Oddly enough, Castro had once before supplanted Duero, as the royal factor in Cuba. This office had first been held by Bernardino Velasquez, upon whose death Andres Duero had been appointed to hold it temporarily, only to be speedily replaced by Castro. The latter appears to have been one of the most enterprising men of affairs of that time, and to have done more than most of his contemporaries for the industrial and economic development of the island. He became engaged in commerce between Spain and the West Indies at an early date, and paid much attention to agriculture, which he believed would be the chief permanent industry of Cuba. It was he who introduced the cultivation of wheat and other staples, with a view to making the island self-supporting, and for such activities he received the formal thanks of the King. Unfortunately, he too somewhat compromised himself by attempting to appropriate as his own the native Cubans who had been the serfs of Bernardino Velasquez and whom Duero, the factor pro tempore, had seized. Soon after the replacing of Duero with Castro as treasurer pro tempore the former died, and then the latter was in turn replaced by the permanent appointment of Lopez Hurtado, who held the place for many years, and who was distinguished at once for his honesty and his irrepressible cantankerousness. He seemed to have a mania for faultfinding; though doubtless there was much legitimate occasion for the exercise of that faculty. To his mind, almost every other man in Cuba was a knave, and he never wearied of reporting to the King, in interminable written messages, his complaints and accusations. Not only in spite of but also because of this he was a most useful public servant. Pedro Nunez de Guzman, who died in 1527, left, as we have seen, a considerable fortune. Practically all of it was left to his widow, and her the thrifty Gonzalo de Guzman presently married, and thus got himself into one of the most serious controversies of his whole career. A part of the fortune of Pedro consisted of about two hundred Cuban serfs. These Gonzalo de Guzman, as Repartidor, transferred to the widow, and then, of course, when he married her, they became his property. This roused the animosity of the honest but cantankerous Hurtado, who thought that the Cubans should have been given to himself, as their former owner's official successor; according to the example set by Hernando de Castro, as already related. Hurtado accordingly wrote to the King a long letter on the subject, which, though it did not cause intervention in that special matter, attracted the King's attention to the complications which the Guzman marriage was producing.