Diego de Ribera, as Acting Governor, also took up the matter. The fort was already sufficiently advanced to permit him to mount eight pieces of artillery, but he wanted twenty more. Also, he wanted a large permanent garrison of professional soldiers. It was unsatisfactory to have to depend upon a rallying of the citizens, because it interfered with the occupations of the citizens, because they were not expert in arms, and because when they were summoned not more than half their number responded, so that the commander never knew how many he could depend upon. There should, he urged, be a permanent garrison of two hundred men, under the command of the governor. Of course such a garrison could not be furnished by the town itself, because there were not in all Havana more than two hundred fighting men, all told. This gives, by the way, a hint concerning the rapid growth of the place at the time of Mazariegos. A town containing two hundred men capable of bearing arms must have had a total population approximating two thousand. Ribera's arguments and appeals appear to have been more effective than those of Menendez. The Council for the Indies, and the King, too, ordered practical steps to be taken for finishing and equipping the building which had so long been neglected. As Cuba, or perhaps especially the port of Havana, was of no great importance to the Spanish colonies on the mainland, for the safeguarding of their shipping, and also as Cuba had been so drained of men and supplies in former years for the exploitation of colonies on the main land, it was but justice as it was a matter of practical convenience and expediency for the government to call upon Mexico and Castilla del Oro to contribute largely to the payment of the cost of fortifying Havana. That place was a little later called, by royal decree, "Llave del Nuevo Mundo y Antemural de las Indias Occidentales," or Key of the New World and Bulwark of the West Indies. Certainly it was fitting that the New World should pay for its key and that the Indies should pay for their bulwark.