General Gomez ignored this mutinous demonstration, and proceeded with arrangements to receive and distribute the $3,000,000; whereupon the Assembly came together and on March 12 impeached General Gomez and removed him from office as Commander-in-Chief, the charge being that he had failed in his military duties and had disobeyed the orders of the Assembly. This scandalous performance was ignored by Gomez, and was condemned by the great majority of the Cuban people. It was also ignored by the American authorities. General Brooke continued his negotiations with Gomez, and finally reached an agreement. The terms were as follows: Every Cuban soldier who had been in service since before July 17, 1898, and who was not in receipt of salary from any public office, upon delivery of his arms and equipments was to receive $75 in United States gold. The arms and equipments were to be surrendered to municipal authorities, and to be placed and kept in armories, under the charge of armorers appointed by General Gomez, as memorials of the War of Independence. The Cuban Commissioners protested against and resisted this settlement, but finally yielded when they saw all the soldiers accepting it. They continued for some time, however, to manifest disaffection and distrust toward the United States, and to propagate doubt whether that country would ever fulfill its promise to make Cuba independent. Some agitators went so far as to try to provoke insurrections against the American administration. But all such things met with no encouragement from General Gomez or from any of the real leaders of the Cuban people, who expressed the fullest confidence in the good faith of the United States and did their utmost to lead the nation to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunity which had been placed before it. Day by day the magnitude of that opportunity became more apparent, as did the practical beneficence of the American administration. CHAPTER IX American occupation of Cuba, formal and complete, did not begin, as we have seen, until January 1, 1899, when the ceremonial transfer of sovereignty was effected at Havana. But nearly six months before that epochal date actual occupation and administration was begun on an extensive scale and in a most auspicious manner. With singular appropriateness this was effected at that city which nearly four centuries before had been the first capital and metropolis of the island, and in that Province which had been the scene of the first Spanish settlements in Cuba and which had been more perhaps than all the rest of the island the scene and the base of operations of the revolution for independence.