f punishment and persecution if they did not
renounce the experiment and ask to be returned to slavery. Similar
tactics were certainly employed against those outside of the villages.
Wherever Rojas went on his tours of inspection and investigation, he
heard of natives who had complaints to make, or petitions to offer, or
who wished to be released from serfdom and to enter the free village.
But when he reached the spot and sought for these Indians, they had
disappeared, or had changed their minds. He had little doubt of foul
play, that they were smuggled out of sight, or were coerced into action
and speech contrary to their real desires; but he was seldom able to
prove it, so general was the conspiracy against emancipation.

The result was inevitable. Rojas lost heart. It is possible that he
still clung to his beliefs, but realized that the obstacles to his
policy were too great for him to overcome. It may be, on the other hand,
that he became convinced that he had erred, that the Indians were not as
fit for freedom as he had supposed, and that their general emancipation
was impracticable. In any case, he gave up the struggle. "Before God and
his conscience," he said, he was convinced that little if any good had
come of the experiment of freedom, and that it would be best to abandon
it and to return the Indians to the control of well-disposed Spaniards;
with a proviso that any who wished for freedom and showed fitness for
it should be emancipated. A tone of sadness but of sincerity pervaded
the report in which he made this recommendation. The King accepted it
and approved it, doubtless with the same reluctance and regret which
Rojas must have had in making it; and that chapter of Cuban history was
ended.

Not one of all the early governors of Cuba deserves more grateful memory
than Rojas. Not one of them surpassed him in ability, in statesmanship,
in executive efficiency, in breadth and penetration of vision in
discerning the needs and the possibilities of the island. Not one,
certainly, surpassed if indeed any rivalled him in integrity,
benevolence, and self-sacrificing devotion to duty. Velasquez, indeed,
occupied the governorship for a longer period, and was associated with
more striking events; naturally, being the first and the founder of the
line. But not even he had as true a public spirit or as just a
conception of the ways and means by which a substantial and prosperous
commonwealth was to be developed, as had