There is nothing remaining that throws more light on the condition of affairs in Hispaniola at the time of which we are speaking, than the letter of Columbus to the old nurse of Don Juan. Any one who reads it thoughtfully must receive a number of very heterogeneous impressions. With a little more than usual intensity, it breathes a loyal and pietistic spirit. It conveys a very delicate, but at the same time a very just, reproach to the monarchs for bestowing on Bobadilla the authority which he received. Nothing could have been more justly or felicitously expressed than the sentence in which he declared: “I have been wounded extremely by the thought that a man should have been sent out to make inquiry into my conduct who knew that if he sent home a very aggravated account of the result of his investigation, he would remain at the head of the government.” He showed, moreover, the unpardonable precipitancy with which Bobadilla had acted, in making his arrests right and left before he had had time to conduct any proper investigations. But after all these mitigations are admitted, and after Columbus has received every credit that can be accorded him, there still remains the fact that the island had been in turmoil almost from the first; that the Indians, who, according to the testimony of Columbus himself, had been at the first everywhere friendly and peaceable, had now become universally hostile; that even if these disorders had largely occurred in the absence of the Admiral, it was nevertheless true that they had all occurred under officers appointed by Columbus himself; that even if, as he said, vast numbers of men had gone to the Indies “who did not deserve water from God or man,” still, all the men that had gone had been accepted for the purpose by the Admiral himself; that if he complained that the Spanish settlers “would give as much for a woman as for a farm,” and that “this sort of trading is very common,” still this iniquity was all under an administration of which he himself was the head, and directly under subordinates whom he himself had appointed to command and, most important of all, under a system which he himself had recommended, and for which he alone was responsible. It may well be asserted that the comprehensive nature of his own commission, and the fact that his appointments had not been interfered with, estopped him from asserting that all responsibility for failure was to be charged to the wickedness and the weakness of his subordinates. Had Columbus been completely adequate to the situation, he would have bound his subordinates to him in unquestioning loyalty. The truth is, however, that from first to last, with the exception of his brothers, those who were nearest him in command sooner or later became his enemies,--and generally the enmity was not long delayed.