Besides these reports, numerous others of a more private nature were sent by colonists to their friends at home, all of them laden with gloom and dissatisfaction. That the administrations of the Admiral and the Lord Lieutenant were very unpopular, there can be no doubt whatever in the mind of any one who reads the original accounts; and these expressions of popular disfavour streamed back to the mother-country by every means of conveyance. Nor did these tidings fall upon unwelcoming ears. Those who had sent out friends only to hear of their death or misfortunes; those who were filled with envy at the success of one whom they regarded as merely a foreign adventurer; those who were embittered by disappointment that no pecuniary returns had been received,--all these and thousands of others now united in one general cry of denunciation. The Admiral’s son Fernando gives a vivid picture of the complaints made against his father. Columbus himself, in writing to the nurse of Prince Juan at this period, said: “I have now reached a point where there is no man so vile but thinks it his right to insult me.... If I had plundered the Indies, even to the country where is the fabled altar of St. Peter’s, and had given them all to the Moors, they could not have shown toward me more bitter enmity than they have done in Spain.” That much of this unpopularity was unjust and unreasonable, there can be no doubt whatever. But even when we have conceded this, there still remains the great fact of a popular outcry; and such an outcry always justifies at least an inquiry. It must not, therefore, be regarded as strange that the Spanish sovereigns at length decided to make an official investigation. Indeed, any other course would have been little less than a culpable disregard of a powerful public sentiment. Such were the influences that were borne in upon the king and queen. There is evidence that soon after the return of the five vessels with their cargo of slaves, Ferdinand and Isabella began to take into consideration the question of suspending the Admiral. They did not, however, act in haste. The ships arrived with their ill-omened freightage in November of 1498. In the course of the following winter the monarchs decided definitively that an investigation should be made. On the 21st of March, 1499, they issued a commission authorizing Francis de Bobadilla “to ascertain what persons have raised themselves against justice in the island of Hispaniola, and to proceed against them according to law.”