In the year 1510 the Spanish government established in Santo Domingo the first of the famous colonial audiencias, or royal high courts, the list of which appears like a roll call of Spain's former glories. Others were added later in Mexico, Guatemala, Guadalajara, Panama, Lima, Santa Fe de Bogota, Quito, Manila, Santiago de Chile, Charcas (now Sucre), and Buenos Aires. The audiencia of Santo Domingo at first had jurisdiction over all the territory under Spanish dominion in the new world, but upon the establishment, of the audiencia of Mexico and others its jurisdiction was confined to the West India Islands, and the north coast of South America. Its functions were both judicial and administrative, including the power to hear appeals from the judges of the district and from certain administrative authorities, and to intervene in certain matters of government, in the finances of the territory and in behalf of the public peace. The governor and captain-general of Santo Domingo was president of the royal audiencia, though not acting when it sat as a law court, and at times the audiencia alone temporarily carried on the government of one or more of the territories under its jurisdiction. It applied the law as expressed in the codification of the "Laws of the Indies," and the Spanish "Partidas." It sat in the building still called the old palace of government. During the dark days which fell upon the island in the seventeenth century, the presence of the audiencia helped to save the colony from being completely forgotten. It continued in its functions until the country was ceded to France, whereupon in 1799, it was removed to the city of Puerto Principe, in Cuba. Could its records but have been preserved a great many gaps in the history of Santo Domingo, Cuba, Porto Rico and Venezuela would be filled. It seems that the first records were destroyed by Drake in 1583, and almost all the later ones succumbed to the negligence of man and the voracity of the tropical insects. When the government of Cuba in 1906 honored the request of the government of the Dominican Republic for the return of such of the records of the audiencia of Santo Domingo as were still extant, it could find in its national archives and turn over but a score of bundles of documents, mostly records of suits regarding land boundaries in the eighteenth century, of little historic value. These and several small mahogany bookcases still preserved in the present audiencia of Havana, are the only tangible remains of this noted court.