The History of Cuba Volume I Part 14

Matters reached their climax in the matter of further fortifications.

Osorio wanted to build a sea wall in front of the city, such as the engineer Sanchez had planned years before, at the beginning of Mazariegos's administration. Menendez curtly dismissed that scheme, and commissioned his son-in-law, Pedro de Valdes, with some other officers from Florida, to survey the waterfront of the city and recommend additional fortifications. They reported that it would be folly to build a sea wall, and that all that was needed was a round tower, about thirty-seven feet high, on the headland opposite the Morro, on which latter an observation tower had already been erected. Valdes suggested that the tower might be built by the garrison of La Fuerza, at no cost, if the governor would provide the materials. This Osorio refused to do.

He had no money for such a purpose, and no authority to spend any for it. Moreover, he condemned the plan of thus dividing the garrison, holding that it would be far better to finish La Fuerza and concentrate all the forces there. The outcome of it was, therefore, that the proposed Punta Castle had to be for the time abandoned; Menendez perforce contenting himself with some earth-works on Punta, in which he placed a couple of cannons.

At the same time other friction arose at Santiago, a place which could not yet be altogether neglected. Menendez's attention was called to that place by having one of his own s.h.i.+ps chased into Santiago harbor by a French privateer. The captain of that s.h.i.+p reported to him that Santiago had a fine harbor but practically no defences. A fort had indeed been begun on the headland at one side of the harbor entrance, but had not been finished, and the sea wall for which the people had pet.i.tioned had not been started. Menendez thereupon sent thither a company of fifty men with four cannon, under command of Captain G.o.doy; without, of course, consulting Osorio as governor of the island.

This force remained there about three months, in the summer of 1567. It saw nothing of French privateers, or of any menace of an attack upon the town. But it did see a good deal of merchant s.h.i.+ps of various nations, French, Scottish and Portuguese, which came thither with slaves and merchandise, but which seldom ventured in for fear of G.o.doy and his men.

For such trade with foreigners, and particularly with those who were or were suspected to be heretics was strictly forbidden. G.o.doy and his men were therefore most unwelcome visitors, to the merchants and people of Santiago, and to the lieutenant of the governor, Martin de Mendoza. It was suspected, not without reason, that Osorio had sent word to Mendoza to antagonize G.o.doy as much as possible. At any rate, one day a particularly big French merchant vessel came into the harbor; G.o.doy rallied his men to the battery near the wharf, to prevent it from landing its cargo; and Mendoza arrested G.o.doy and sent him to jail, where he kept him until the cargo had been discharged and another taken on in its place, amid the jubilations of the people. Then G.o.doy was released, with profound apologies for the error which had been committed in arresting him!

G.o.doy remained for some time thereafter at Santiago, though much against his will. His superior officer commanded him to remain. But he sent an appeal for relief to the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, with the result that Mendoza was removed from office, in the winter of 1557-58. This was a relief to both Mendoza and G.o.doy, though it did not make their feelings less bitter. On Palm Sunday the two met at church, Mendoza accompanied by his wife and G.o.doy by a friend named Cordoba. The latter two grossly insulted both Mendoza and his wife, then ran into the church for security from chastis.e.m.e.nt, forcibly resisted arrest, and committed acts of sacrilege. They were finally overpowered, and on being brought to trial before the local court were condemned, G.o.doy to be hanged and his body quartered, and Cordoba to be flogged and sent to the galleys.

The sentence was executed, G.o.doy being hanged on a gallows at the door of the church the sanct.i.ty of which he had violated. When Menendez heard of this he was furious. He inst.i.tuted proceedings against Mendoza and the local alcaldes at Santiago, charging them with conspiracy to destroy G.o.doy so that their illegal traffic with Frenchmen and other foreigners would not be molested. Mendoza thought it prudent to remove to Carthagena, in New Granada, for fear of personal violence; whence he proceeded to Spain, where he was acquitted of all the charges which Menendez had made against him.

