ficant island in a remote corner of his vast dominions. Puerto
Rico was left to take care of itself, and San German's last hour
struck on Palm Sunday, 1554, when 3 French ships entered the port of
Guadianilla, landed a detachment of men who penetrated a league
inland, plundering and destroying whatever they could. From that day
San German, the settlement founded by Miguel del Toro in 1512,
disappeared from the face of the land.

The capital remained. No doubt it owed its preservation from French
attacks to the presence of a battery and some pieces of artillery
which, as a result of reiterated petitions, had been provided. The
population also was more numerous. In 1529 there were 120 houses, some
of them of stone. The cathedral was completed, and a Dominican convent
was in course of construction with 25 friars waiting to occupy it.
Thus, one by one, all the original settlements disappeared. Guanica,
Sotomayor, Daguao, Loiza, had been swept away by the Indians. San
German fell the victim of the Spanish monarch's war with his neighbor.
The only remaining settlement, the capital, was soon to be on the
point of being sacrificed in the same way. The existence of the island
seemed to be half-forgotten, its connection with the metropolis
half-severed, for the crown officers wrote in 1536 that _no ship from
the Peninsula had entered its ports for two years_.

"Negroes and Indians," says Abbad, "seeing the small number of
Spaniards and their misery, escaped to the mountains of Luquillo and
Anasco, whence they descended only to rob their masters."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 33: Castilla and Aragon, Navarro, Valencia, Cataluna,
Mallorca, Sicily, and Naples.]

[Footnote 34: Hista. general de Espana por Don Modesto Lafuente.
Barcelona, 1889.]

CHAPTER XV

SEDENO--CHANGES IN THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT

1534-1555

A slight improvement in the gloomy situation of the people of San Juan
took place when, driven by necessity, they began to dedicate
themselves to agriculture. At this time, too (1535), Juan Castellanos,
the island's attorney at the court, returned with his own family and
75 colonists. Yet scarcely had they had time to settle when they were
invited to remigrate by one of Ponce's old companions.

This was Sedeno, a perfect type of the Spanish adventurer of the
sixteenth century--restless, ambitious, unscrupulous. The king had
made him "contador" (comptroller) of San Juan in 1512 and perpetual
"regidor" (alderman