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Updated: June 16, 2025
Terreros went, delivered that letter, and returned to the Juana. And our sails were made and our anchors lifted, and it was sunset and clear and smooth, and every palm frond of San Domingo showed. Eighteen ships in harbor, and fifteen, they said, going to Spain, and around and upon them all bustle of preparation.
Then he wheeled and left the cabin. A minute later I heard the master from the Consolacion hail the Margarita that lay close by. "Margarita, ahoy! Orders! Clap on sail and follow!" The trumpet cried to the Juana and the San Sebastian, "Make ready and follow!" Our mariners ran to make sail. But the long boat waited for some final word that they said was going ashore. Terreros would take it.
We were so close that we saw the yet watching crowd, wharf and water side, and the sun glinting upon Ovando's order-keeping soldiery. The Admiral called me to him. I read the letter to the Governor, Terreros would deliver to our old officer, probably waiting on the wharf to see us quite away. The letter there was naught in it but the sincerest, gravest warning that a hurricane was at hand.
Fortunately for the family of Terreros and the many successful mining families of that period, Charles IV. was not quite so much of an idiot as his grandfather or his great-grandfather had been, and though the Inquisitors resumed their fires, yet it was with such comparative moderation as not to interfere seriously with the progress of that prosperity to which Carlos III. had given an impulse.
They forgot that their wealth rested upon the perfect security which they inherited from the wise and virtuous government of Carlos III., of blessed memory; that he it was who had put out the fires of the Inquisition, and so curtailed the power of the priests that they could no longer plunder with impunity, or rob the Terreros of the fruits of their father's enterprise by threatening them with the censure of the Church, which, in the reign of a feeble king, had a significant meaning.
The preparations were all made, and the fleet was ready to put to sea, when, on the 29th of June, the squadron of Columbus arrived at the mouth of the river. He immediately sent Pedro de Terreros, captain of one of the caravels, on shore, to wait on Ovando, and explain to him that the purpose of his coming was to procure a vessel in exchange for one of his caravels, which was extremely defective.
He arrived off the harbour of San Domingo on the 29th of June in very threatening weather, and immediately sent Pedro de Terreros ashore with a message to Ovando, asking to be allowed to purchase or exchange one of the vessels that were riding in the harbour, and also leave to shelter his own vessels there during the hurricane which he believed to be approaching.
This was the Governor of whom one said long afterwards, "He was a good governor for white men, but not for Indians." As life and destiny would have it, in the place without the Governor's house I met him who was to say it. Terreros and I with the same escort were for the water side, the Consolacion's long boat. The crowd kept with us, but His Excellency's soldiers held it orderly.
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