nomic
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 assaults 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affairs that Menendez was superseded in office by the appointment as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 nobleman
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returned to Spain after being superseded, and died there a few months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