Albeit he was a native of that city of Cadiz in the harbor of which Drake performed one of his most daring and most famous feats, Carreno probably entered upon his governorship with no premonitions of what was in store. While Drake was furrowing the strange expanses of the South Sea, it was French privateers that chiefly troubled the Spanish Main and menaced the ports of Cuba. Their favorite cruising ground was in the waters between Cuba and Jamaica, and between Cuba and Hispaniola, and their menace to Cuba was chiefly to the ports between Cape Maysi and Cape Cruz, and in the Gulf of Guacanabo. The chief sufferers, as also the chief gainers from contraband trade, were Santiago, Manzanillo, and the settlements at the mouth of the Guantanamo River. The people of those places were never sure whether an approaching French vessel was bent on contraband trade or war and plunder; and indeed the Frenchman himself sometimes left that question to be answered after he had landed and viewed the place. He then decided which would be the more profitable, to trade with the people or to plunder them. At times, too, it must be confessed, the Spaniards were in similar uncertainty whether to receive the French as traders or to slay them--if they could--as enemies. Carreno was the first governor of Cuba to die in office, his death occurring on April 27, 1579. His administration thus lasted only two years; but they were years filled with hard work on his part and with much progress for the island. The sugar industry which had been founded in the preceding administration prospered and expanded, and caused a considerable increase in slave-holding. Negro slaves were the favorite workmen on the plantations and at the mills, and a large number of them was needed at each establishment. The increase in the number of slaves caused, however, some anxiety lest there should be servile insurrections, such as had occurred on the Isthmus of Panama, in Mexico and elsewhere; so that in 1579 the government refused to permit any more to be imported, even though they were wanted by the governor himself. It is recorded that his personal request for a thousand negroes to work at copper mining was refused by the King, or by the Council for the Indies.