Meantime, the governors.h.i.+p of Osorio had ended. Early in 1567, at the time when the controversy arose over the sea wall and the Punta fortifications, he had realized that his usefulness as governor was ended, and had asked the King to accept his resignation; declaring that his presence there was no longer of value to his majesty. In August, 1567, the King appointed Diego de Santillan to be governor in his stead, and commissioned him to investigate Osorio's stewards.h.i.+p, and particularly to bring him to trial on certain charges of false arrest and cruelty to a prisoner. But just as Santillan was about to embark for Cuba, in October, 1567, his commission was revoked and Menendez was appointed governor of Cuba in his stead. It has been said that this appointment was made by the fanatical King to show his approval and appreciation of Menendez's act on September 20, 1565, when he ma.s.sacred the French garrison of Fort Caroline, Florida, "not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans."

Menendez was not able, however, as Adelantado of Florida, to reside permanently in Cuba, or indeed to spend much time there; wherefore it was arranged that a lieutenant governor should be the actual administrator in his stead. The man chosen was Francisco Zayas, a lawyer, who had been selected by the King to be lieutenant governor with Santillan. He reached Havana in July, 1568, and at once a.s.sumed the office which Osorio was glad to relinquish. It cannot be said that he was greatly welcomed by the people of Havana or of any part of Cuba, since it was a.s.sumed that he would be a mere puppet acting for Menendez, and it was feared that Menendez would use Cuba as a mere stepping stone or adjunct to Florida, draining it of men and resources for the benefit of the larger province on the continent. This apprehension, happily, was not realized.

Osorio personally had cause for fear. Zayas was commissioned to conduct the investigation into his affairs, and there was every reason to suppose that Menendez would compel him to make the inquest as drastic as possible and to impose the heaviest possible penalties for any misdemeanors which might be proved against him. But Zayas was after all a just and reasonable man, who was not afraid to a.s.sert his independence of Menendez, particularly since, as he pointed out, his commission as lieutenant governor antedated that of Menendez as governor by two months. Moreover the people of Havana, through dislike of Menendez and fear of his policy, gave their strongest support to Osorio, testifying in his behalf, and at the end sending a great memorial to the King, signed by almost every man of consequence in Havana, pet.i.tioning for the utmost possible favor for the governor. The result was that the lightest of sentences was pa.s.sed upon Osorio, two years after his actual retirement from office.

In dealing thus with Osorio, however, Zayas sealed his own fate. Nothing that he could do thereafter pleased Menendez, while he was called upon by the latter to do or to sanction things which offended his sense of right. By the beginning of May, 1569, relations between them reached the breaking point. Menendez caused the city council to protest that Zayas had never filed the bond which was required of a lieutenant governor, and to characterize this as a grave offence, indicating criminal intent.

Zayas thereupon resigned his office. Suits were inst.i.tuted against him and his wife in Spain, by Menendez, and he returned to the country to meet them. He appears to have been successful in his defence, since the King subsequently appointed him to be a judge in the Canary Islands.

Menendez appointed in place of Zayas as lieutenant governor Diego de Cabrera, who had filled that place under Osorio. His term of service was short, however, and no fewer than five others succeeded him, one after another, during the administration of Menendez. They were Diego de Ribera; Pedro Menendez Marquez, a nephew of Menendez; Juan de Ynestrosa; Juan Alfonso de Nabia; and Sancho Pardo Osorio.

Diego de Ribera, who served for a brief s.p.a.ce under Menendez as lieutenant-governor, was captain of the galleons, and was presently commissioned for an expedition to Florida. He was succeeded by Pedro Menendez Marquez, a nephew of Menendez. He was an accomplished navigator and on that account was directed by his uncle to sound and chart the Old Bahama Channel, a much-frequented route of commerce and approach to Cuba from the north and east. To this undertaking he devoted only a few weeks, but his observations were so exact, thorough and comprehensive that the Council for the Indies, on receiving his charts, immediately approved them and ordered them to be regarded as the authority for navigation of those waters.

