to give much information concerning the country. Upon the arrival of Diego Velasquez, whose bride had died very shortly after her marriage, a town was founded on the banks of a large river, called by the Indians the Arimao, where very rich gold-mines were discovered. In this newly founded town of Xagua, as it was named, Las Casas received a valuable repartimiento of land and Indians in recognition of the services he had rendered during the expeditions, for, though he was the enemy of all cruel treatment and the protector of the natives against his callous-hearted countrymen, his conscience on the subject of repartimientos was not yet fully awakened.