The same gentle graceful inoffensive natives were found in this section of Cuba as those who first received the Spanish conquerors at Baracoa and other places in the Island. Those of the great plains belonging to this province were known as Camagueyanos, and although for many years Spain called this section of the island Puerto Principe, the musical Indian term stuck, and with the inauguration of the Republic in 1901, the name of Camaguey was officially given to this part of Cuba. In the year 1515, Diego Velasquez, with his fever for founding cities, established a colony on the shore of the Bay of Nuevitas, and christened it Puerto Principe. In those early days, however, there was no rest for the unprotected, hence the first settlement was moved in a short time to another locality not definitely known, but a year later the city was permanently established in the center of the province, about fifty miles from either shore, where it remains today, with many features of its antiquity still in evidence. The first of the old Spanish adventurers who succeeded in making himself both famous and rich without flagrant trespass of law, was Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa, one of the original settlers whom Velasquez left in the City of Puerto Principe founded in 1515. This sturdy old pioneer did not bother with gold mining, but succeeded in securing large grants of land in the fertile plains of Camaguey, where he raised great herds of cattle and horses, exercising at the same time a decidedly despotic influence over the natives and everyone else in that region. Vasco, although spending more than half of the year in the cities of Puerto Principe and Sancti Spiritus, had a retreat of his own, probably some place in the Sierra de Cubitas, where he held princely sway and guarded his wealth from intrusive buccaneers and other ambitious adventurers of those times. It was he who, meeting Hernando de Soto on his arrival at Santiago de Cuba, escorted that famous explorer across the beautiful rolling country of Camaguey, which he seemed to consider as his own special domain, and finally accepted the position of second in command in that unfortunate expedition of De Soto into the Peninsula of Florida in 1539. Fighting the savage Seminoles was not however to his taste, and the old man returned to Havana inside of a year, mounted his horse and rode home, firmly convinced, he said, that Camaguey was the only country for a white man to live and die in.