The Spanish Indies at this time consisted of four main
governments: Peruana or Peru, lying inaccessibly on the
South Pacific Coast with its capital at Lima; New Spain,
withdrawn from observation behind the unknown waters of
the Bay of Mexico; Guatemala, comprising with the
provinces of Verapaz, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Veragua,
the greater part of Central America; and finally the govern-
ment of Española, which included with all the Islands the
provinces of Tierra Firme, or Golden Castille, up to the con-
fines of Guatemala. ¹ Though the oldest and once the most
important the latter government was now quite eclipsed
by her younger sisters. The City of San Domingo it is
true still retained, as the rendezvous of the outward-bound
convoys and the point of distribution for European goods,
its old position of the Queen City of the Indies, and but
two or three cities in the whole Spanish dominions could
rival it for strength, size, and importance. But already
the reckless native policy of the earlier colonists had
exhausted the islands; most of them were uninhabited and
valuable chiefly for their timber and the hides of the
cattle that had run wild upon them, and the rest, including
Española, or, as we called it, Hispaniola, were given
up to roving tribes of escaped negroes, who having taken
Indian wives were rapidly forming a new and savage
population known to their former Spanish masters as
Cimaroñes or 'Hill-men.' Darien was in no better case,
and owed its importance solely to the fact that through
it lay the road to Peru, which was almost all the Spaniards
really held. Tierra Firme or the Spanish Main had been
arrested in its development by the superior attractions
of Peru and Mexico, and still consisted of a few scattered
settlements along the coast and the course of the principal
rivers with but one town of any importance--which was

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