oad to riches when, little by little, the
inhumanity of slave-owning became clear to him. To one of his
enthusiastic temperament no half measures were possible. He gave up his
Indians forthwith, allowed his estate to revert to Nature, and began his
strenuous campaign, that had as its object the freedom of the native
races.

By 1517 he had succeeded in attracting a wide attention to his efforts.
Journeying to Spain, he persisted in his cause, and gave the high
authorities of that country little peace until they lent an ear to the
grievances of his dusky proteges. Las Casas was endowed to an unusual
extent with both eloquence and fervour, and both these attributes he
employed to the utmost of his powers in the service of the American
aborigines. Thus he painted the sufferings and the terrible mortality of
these unfortunate people with a fire and a force that left very few
unmoved. Nevertheless, as was only to be expected, he met with
considerable opposition from various quarters where the financial
interests dependent on the New World outweighed all other
considerations. In the end, rendered desperate by this opposition and by
the active hostility which he encountered in these quarters, he
determined to lead the way by the foundation of a model colony of his
own in South America.

He obtained the cordial sanction of the Spanish King to this end.
Nevertheless, when put into practice, the scheme failed utterly. The
reasons for this were to be sought for in the poorness of the soil
chosen and in the intrigues of the white settlers rather than in any
fundamental fault of the plan itself. For all that, its failure came as
a severe blow to Las Casas. After experiences such as these, the
majority of men would probably have given up the attempt in despair. Las
Casas, it is true, sought the refuge of a monastery for a while in order
to recover his health and spirits, which had suffered from the shock.
Once again in possession of these, he returned to the field, and,
undaunted, continued to carry on his work.

This campaign of Las Casas is famous for a curious anomaly. That his
work of mercy should have resulted in the introduction into the
Continent of a greater number of dusky labourers than before appears on
the face of it paradoxical. Yet so it was. For Las Casas, determined
that the mortality among the Indians should cease, advocated the
importation of African slaves into Central and South America. His idea
was that the la