Having seen Diego safely started, Columbus, with Bartholomew, two hundred and twenty Spaniards, and twenty other bloodhounds, started to attack the savages. He met a hundred thousand of them--so the story goes--and defeated them with great slaughter. It is very probable that the number of the enemy was exaggerated, and that there were not more than ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-six, with perhaps two small-boys. There is no doubt, however, that they were shot down by the soldiers, ridden down by the horses, and mangled by the dogs to an immense extent, and that the battle was a glorious triumph of civilization over barbarism. The victory was followed up by Columbus with energy. He marched through almost the entire length and breadth of the island, and compelled the caciques to make peace and pay a heavy tribute to the Spaniards. Every native was taxed either a certain amount of gold or its equivalent in cotton, according to Columbus’s view of their relative value; and to secure his conquest, the Admiral built and garrisoned forts in different parts of the island, the most important of which was called Fort Concepcion, and was situated in the beautiful plain lying back of Isabella. Even Guacanagari and his people, who had remained faithful to Columbus, were taxed as heavily as the hostile natives, and that amiable cacique was so disgusted by this reward of his fidelity that he resigned his chieftainship and died of what in the case of a white monarch would be called a broken heart. The yoke that the Spaniards had put on the native neck was too heavy to be borne. The savages resolved to starve their oppressors, and with this view destroyed their crops and retired to the mountains, to live on roots until the Spaniards should die of starvation. The plan was not successful. The Spaniards hunted the natives with dogs and dragged them back to work as slaves. Within a few months the free and happy people who had welcomed the Spaniards to the island, and were ready to worship them as superior beings, were converted into a horde of cowed and wretched slaves.