bly entered upon his governorship with no premonitions of what was
in store. While Drake was furrowing the strange expanses of the South
Sea, it was French privateers that chiefly troubled the Spanish Main and
menaced the ports of Cuba. Their favorite cruising ground was in the
waters between Cuba and Jamaica, and between Cuba and Hispaniola, and
their menace to Cuba was chiefly to the ports between Cape Maysi and
Cape Cruz, and in the Gulf of Guacanabo. The chief sufferers, as also
the chief gainers from contraband trade, were Santiago, Manzanillo, and
the settlements at the mouth of the Guantanamo River. The people of
those places were never sure whether an approaching French vessel was
bent on contraband trade or war and plunder; and indeed the Frenchman
himself sometimes left that question to be answered after he had landed
and viewed the place. He then decided which would be the more
profitable, to trade with the people or to plunder them. At times, too,
it must be confessed, the Spaniards were in similar uncertainty whether
to receive the French as traders or to slay them--if they could--as
enemies.

Carreno was the first governor of Cuba to die in office, his death
occurring on April 27, 1579. His administration thus lasted only two
years; but they were years filled with hard work on his part and with
much progress for the island. The sugar industry which had been founded
in the preceding administration prospered and expanded, and caused a
considerable increase in slave-holding. Negro slaves were the favorite
workmen on the plantations and at the mills, and a large number of them
was needed at each establishment. The increase in the number of slaves
caused, however, some anxiety lest there should be servile
insurrections, such as had occurred on the Isthmus of Panama, in Mexico
and elsewhere; so that in 1579 the government refused to permit any more
to be imported, even though they were wanted by the governor himself. It
is recorded that his personal request for a thousand negroes to work at
copper mining was refused by the King, or by the Council for the Indies.

Anxiety was caused, also, by the increasing number of free negroes, and
of slaves who were practically free. Most of the entirely free negroes
had been slaves but had bought their freedom from their masters for
cash. This was not particularly difficult, since the market value of the
best negro slaves at that time was only from fifty to sixty pesos. Thos