The administration of Sancho Pardo Osorio was marked with much energy in advancing the defences of Havana and in caring for the commerce which frequented or touched at Cuban ports. The former work proceeded slowly, because of the necessity of depending almost exclusively upon the local community for aid. At this time also was effected the immensely important reform of codifying the munic.i.p.al ordinances. This work was done under a commission of the Supreme Court by Dr. Alfonso Casares, of Havana, who on January 14, 1577, presented the results of his labors to a council consisting of Sancho Pardo, the Alcaldes Geronimo de Rojas Avellaneda, and Alfonso Velasquez de Cuellar, and the Regidores Diego Lopez Duran, Juan Bautista de Rojas, Baltasar de Barreda, Antonio Recio, and Rodrigo Carreno. The code was unanimously approved by them, and it remained in force and active practice until the War of Independence in 1898.

CHAPTER XVII

Menendez was governor of Cuba for a little more than six years, from October 24, 1567, to December 13, 1573. Those were important years for the world at large. They saw the Duke of Alva, as governor of the Netherlands, establish there the b.l.o.o.d.y Tribunal, and in return the "Beggars of the Sea" engage in their indomitable campaigns against the oppressor, extending even to the coasts of Cuba. Spain engaged in a great war with the Ottoman Turks. France had the second and third civil wars, culminating in the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. Elizabeth of England fully committed herself to the Protestant cause and was excommunicated by the Pope. Mary of Scotland fled from her throne and was succeeded by young James VI.

Menendez, more a statesman of world-wide vision than any of his predecessors, was not unmindful of these transactions, or of the far greater events which they portended, and he strove after his fas.h.i.+on to prepare Cuba for her part in great affairs. He realized that in the wars of the European powers their American possessions were increasingly likely to become implicated. Despite his utmost efforts, various other nations sent vessels to West Indian waters, to harry the fleets of Spain. The numbers of such intruders were increasing. His utmost efforts had not been sufficient to drive the French away and to keep them away.

Now others than the French began to appear. The "Sea Beggars" of the Netherlands were daring navigators and formidable fighters, and they began to prowl around the coasts of Cuba. English captains had found their way to the Spanish Main, and Hawkins made his way to Vera Cruz, and Drake plundered Nombre de Dios.

Finding himself unable to protect the Spanish treasure s.h.i.+ps and to keep all enemies away from West Indian waters, Menendez sought at least to make Cuba secure against invasion, or its capital--for such Havana was about to become in name as well as in fact--secure against capture and looting by buccaneers. To this work he gave his chief attention, and, above all else, to the completion of La Fuerza. The rebuilding of that fortification dragged scandalously. Sometimes it was for lack of money, sometimes for lack of workmen. Menendez told the Council for the Indies that in its unfinished state it was an actual menace to the town, because a hostile force could easily land and capture it, and having done this, they could quickly complete it and make it almost impregnable against any attempt to drive them out. He did not explain why he could not complete it as quickly as an invading force could, but he asked for a force of three hundred negro slaves to work on it. With them, he said, it would be possible to finish the fort in two years. The Council was not favorably impressed. It could not understand how a few score buccaneers, landing and seizing the fort, could finish it in a few days, while it would take Menendez with three hundred slaves two years to do the work.

Diego de Ribera, as Acting Governor, also took up the matter. The fort was already sufficiently advanced to permit him to mount eight pieces of artillery, but he wanted twenty more. Also, he wanted a large permanent garrison of professional soldiers. It was unsatisfactory to have to depend upon a rallying of the citizens, because it interfered with the occupations of the citizens, because they were not expert in arms, and because when they were summoned not more than half their number responded, so that the commander never knew how many he could depend upon. There should, he urged, be a permanent garrison of two hundred men, under the command of the governor. Of course such a garrison could not be furnished by the town itself, because there were not in all Havana more than two hundred fighting men, all told. This gives, by the way, a hint concerning the rapid growth of the place at the time of Mazariegos. A town containing two hundred men capable of bearing arms must have had a total population approximating two thousand.

