To the most impartial eyes it began to appear as though Columbus were either an impostor or a fool.  There is no evidence that Ferdinand and Isabella thought that he was an impostor or that he had wilfully deceived them; but there is some evidence that they began to have an inkling as to what kind of a man he really was, and as to his unfitness for governing a colony.  Once more something had to be done.  The sending out of a commissioner had not been a great success before, but in the difficulties of the situation it seemed the only thing.  Still there was a good deal of hesitation, and it is probable that Isabella was not yet fully convinced of the necessity for this grave step.  This hesitation was brought to an end by the arrival from Espanola of the ships bearing the followers of Roldan, who had been sent back under the terms of Columbus’s feeble capitulation.  The same ships brought a great quantity of slaves, which the colonists were able to show had been brought by the permission of the Admiral; they carried native girls also, many of them pregnant, many with new-born babies; and these also came with the permission of the Admiral.  The ships further carried the Admiral’s letter complaining of the conspiracy of Roldan and containing the unfortunate request for a further licence to extend the slave trade.  These circumstances were probably enough to turn the scale of Isabella’s opinion against the Admiral’s administration.  The presence of the slaves particularly angered her kind womanly heart.  “What right has he to give away my vassals?” she exclaimed, and ordered that they should all be sent back, and that in addition all the other slaves who had come home should be traced and sent back; although of course it was impossible to carry out this last order.

At any rate there was no longer any hesitation about sending out a commissioner, and the Sovereigns chose one Francisco de Bobadilla, an official of the royal household, for the performance of this difficult mission.  As far as we can decipher him he was a very ordinary official personage; prejudiced, it is possible, against an administration that had produced such disastrous results and which offended his orderly official susceptibilities; otherwise to be regarded as a man exactly honest in the performance of what he conceived to be his duties, and entirely indisposed to allow sentiment or any other extraneous matter to interfere with such due performance.  We shall have need to remember, when we see him at work in Espanola, that he was not sent out to judge between Columbus and his Sovereigns or between Columbus and the world, but to investigate the condition of the colony and to take what action he thought necessary.  The commission which he bore to the Admiral was in the following terms: