pomp. There were not persons wanted who whispered that so sudden a death of a late arrival was significant of poison, though the doctor under oath declared the cause to be a very prevalent disease to which a number of soldiers had succumbed.[1]
Soon after Garay's arrival[2] at Mexico a messenger arrived in hot haste from Pánuco with the report that all the natives were in arms, slaughtering Spaniards in every direction, and resolved not to leave one white man alive. The trouble was ascribed to Garay's men: already mutinous before his departure, they wholly ignored the son he had left i charge. A large number felt also absolved from all restraint by the absence of officers, whom Ocampo had exiled for their well-known sympathy with Velazquez, or taken with him to Mexico.[3] Abandoning the camps assigned to them, some disbanding, they scattered over the country in small parties,[4] pillaging the native villages of
- ↑ The sickness lasted usually three or four days. Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 170-1. The rumor of poison was freely ventilated in the accusations sent to Spain by royal officials a year later, and in Cortés, Residencia, 1.-ii. Gomara ascribes one rumor to the supposed change of feeling between Cortés and Garay when the latter removed from his palace to the house of an old friend named Alonso de Villanueva, where he frequently conversed with Narvaez. Hist. Mex., 227. Neither is said to have spoken there of Cortés save in flattering terms, according to Bernal Diaz. Cortés does not allude to the sickness, but attributes his death to the disappointments suffered in Pánuco, to remorse for the revolt then raging in that province, caused by his men, and to fears for the safety of his son. Cartas, 299-300. The audiencia of Santo Domingo, which had looked coldly on Garay's expedition, received a royal decree dated December 27, 1523, instructing them to prevent any quarrel between him and Cortés, each to confine himself to their respective discoveries. Cédula, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., xiii. 498-9. The sons did not take advantage of the privilege this implied, but sent to collect what remained of the father's estate. One of them, named Antonio, received a regimiento in Santo Domingo city, and the lieutenancy of the forts at Santiago in Cuba, and Yaquimo in Española, with a remission of half the 1,000 ducats due by his father to the royal treasury. Herrera, dec. iii. lib, vii. cap. i. In 1532 he figures as regidor of Santiago, while claiming the restitution of certain estates of his father in Jamaica. Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., xii. 127-33.
- ↑ I the beginning of December 1523, evidently.
- ↑ Bernal Diaz differs from Cortés and others in assuming that these very men of Velazquez gave occasion for the anarchy by quarelling for the supreme command. He supposes them to be exiled afterward in consequence. Hist. Verdad., 171.
- ↑ By order of the lieutenants of Cortés, says a witness, in Cortés, Residencia, 1. 284, but this must be an exaggeration of the fact that they were quar-