Ribera's arguments and appeals appear to have been more effective than those of Menendez. The Council for the Indies, and the King, too, ordered practical steps to be taken for finis.h.i.+ng and equipping the building which had so long been neglected. As Cuba, or perhaps especially the port of Havana, was of no great importance to the Spanish colonies on the mainland, for the safeguarding of their s.h.i.+pping, and also as Cuba had been so drained of men and supplies in former years for the exploitation of colonies on the main land, it was but justice as it was a matter of practical convenience and expediency for the government to call upon Mexico and Castilla del Oro to contribute largely to the payment of the cost of fortifying Havana. That place was a little later called, by royal decree, "Llave del Nuevo Mundo y Antemural de las Indias Occidentales," or Key of the New World and Bulwark of the West Indies. Certainly it was fitting that the New World should pay for its key and that the Indies should pay for their bulwark.

So Mexico was required to contribute four thousand ducats, and Florida to provide fifty good men to form the garrison of La Fuerza. The cost of maintaining the garrison was charged against Venezuela and Darien. The providing of labor was a more difficult matter. It seemed to be settled that negro slave labor must be employed. In order to secure it at little cost it was proposed to give slave-traders the privilege of taking as many slaves as they pleased to Cuba, provided that they would lend them to the government to work on La Fuerza until its completion; after which they might be sold or otherwise disposed of at the traders' will. The objection to this from the traders' point of view was the length of time that it was expected to take to finish the fort. The government estimated it at three years. Now the traders would have been willing thus to lend their slaves for a shorter time, for six months, or for a year. But they considered three years entirely too long. After working for so long a time, under a rigorous taskmaster, the average slave would be so nearly worn out that his value would be much impaired. So that scheme failed.

The next plan for getting labor for the fort was disastrous. A contract was made with a trader to provide three hundred negro slaves, by the end of 1572. He did deliver 191 of them in the summer of that year, and later sent the rest but they never got further than Hispaniola. The 191 whom he did deliver were, however, infected with small pox. A number of them died of that plague after their arrival at Havana, and the contagion got abroad in the city with the result that many other slaves and a number of the Spaniards also perished from it. Still, enough of the slaves in that plague-stricken cargo survived to cause the authorities of Havana much embarra.s.sment in feeding and clothing them.

Agriculture was not yet receiving the attention which it deserved, and even a hundred or a hundred and fifty more mouths to feed overtaxed the local resources. Requisition was therefore made upon the government of Yucatan to send a sufficient supply of corn and meat to feed the slaves, while the king himself undertook to clothe them. He was led to do this in a way which strikingly indicates the limitations of Philip's mind. To all appeals for clothing for their comfort or for decent appearance's sake, he was deaf. But when it represented to him that they must have clothes in order to be able to attend ma.s.s, he at once ordered them to be clad from his royal bounty!

More money was needed, and was raised in various ways. An examiner went about the island, looking into the accounts of public officials.

Generally he found that there was something due to the state from them.

Of the money thus collected, nearly all, to the amount of nearly four thousand pesos, was devoted to the costs of the fort. Other funds were taken for the purpose, and when there was still a deficit it was actually proposed to sell some of the slaves to pay for the maintenance of the rest. This counsel of despair was not, however, acted upon.

Instead, Sancho Pardo Osorio when acting governor, near the end of Menendez's administration, advanced much money from his own purse, trusting to the government to reimburse him. Another draft of four thousand ducats was finally obtained from Mexico, and smaller sums came from Venezuela and Darien. Thus the enterprise dragged on, until the summer of 1573 found the fort still far from finished, the builders of it heavily in debt for labor, materials and maintenance, and the garrison, workmen, and citizens of Havana all profoundly dissatisfied.

