We shall hereafter, however, find something which may enable us to conjecture what the decision practically came to be.
DISTRESS OF NATIVES.
Many of the so-called free Indians in Hispaniola had, perhaps, even a worse fate than that which fell to the lot of their brethren condemned to slavery.

These free men, seeing the Spaniards quietly settling down in their island, building houses, and making forts, and no vessels in the harbour of Isabella to take them away, fell into the profoundest sadness, and bethought them of the desperate remedy of attempting to starve the Spaniards out, by not sowing or planting anything.

But this is a shallow device, when undertaken on the part of the greater number, in any country, against the smaller.

The scheme reacted upon themselves.

They had intended to gain a secure though scanty sustenance in the forests and upon the mountains; but though the Spaniards suffered bitterly from famine, they were only driven by it to further pursuit and molestation of the Indians, who died in great numbers, of hunger, sickness, and misery.
SPANISH COMMISSIONER.
About this period there arrived in the Indies from the Court of Spain a Commissioner of Inquiry, his mission being doubtless occasioned by the various complaints made against the admiral by Father Buil, Margarite, and the Spaniards who had returned from Hispaniola.