While these unpleasant events were agitating the official circles of the island, the people saw in the year 1728 one of the most ardent desires of the ambitious youth of Cuba attain fulfillment. This was the foundation of the University. Hitherto, it was necessary for young men desiring a superior and especially a scientific education to attend the universities of Mexico, Santo Domingo or Seville. With the opening of this institution of learning in the metropolis of the island, Havana, the intellectual life received a strong impulse. The credit for having secured the permission to open this university is due to the Dominican order which was mainly instrumental in promoting the cause of education in Latin America and especially the West Indies. The University was opened in the convent of Havana by virtue of a bull issued by Pope Innocent XIII. and in accord with the royal order of March fourteenth, 1732. The event was celebrated by brilliant decoration and illumination of the principal thoroughfares and buildings of the city and by festive gatherings and banquets, as also by dignified and solemn ceremonies in the building itself. The first rector of the University was Fra Tomas de Linares. According to the custom of the period and the country the rector, vice-rector and assistants were all selected from the clergy. The curriculum comprised courses in grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, philosophy, theology, canons of economic laws, jurisprudence and medicine. But it seems strange that for a number of years no professor could be found to occupy the chair of mathematics. The peripatetic system prevailed. After two years of existence the university won such hearty approbation from the king that it was granted by royal decree of the twenty-seventh of June, 1734, the same concessions and prerogatives as were accorded to the University of Alcala. In the year 1733 Cuba lost her most revered and beloved spiritual leader, Bishop Valdes, who expired on the twenty-ninth of March. He lived in the memory of many generations that followed not only by the many parishes which he had founded in the smaller towns and rural districts, and by the seminary of San Baulie el Magne, which he had called into being, but also by his many personal virtues that had endeared him to his people.