After another reverse on the east side of the Gulf of Darien Ojeda returned to Hispaniola and died there.
The term tobacco appears not to have been a commonly used original name for the plant, and it has come to us from a peculiar instrument used for inhaling its smoke by the inhabitants of Hispaniola (San Domingo).
The attack on Hispaniola, however, was a disastrous failure, and though a landing at Jamaica and the capture of the capital, Santiago de la Vega, was effected, the expedition was almost annihilated by disease; and Penn and Venables returned to England, when Cromwell threw them into the Tower.
In 1508 Nicolas de Ovando, governor of Hispaniola (Haiti) rewarded the services of Juan Ponce de Leon, one of Columbus's companions in 1493, by permitting him to explore the island, then called by the natives "Borinquen," and search for its reputed deposits of gold.
Ovando, the governor of Hispaniola (Haiti), who had exhausted the labour of that island, turned his thoughts to the Bahamas, and in 1509 Ferdinand authorized him to procure labourers from these islands.
