In later years, when Columbus had seen his own authority in Hispaniola set aside, and the island under the control of his rivals and enemies, he protested that the sight of the sufferings of the unhappy natives filled him with grief and horror. It was, however, to his political advantage at just that time to have his heart bleed for the poor savages, and the unprejudiced reader must regret that it did not bleed at an earlier period. It was under the immediate rule of Columbus that the natives of Hispaniola were first reduced to slavery, and it was Columbus who made his old friend and faithful ally, Guacanagari, suffer the same fate as the chiefs who had rebelled against the Spaniards. Then it cannot be forgotten that, in spite of the direct and repeated commands of Queen Isabella, Columbus sent cargo after cargo of slaves to Spain. He may have been very sorry to see the natives oppressed by Spaniards whom he disliked, but he certainly oppressed them quite as vigorously as did any of his successors. The contrast between his pious and humane protestations and his acts as an oppressor and a slave-trader is not easily explicable if we adopt the usual theory that he was one of the most sincere and noble of men. We may concede that he was naturally kind-hearted, and that he would have preferred gold-mining to slave-hunting; but when his interest urged him to cruelty, he usually listened to it with respectful attention, and straightway showed by his conduct that, although he was not a countryman of Ojeda and Pizarro, he was not altogether unfit to hold a Spanish commission. CHAPTER XIV. DIFFICULTIES AND DISCOURAGEMENTS. [Æt. 59; 1495] Margarite and Father Boyle, as has been mentioned, had sailed for Spain while Columbus was absent on his cruise in search of China. Arriving in Spain, they told a series of able and effective falsehoods, judiciously seasoned with a little genuine truth. They said it gave them the greatest pain to speak in disparaging terms of their superior officer, but a stern sense of duty compelled them to say that the misguided man was a liar and a scoundrel. All the Admiral’s stories of fertile islands, rich gold-mines, delightful climate, and amiable heathens clamoring for conversion, were without any foundation. Hispaniola was a wretched, fever-stricken place, wholly unfit for colonization. As for Columbus and his brother Bartholomew, they were cruel tyrants, who required Spanish gentlemen to work and made sick men get out of their beds, where they were comparatively comfortable, in order to engage in ridiculous expeditions after gold that never existed. Of the two, Don Bartholomew was perhaps the more objectionable, which was unfortunate, inasmuch as the Admiral, having put to sea in search of more of his worthless islands, had undoubtedly been drowned.