There appeared to be no roads in the country.
But this was not an impossible situation to the young Spanish cavaliers,
for in the Moorish wars it had often been necessary to construct a road
over the mountains. A number of them at once volunteered for the
service, and with laborers and pioneers, to whom they set an example by
working as valiantly as they were ready to fight, they made a road for
the little army, which was named in their honor El Puerto de los
Hidalgos, the Gentlemen's Pass. When they reached the top of this steep
defile and could look down upon the land beyond they saw a vast and
magnificent plain, covered with forests of beautiful trees, blossoming
meadows and a network of clear lakes and rivers, and dotted here and
there with thatch-roofed villages. Near the top of the pass a spring of
cool delicious water bubbled out in a glen shaded by palms and one tall
and handsome tree of an unknown variety, with wood so hard that it
turned the ax of a laborer who tried to cut a chip of it. Colon gave the
plain the name of the Vega Real or Royal Plain.
Of all the events, exploits and intrigues of those first years in the
Spanish Indies, no one historian among those who accompanied the
expedition ever found time to write. Where all was so new, and every
man, whether priest, cavalier, soldier, sailor, clerk or artisan, had
his own reasons and his own aims in coming to this land of promise,
nothing went exactly according to anybody's plans.
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