Naturally, and inevitably, this state of affairs reflected upon Menendez, and compa.s.sed his downfall. He was not merely governor of Cuba. He was Adelantado of Florida, and he gave to Florida his first thought and chief attention. He spent most of his time there, leaving Cuban affairs to be administered by acting governors of his own selection. This was altogether unsatisfactory to the people of Cuba, and especially of Havana. They wanted their governor to live among them, where he would be accessible, and pay much more attention to them and their interests. So they began agitating against him, and demanded a governor who should not be Adelantado of Florida, nor subject to that functionary. They did more than complain. They refused supplies. They would not send to Florida the supplies which Menendez urgently needed for his enterprises there. When the King reprimanded them and bade them do their duty, they replied with surprising defiance that they wanted payment, first, for supplies long ago furnished to the Havana garrison.

They also wanted to be relieved of the burden of being compelled to guard or to watch the coast themselves, at their own cost for arms and ammunition. They wanted these things done for them before they would trouble themselves for the furtherance of the Adelantado's enterprises in Florida.

Meantime, the Council for the Indies, at Seville, was also unfriendly to Menendez. Tired of the delay in building La Fuerza, it recommended to the king his removal in favor of someone who would more vigorously expedite that essential work. It was the bitter irony of fate that he should thus be condemned for failing to do the very thing upon which he had most set his heart to do. The Council also condemned him for faults of administration which were due, it held, to his personal neglect through absence from the island, and it therefore urged that a governor be appointed in his place who would spend his time chiefly in Cuba and would give to that island and its interests his first and best thoughts.

These representations were made to the King as early as the spring of 1571, and they had much weight with him.

The sequel was that in 1572 Menendez was recalled to Spain, and was commissioned for a work similar to that in which he had first won distinction, to wit, the protection of Spanish commerce against hostile privateers; only it was not now the commerce between Spain and Mexico which he was to safeguard in the West Indian seas, but that between Spain and the Netherlands, along the coast of France and in the British Channel. In that capacity he was commander of a considerable fleet, and the work was doubtless in itself congenial to him, and one which he was well fitted to perform with success. But his heart was set on Florida, with which he aspired to be identified as Cortez had been with Mexico and Pizarro with Peru; and he bitterly lamented his being so far separated from that country.

So far as his governors.h.i.+p of Cuba was concerned, which is all in which we need here be interested, he had at this time reached the beginning of the end. The king decided to remove him from that office, though probably not so much to get rid of him there as to be able to keep his valuable talents continually employed nearer home. He had decided that Menendez was of more value to him as a captain of his fleet than as a civil administrator. Accordingly at the beginning of 1573 Alfonso de Caceres Ovando, a temporarily retired judge of the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, was commissioned to make the customary investigation of Menendez's administration. He was not, however, appointed to succeed Menendez as governor, but the latter was left for the time in office.

This was a mark of the high favor in which Menendez was held by the king; and another token to the same effect was the provision that Menendez need not personally appear to answer any charges which might be made against him, but might, if he preferred, send an attorney in his stead. A third and perhaps still more notable indication of royal favor was in the fact that when Menendez elected not to appear in person, and not to send an attorney, but to ignore the whole investigation, he was not called to task, but was permitted to go without so much as a reprimand.

The investigation did not take place until November, 1573. Though brief it was thorough and searching. But it disclosed little that was to the discredit of Menendez, and nothing that was really serious. He seems to have been a somewhat gloomy and cruel fanatic, but a man of integrity and singular loyalty to his sovereign and his faith. He was zealous and energetic, but better fitted to command a s.h.i.+p or a fleet, or indeed an army, than to govern a state. Yet in both respects he failed. His chief concern in Cuba, as we have seen, was to promote her military defences; but he left La Fuerza incomplete, while the inestimable economic potentialities of the island were altogether neglected. So in Florida, he aimed at conquest with the sword and little else; and while he succeeded in holding the land against French a.s.saults and intrigues, he did not develop there a colony comparable with those which were being developed elsewhere in the New World; and he had the mortification of seeing, in the closing years of his life, French, Dutch and British privateers swarming in defiance of him the seas which Spain claimed for her exclusive own.

