Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/391

Rh conversational power; but when he dismissed him, he changed his tone, and bade him depart with his followers within four hours, under penalty of a traitor's doom. The threat lent wings to Castilla, and he hastened crestfallen to report his failure to the captain-general. "It appears that the Castillas in New Spain are better fitted to govern in peace," caustically observed Cortés as he turned his back upon him.

This was the governor's last triumph; from this time his prosperity waned. His friends and supporters one by one left him, some of them estranged by his arbitrary misrule, others because the star of his foe seemed in the ascendant. The refusal of the king to confirm Guzman's license to enslave the natives thinned the settlers' ranks; the governor's severe punishment of certain persons who disobeyed the law — a tardy attempt to conciliate a powerful element among his foes — drove away others; while of the remaining colonists many were drawn away by exciting reports of the gold Discoveries in Perú. The governor had the petty satisfaction on several occasions, as will appear, of refusing water and other aid to the vessels sent out by Cortés, or of plundering those vessels when cast aground on the coast; but so weak did he become finally that he offered no resistance when Cortés marched to Jalisco to recover his vessels.