eming the value of the find, permitted private
exploitation of the mines on a basis of ten per cent royalty. An assayer
was sent from Spain to superintend the refining of the copper from the
ore, and suitable works were erected. But little or nothing was done for
several years. Then, after the administration of De Soto, and while the
alcalde mayor, Ortiz, was acting governor, a great demand for copper
arose, for the casting of cannon, in Spain, and interest in the mines
was revived. A German engineer made an agreement with the local
authorities to extract the copper and did so with great success. The ore
was found to be very rich in copper and also to contain so much gold and
silver that it would be worth working for those metals entirely apart
from the copper. Under this expert management the mines became highly
profitable.

In the administration of Angulo the German engineer had two mines
assigned to him as his own, in return for which he instructed all
comers--chiefly slaves who were sent to him for the purpose by the
settlers--in the art of smelting and refining copper. Large quantities
of the copper were at that time sent to Spain, and the first cannon
mounted on La Fuerza, in Havana, were made of it, being cast at the
royal foundry at Seville. It is related that one of these cannon, a
small falconet, burst in the casting, and so badly injured the
superintendent of the works that he had to be taken to a hospital,
where he expressed a bad opinion of Cuban copper. This was the origin of
the really unfounded belief which long prevailed, and which was recorded
in technological works, that Cuban copper had some peculiar quality
which rendered it difficult and even dangerous to work.

The first essays toward the growing of sugar, which has become one of
the greatest industries of the island and in which Cuba surpasses any
other equal area of the earth's surface, were made as already related in
the closing years of Velasquez's administration. They did not at that
time prove important, and nothing more was done until the first
administration of Guzman. That enterprising governor, always ready to do
anything to enrich himself, asked permission to import negro slaves free
of royalty, in order to establish the sugar industry, promising under
penalty to begin the construction of a sugar mill within two years and
to complete it within four years. The crown considered that too long a
time, and refused to waive the royalty on sl