red upon his
work with the efficiency and zeal that had marked his former
undertaking. He quickly found that there was much need for
investigation, and of thorough reforms. The whole administration had
become demoralized by the personal jealousies and local feuds which for
years had been raging. Bribery, slander, false arrest, even murder, had
been resorted to by political partisans for the accomplishment of their
ends, until something like chaos had been precipitated upon the unhappy
island. It was in November, 1531, that Vadillo arrived at Santiago de
Cuba on his formidable errand. He purposed to spend a few weeks in
preliminary surveys of the ground, announcing that his sixty days'
incumbency of the governorship would begin on January 1.

On the latter date the actual house-cleaning began. The tremendous
indictment which Guzman had made against Altamarino was a petty trifle
in comparison with that which Vadillo launched against Guzman. There was
scarcely any conceivable form of maladministration which was not charged
against the governor. He had, said Vadillo, interfered with freedom of
suffrage at elections. He had levied and collected taxes for which there
was no warrant in law. He had appointed and commissioned notaries,
although he had no legal power to do so. He had failed to compel married
men either to return to their wives in Spain or to send for their wives
to come to Cuba. He had permitted illicit trade in slaves. He had been
biassed and partial in his administration of justice. All these and
other accusations were made with much circumstance and with a formidable
array of corroborative testimony, against Guzman as governor. Against
him as repartidor it was charged that he had been guilty of gross and
injurious misrepresentations to the Crown and to the people; that he had
assigned natives as serfs to his relatives and friends in defiance of
law; and that he had made the distribution of native labor inequitable.

All these charges were indignantly denied by Guzman, who defended
himself with much vigor and shrewdness. But Vadillo found him to be
guilty of almost every one of them, and sentenced him to pay a heavy
fine and to be removed from office, both as governor and as repartidor.
Against this judgment Guzman made appeal to the Council for the Indies,
in Spain. In order to bring all possible influence to bear upon that
body, he himself went to Spain, in August, 1532, carrying a vast mass of
documents, an