Rumor reaching him that Anacaona, queen of Jaraguá, meditated revolt, he marched thither at the head of two hundred foot-soldiers and seventy horsemen. The queen came out to meet him, and escorted him with music and dancing to the great banqueting-hall, and entertained him there for several days. Still assured by evil tongues that his hostess intended treachery, he determined to forestall her. On a Sunday afternoon, while a tilting-match was in progress, Ovando gave the signal. He raised his hand and touched his Alcántara cross—a badge of honor it was called, which, had it been real, should have shrivelled the hand that for such a purpose touched it. On the instant Anacaona and her caciques were seized and a mock trial given them; after which the queen was hanged, the caciques tortured and burned, and the people of the province, men, women, and children, ruthlessly and indiscriminately butchered. Those who escaped the massacre were afterward enslaved. For intelligence, grace, and beauty Anacaona was the Isabella of the Indies, and there was no valid proof that she meditated the slightest injury to the Spaniards. The natives of Saona and Higuey, in revenge for the death of a chief torn in pieces by a Spanish bloodhound, rose to arms, and slew a boat's crew of eight Spaniards. Juan de Esquivel with four hundred men was sent against them, and the usual indiscriminate hanging and burning followed. It is stated that over six hundred were slaughtered at one time in one house. A peace was conquered, a fort built; fresh outrages provoked a fresh outbreak; and the horrors of the extermination that followed Las Casas confessed himself unable to describe. A passion arose for mutilation, and for prolonging agony by new inventions for refining cruelty. And the irony of Christianity was reached when thirteen men were hanged side by side in honor of Christ and his apostles. Cotubano, the last of the five native kings of Española, was taken to Santo Domingo, and hanged by order of Ovando. In Higuey were then formed two settlements, Salvaleon and Santa Cruz. To take the places in the Spanish service of the Indians thus slain in Española, forty thousand natives of the Lucayas Islands were enticed thither upon the pretext of the captors that they were the Indians' dead ancestors come from heaven to take their loved ones back with them. Española was indeed their shortest way to heaven, though not the way they had been led to suppose. When tidings of Ovando's doings reached Spain, notably of his treatment of Anacaona, Queen Isabella was on her death-bed; but raising herself as best she was able, she exclaimed to the president of the council, "I will have you take of him such a residencia as was never taken." * * * * * [Sidenote: THE LABOR QUESTION.]