It was just a month after the beginning of the investigation into his affairs that Menendez was superseded in office by the appointment as governor of Cuba of Don Gabriel Montalvo. This gentleman was a n.o.bleman of great distinction in Spain. He was a Knight of the Order of Saint James, and he was also high sheriff of the Court of the Holy Inquisition in the city of Granada. The latter office indicates him to have been a man after the King's own heart. It remains to be added that Menendez returned to Spain after being superseded, and died there a few months later, at Santander; men said, of a broken heart at the enforced abandonment of his ambitions in Florida.

Little either attractive or grateful is to be found in the record of the condition of Cuba during the administration of Menendez, or as he left it to his successor. Rich as the island was in agricultural possibilities--it might well have been said of Cuba as Douglas Jerrold said of Australia, "Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest"--and few as were its inhabitants, it yet produced not enough to feed those few. It produced nothing with which to clothe them. After the decline of gold mining, the raising of cattle became the chief industry; chiefly for their hides, which were an important article of export. Bayamo was the centre of this industry, and was also the centre of a thriving but illegitimate commerce.

In fact the whole southeastern part of the Cuban coast was the resort of contraband traders, who brought thither silks and linens, wines, and sometimes cargoes of slaves, to exchange without paying tariff duties for hides and the valuable woods with which Cuba abounded. No attempt was made, at least with any efficiency, by the governor or the royal officials at Havana to stop this lawless trade. Now and then, however, the Supreme Court at Hispaniola interfered, arrested citizens of Bayamo, Manzanillo, and Santiago itself, and fined them heavily. Then the government at Havana, which had done nothing to enforce the law, remonstrated and protested against so much money being taken from Cuba to Hispaniola.

The island was, nevertheless, making some progress; appropriately enough through a reversal of the conditions which had formerly involved it in disaster. The Mexican adventure of Cortez had drawn away from Cuba men and resources almost to the exhaustion of the island. But now that country began sending men and means back to Cuba. Cortez had long been dead, but under his successors the wealth of Mexico was being wondrously developed, as was indeed that of Peru and other South American countries. Some of the commerce between South America and Spain went by other routes, though a considerable portion of it pa.s.sed by the sh.o.r.es of Cuba and utilized that island as a stopping place, to its material benefit. But all the Mexican traffic followed the Cuban route, the most of it pa.s.sing along the north coast and making Havana a port of call or of refuge. Florida, too, which had likewise drawn much from Cuba, was now sending men and supplies back to the island.

By 1575 Havana was the commercial metropolis of the West Indies, and it had for some years been the practical capital of the island, though Santiago continued nominally to enjoy that distinction until 1589.

Vessels from Vera Cruz, bearing the treasures of New Spain, and from Nombre de Dios, laden with the wealth of Castilla del Oro and of Peru, thronged the harbor, and contributed to the trade of the city. To meet the requirements of the thousands of transient visitors, houses in the city were multiplied in number, and plantations in the suburbs extended their borders. The people began to realize how profitable a business was to be conducted in providing supplies of food for the s.h.i.+ps' companies.

And while the southeastern part of the island was, as we have seen, in a backward condition, the northwestern part entered upon an era of progress and prosperity.

CHAPTER XVIII

Don Gabriel Montalvo was appointed to be Governor of Cuba early in December, 1573. As was the custom in those days, however, he delayed for some time actual a.s.sumption of office, so that it was not until October 29, 1574, that he entered upon his duties. He was also charged with some important duties in Florida, but they were subordinate to those in Cuba.

He made his home in the island and spent most of his time there. Indeed, he seems to have planned to make his home at Santiago, and to restore that place to its former prestige. On coming to Cuba he landed at Manzanillo instead of coming to Havana, and sent Diego de Soto to be his representative, practically deputy governor, at the latter place. From Manzanillo he went straight to Santiago, refurbished the governor's house and the public buildings, and began planning an elaborate system of harbor defences worthy of the capital of the island. He was naturally received with great joy by the people of Santiago and of the eastern end of the island generally, who saw in him, as they thought, a promise of restoration of that region to its former importance.

