Admiral, in chains, shipped back to the kingdom he had endowed with a world. Bobadilla’s moral, social, and economic administration proved a complete failure and his own excesses contributed to his speedy removal, without his management of the colony having corrected the abuses he was sent out to redress or having relieved the Indians from the bonds of slavery which, in defiance of the sovereign’s commands, were being daily riveted more securely upon them. The justified protests of Columbus found a hearing, and the man who had inflicted a supreme indignity upon him was recalled, Don Nicholas de Ovando being appointed by a royal cedula of September 3, 1501, to succeed him. CHAPTER III. - THE COLONY OF HISPANIOLA. ARRIVAL OF LAS CASAS. CONDITION OF THE COLONISTS The arrival of Don Nicholas de Ovando’s fleet at Hispaniola was an event of the greatest importance to the colony. The first news that greeted the new arrivals was that of the discovery of a huge nugget of gold, the largest yet found and which, in fact, was never again equalled in size until the rich lodes in California were tapped in 1849, for it weighed thirty-five pounds and was valued at 3600 pesos in the money of that time. This famous nugget was found eight or nine leagues from the settlement of San Domingo, by an Indian girl, who, while resting from her labours, idly turned up the soil with an instrument she held, and thus brought to light the wonderful treasure. The Governor appropriated it for the King, paying its value to the two owners of the mine. The jubilant Spaniards used the nugget, which was shaped like a broad, flat dish, to serve up a roast sucking-pig at a banquet given in honour of the occasion, saying that no king ever feasted from such a platter. Las Casas remarks that as for the miserable Indian girl who found it, we may without sin suppose that they never gave her so much as a red silk petticoat, and lucky was she indeed if she got even a mouthful of the pig! The second piece of glad news the colonists communicated was, that owing to a recent uprising of the Indians in a certain province, they had been able to enslave a goodly number of the rebels. Such occasions rejoiced their hearts, over the profits they thus derived from the struggles of the unhappy natives to recover their freedom, and it may likewise without sin be supposed that their ingenuity was not barren in suggesting devices for provoking such lucrative revolts.