Gold was the god of the Spanish conquerors, and to secure it was their chief aim and ambition. Its discovery in this section of Santa Clara brought hope to them and despair to the Indians, on whom the former depended for labor with which to dig this precious metal from the earth. Velasquez found the natives of Trinidad, like those of Oriente, a gentle, confiding people, who asked only permission to live as they had always done; tilling the soil, fishing, visiting and dancing, at which they were most clever, an ideal and harmless life, suited to their tastes. They grew corn, sweet potatoes, tobacco and yucca, from which they made their cazaba bread, still used by the country people of the present day. The Spaniards, however, soon changed this earthly dream of ease and joy into one of arduous and repugnant toil, rather than to submit to which, many of them committed suicide by poison and by drowning. Velasquez, enthusiastic over the locality of his newly founded city, Trinidad, despatched at once one of his caravels to La Espanola in Santo Domingo, with orders to bring back cattle, mares and other material necessary to further the interests of the new settlement. And so it came to pass that this section of southern Santa Clara, with its fertile lands, beautiful scenery and promise of gold, played an important part in the early colonization of the Island. The desire to accumulate wealth through the toil of the unhappy Indians, of whom the Spaniards made slaves, tempted even Las Casas, the great defender of the Cuban aborigines, to accept assignment of them as a gift from the crown, so that he might share something of the prosperity of the early conquerors. It is reported that Las Casas repented this departure from the path of rectitude and afterwards was led to indorse the importation of African slaves in order to save the Cuban Indians from extermination. It was on the banks of the beautiful Arimo, some twenty-five miles east of Trinidad, that this celebrated old historian and defender of the faith maintained his ranch and other worldly possessions. Throughout the sixteenth century this section of Santa Clara was an important station on the line of travel between Santiago de Cuba and Havana. Caravels leaving “Tierra Firme,” or the great continent of South America, that had been discovered, frequently made this shore, on the other side of the Caribbean, or were driven against it by storms, the crews afterwards reaching Santiago de Cuba by travel overland, along the south coast. Owing probably to the fact that all of this coast, from the mouth of the Zaza River east to the Cauto, is low, covered with dense jungle, reports reached Spain to the effect that the most of Cuba was a swamp, which is far from the truth, since by far the greatest portion of the Island is rolling and mountainous.