From Santiago the governor set out on a tour of the eastern cities and towns, and had got as far as Bayamo when there came a hurried and urgent appeal for him to come to Havana. There was trouble in the city. Diego de Soto, the deputy governor there, had made Gomez de Rojas commander of La Fuerza--that reckless and truculent younger brother of Juan de Rojas whom Governor Mazariegos had once exiled from the island for disorderly if not criminal conduct. Now Gomez de Rojas was a land owner, and therefore, under the law, ineligible thus to serve. But confiding in the powerful influence of his family he ignored the law and held his place in defiance of all protests and demands for his retirement. The town council demanded his retirement, and the populace of Havana raged against him, but he shut himself up in the unfinished fort, trained his guns against the town, and prepared to resist with force any attempt which might be made by force to compel his resignation.

Such was the emergency which sent a message post haste to the new governor asking him to hasten to Havana. He came, and at his coming Gomez de Rojas capitulated without a blow. Montalvo rebuked him severely and imposed upon him a heavy fine, which was paid. But in this the governor incurred the hostility of the Rojas family. The feud was taken up by Juan Bautista de Rojas, who had succeeded his cousin Juan de Ynestrosa, deceased, as royal treasurer. This official charged the governor with conniving with smugglers and receivers of smuggled goods, and also with those who exported goods to countries with which traffic was prohibited, and on that account demanded for himself the right to inspect vessels and their cargoes; a function which had been exercised by the governor.

This demand was curtly rejected by Montalvo, who appears to have been a stickler for dignity and technical rights. Thereupon De Rojas made appeal to the King, coupling the appeal with a detailed and bitter arraignment of the governor and an impeachment of his integrity. This seems to have impressed the king deeply, for he presently decided the controversy in favor of his own treasurer. He sent word to the governor that thereafter he should not inspect or even visit s.h.i.+ps, but should leave that whole business in the hands of the royal treasurer. The advantage thus gained was mercilessly pressed by the Rojas family, with the purpose of compelling the retirement of Montalvo. They accused him of employing for his own private work slaves belonging to the crown and intended for employment on La Fuerza and other public works. They charged him specifically with having made Bartolome Morales a notary for a consideration of five hundred ducats; a transaction the evil of which consisted not in selling the appointment for cash, but in selling it for so little to a favored friend when it might have been sold to someone else for twice as much. Finally he was accused of corruption and maladministration in connection with La Fuerza, in that he had appointed friends to places at exorbitant salaries, and that he had ignored the suggestions of the royal officials in completing the plans of the fort.

These charges were serious, and there is reason to think that some of them, at least, were true. The Rojas family made them and repeated them to the king, again and again, until that monarch was constrained to remark that the time seemed to be near at hand when an investigation would have to be ordered, and Montalvo's administration be brought to a close. Nevertheless the king's favorable disposition toward Montalvo was potent, and prevailed. The governor had been appointed, as was the custom, for the specific term of four years, reckoned from the date of his appointment and not of his actual a.s.sumption of office, and the king delayed calling for an investigation until the four years were so nearly expired that they would be entirely filled out by the time the investigation was completed and a new governor was ready to take the place.

The order for the investigation was given in February, 1577, and at the same time, on February 13, Captain Francisco Carreno was named to succeed Montalvo as governor. The investigation was vigorously prosecuted, and some of the charges against Montalvo were proved. Yet so great was the king's personal regard for him that he was permitted to go with a nominal fine, and was retained in the royal service in important capacities for some years thereafter. He remained governor of Cuba until the accession of his successor, which did not occur until June 2, 1578.

The administration of Montalvo was unfavorably marked by three things.

One was, the continuance of the contraband trade already referred to, in both imports and exports; in which, as already related, the governor himself was charged with partic.i.p.ating. Montalvo at any rate gave the appearance of striving to suppress it. He sent agents to investigate the business, some of whom found their own relatives engaged in it and therefore refrained from reporting upon it, and some were prevented by the people from executing that for which they had been sent. Not merely the people, but the local officials all along the southeastern coast did all in their power to hamper and prevent investigation or any interference with the contraband trade. Indeed, alcaldes and other officials were foremost among those engaged in the unlawful commerce.