Marching with Gomez A War Correspondent's Field Notebook, Kept During Four Months with the Cuban Army (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Marching With Gomez: A War Correspondent's Field Notebook, Kept During Four Months With the Cuban Army To Spaniards. It was not until 151 1 that they began to occupy Cuba. The wrecking of Columbus' best ship on the coast of Hispaniola (hayti) led to the founding of the first settlements upon that coast, and the discovery of gold in 1496 began bringing Span iards by hundreds to the New World. How they behaved themselves in beautiful Hispaniola was long ago described for us by the good Las Casas, in his famous book, The Destruction of the Indies. The story makes one of the most hideous chapters in the history of mankind. Rumors of what was going on from time to time reached the ears of a certain important Chieftain in the neighboring island of Cuba, and he sent spies over to Hispaniola, who more than confirmed the worst things that had been reported. One day this Chieftain, whose name was Hatuey, found a large ingot of gold and forthwith called together his tribal council. Know ye, my brethren, said he, that this yellow thing is the god of the Spaniards wherefore let us propitiate it with songs and dances, and pray it to turn the mind of those people away from coming to Cuba. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.