aves for his benefit,
whereupon he abandoned the scheme. Then Hernando de Castro made a
similar proposal, reducing the time of completion of the mill to three
years. The crown was more favorably impressed by his offer, and agreed
to it, only to have him withdraw it. Juan de Avila and his brother
Alfonso reported strongly in favor of establishing the industry in Cuba,
and asked for a loan of capital from the royal treasury to finance the
undertaking; but nothing was done. Chaves and Angulo also successively
reported that Cuba was admirably adapted to the industry, and it was
known that at that very time sugar growing was enormously successful in
Hispaniola, Porto Rico and other islands. Yet by some strange fatality
nothing practical was done, and the actual establishment of the great
industry was postponed until near the end of the century.

The fiscal policy of the Spanish government was in early years not
unfavorable to Cuba. Apart from a royalty of from five to ten per cent
on precious metals mined, and on copper, and the royalty already
described on the importation of negro slaves, and a customs duty of
seven and a half per cent ad valorem on all imports, the island was free
from taxation. The royalties in question were certainly not oppressive,
and the fact that the Seville government imposed the same customs duty
on all goods imported into Spain from Cuba made the tariff seem entirely
just. Indeed, Cuba was favored above all other islands In the West
Indies for many years. Thus after the middle of the sixteenth century
one-third of what had been the import duty on goods received in Spain
from the West Indies was required to be paid in the Indies as an export
tax; but Cuba alone of all the islands was exempted from this
arrangement. It was not, indeed, until the decline of Spain herself set
in, with increasing expenses for maintaining an inefficient and often
corrupt bureaucracy, and with sorely diminishing resources and revenues,
that Cuba began to be detrimentally exploited for the sake of the Mother
Country.

CHAPTER XV

We have said that the administration of Angulo marked the nadir of early
Cuban history. It also marked the turning point, and the entrance of the
island into international affairs. Not yet had the great duel between
Spain and England begun; which in the next century was to have so
momentous results. France was the enemy. Francis I became King of that
country in 1515, when Velasquez was