We get also some reports by Torres himself on the affairs of the colony in various letters of a Florentine merchant, Simone Verde, to whom he had communicated them. These letters have been recently (1875) found in the archives of Florence, and have been made better known still later by Harrisse.
The departure of the fleet made conspicuous at last a threatening faction of those whose terms of service had prevented their taking passage in the ships. This organized discontent was the natural result of a depressing feeling that all the dreams of ease and plenty which had sustained them in their embarkation were but delusions. Life in Isabella had made many of them painfully conscious of the lack of that success and comfort which had been counted upon. The failure of what in these later days is known as the commissariat was not surprising. With all our modern experience in fitting out great expeditions, we know how often the fate of such enterprises is put in jeopardy by rascally contractors. Their arts, however, are not new ones. Fonseca was not so wary, Columbus was not so exacting, that such arts could not be practiced in Seville, as to-day in London and New York. This jobbery, added to the scant experience of honest endeavor, inevitably brought misfortune and suffering through spoiled provisions and wasted supplies.
The faction, taking advantage of this condition, had two persons for leaders, whose official position gave the body a vantage-ground. Bernal Diaz de Pisa was the comptroller of the colony, and his office permitted him to have an oversight of the Admiral's accounts. It is said that before this time he had put himself in antagonism to authority by questioning some of the doings of the Admiral. He began now to talk to the people of the Admiral's deceptive and exaggerating descriptions intended for effect in Spain, and no doubt represented them to be at least as false as they were. Diaz drew pictures that produced a prevailing gloom beyond what the facts warranted, for deceit is a game of varying extremes.
He was helped on by the assayer of the colony, Fermin Cado, who spoke as an authority on the poor quality of the gold, and on the Indian habit of amassing it in their families, so that the moderate extent of it which the natives had offered was not the accretions of a day, but the result of the labor of generations. With leaders acting in concert, it had been planned to seize the remaining ships, and to return to Spain. This done, the mutineers expected to justify their conduct by charges against the Admiral, and a statement of them had already been drawn up by Bernal Diaz. The mutiny, however, was discovered, and Columbus had the first of his many experiences in suppressing a revolt. Bernal Diaz was imprisoned on one of the ships, and was carried to Spain for trial. Other leaders were punished in one way and another. To prevent the chances of success in future schemes of revolt, all munitions and implements of war were placed together in one of the ships, under a supervision which Columbus thought he could trust.