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There is nothing in all these accounts, as we have them abridged by La Casas, to indicate any great surprise, and certainly nothing of the overwhelming fear which, the Historie tells us, the sailors experienced when they found their ships among these floating masses of weeds, raising apprehension of a perpetual entanglement in their swashing folds.
The traffic was permitted; inquiries were made as to the number of slaves required, which was limited to four thousand, and the Flemings obtained a monopoly of the trade, which they afterwards farmed out to the Genoese. Dr. Eobertson, in noticing this affair, draws a contrast between the conduct of the cardinal Ximenes and that of Las Casas, strongly to the disadvantage of the latter.
Many of the writers who have treated of these transactions, as Robertson, for instance, have accused Las Casas, on the strength of a passage in Herrera, of having originated the idea that the blacks could be profitably substituted for the Indians.
For all that, it must be admitted that the venture was a daring one to emanate from the mind of a preacher who was fighting against the slave trade. But Las Casas, urged by his own experience, took a broad view, and none even of his contemporaries were able for one moment to impugn his motives.
But what is of more significance, and what it is strange that Las Casas was not aware of, or did not mention, the Hieronymite Fathers had also come to the conclusion that negroes must be introduced into the West Indies.
The world was learning new lessons, adopting new policies, in which the Spanish colonial system was a blunder the folly of which Spain did not even then fully realize. Yet from it all, by one means and another, Cuba benefited. Spain was fortunate in its selection of Governors-General sent out at this time. Luis de Las Casas, who arrived in 1790, is credited with much useful work.
Where they were during the intervening four or five years and in what year they were brought to Santo Domingo, is not known. Las Casas, writing in 1544, states that the remains of the Admiral were at that time buried in the sanctuary of the cathedral of Santo Domingo.
Certain it is, that after he had left the island called La Mona, and when he was approaching the island of San Juan, a drowsiness, which Las Casas calls "pestilential," but which might reasonably be attributed to the privations, cares, and anxieties which the admiral had now undergone for many months, seized upon him, and entirely deprived him for a time of the use of his senses.
By the law of all countries, the Conquistadors had outlawed themselves by levying unlicensed war; but as they bore a painting of the Virgin Mary on one of their standards and the cross on the other, it would be impiety to place their conduct in its true light. Las Casas was an exception, and endured persecution for speaking the truth.
He that taketh away his neighbor's living slaveth him, and he that defraudeth the laborer of his hire is a bloodshedder. As Las Casas read these verses he seemed to hear the voice of God speaking to his heart. He remembered Montesino's sermon, he thought of all the cruelties and injustices from which the gentle, helpless Indians suffered.
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