In spite of this apparently friendly action, they gave Columbus just cause of complaint by throwing open the business of exploration, the monopoly of which they had formally given to him. They authorized any Spaniard to fit out exploring expeditions, under certain restrictions, and to discover continents, islands, and seas, without any limitation as to number; the discoverers to pay the Crown one third of all the gold they might find. Columbus was greatly grieved at this, not only because he feared that injudicious explorers would discover unhealthy islands, and would thus bring exploration into disrepute, but because it was a distinct breach of faith on the part of the King and Queen. As for the gracious permission which they gave him to freight a vessel to trade with the New World whenever any other explorer should freight one for the like purpose, he evidently did not trust himself to express his opinion of such a hollow mockery of his rights. In August, 1495, Don Juan Aguado sailed for Hispaniola with a fleet loaded with supplies and a pocket filled with a royal decree, written on the best of parchment and ordering that the colony of Isabella should consist of not over five hundred people. The astute monarchs had perceived that the larger the colony might be the more numerous and contradictory would be the complaints which the colonists would make, and hence they resolved to limit the complaint-producing capacity of the colony, and to render it impossible for more than five hundred distinct accounts of the infamy of Columbus and the climate to be brought to their royal ears. As Aguado was supposed to be a firm friend of the Admiral, Don Diego Columbus decided to return with him to Isabella, which he accordingly did, arriving some time in October. We can imagine how glad Columbus must have been to find that his good though tedious brother’s affection forbade him to desert his own dear Christopher. The latter was in the interior when Aguado arrived, and that officer immediately proceeded to astonish Don Bartholomew by putting on what Bartholomew rightly characterized as airs. Aguado announced that he had come to put things to rights, and that the colonists now had a real friend to whom they could complain when insulted and oppressed by domineering Italians. As Isabella was undoubtedly a dull place, the colonists eagerly availed themselves of the new occupation of making complaints against Columbus and his brother, and displayed a promptness and industry of which they had never before given any signs. Don Bartholomew instantly sent word to his brother that a new and alarming kind of lunatic had arrived from Spain, with a royal commission authorizing him to raise the great adversary of mankind, and that the sooner the Admiral returned the better.