an most of his contemporaries for the industrial and
economic development of the island. He became engaged in commerce
between Spain and the West Indies at an early date, and paid much
attention to agriculture, which he believed would be the chief permanent
industry of Cuba. It was he who introduced the cultivation of wheat and
other staples, with a view to making the island self-supporting, and for
such activities he received the formal thanks of the King.
Unfortunately, he too somewhat compromised himself by attempting to
appropriate as his own the native Cubans who had been the serfs of
Bernardino Velasquez and whom Duero, the factor pro tempore, had seized.

Soon after the replacing of Duero with Castro as treasurer pro tempore
the former died, and then the latter was in turn replaced by the
permanent appointment of Lopez Hurtado, who held the place for many
years, and who was distinguished at once for his honesty and his
irrepressible cantankerousness. He seemed to have a mania for
faultfinding; though doubtless there was much legitimate occasion for
the exercise of that faculty. To his mind, almost every other man in
Cuba was a knave, and he never wearied of reporting to the King, in
interminable written messages, his complaints and accusations. Not only
in spite of but also because of this he was a most useful public
servant.

Pedro Nunez de Guzman, who died in 1527, left, as we have seen, a
considerable fortune. Practically all of it was left to his widow, and
her the thrifty Gonzalo de Guzman presently married, and thus got
himself into one of the most serious controversies of his whole career.
A part of the fortune of Pedro consisted of about two hundred Cuban
serfs. These Gonzalo de Guzman, as Repartidor, transferred to the widow,
and then, of course, when he married her, they became his property. This
roused the animosity of the honest but cantankerous Hurtado, who thought
that the Cubans should have been given to himself, as their former
owner's official successor; according to the example set by Hernando de
Castro, as already related. Hurtado accordingly wrote to the King a long
letter on the subject, which, though it did not cause intervention in
that special matter, attracted the King's attention to the complications
which the Guzman marriage was producing.

The mother of the late Pedro Nunez de Guzman next appeared as a party to
the controversy. This lady, Dona Leonora de Quinones, who had remained
i