_Spanish conquest in
America_, vol. iv. Book xx. ch. 2) has given a lucid account of the
controversy. Sarmiento is quite wrong in saying that Las Casas was
ignorant of the history of Peru. The portion of his _Historia
Apologetica_ relating to Peru, entitled _De las antiguas gentes del
Peru_, has been edited and published by Don Marcos Jimenez de la Espada
in the "Coleccion de libros Espanoles raros o curiosos" (1892). It shows
that Las Casas knew the works of Xeres, Astete, Cieza de Leon, Molina,
and probably others; and that he had a remarkably accurate knowledge of
Peruvian history.]

This chaos and confusion of ignorance on the subject being so spread
over the world and rooted in the opinions of the best informed literary
men in Christendom, God put it into the heart of your Majesty to send
Don Francisco de Toledo, Mayor-domo of your royal household, as Viceroy
of these kingdoms[19]. When he arrived, he found many things to do, and
many things to amend. Without resting after the dangers and long voyages
in two seas which he had suffered, he put the needful order into all the
things undertook new and greater labours, such as no former viceroys or
governors had undertaken or even thought of. His determination was to
travel over this most rugged country himself, to make a general
visitation of it, during which, though it is not finished, it is certain
that he has remedied many and very great faults and abuses in the
teaching and ministry of the Christian doctrine, giving holy and wise
advice to its ministers that they should perform their offices as
becomes the service of God, and the discharge of your royal conscience,
reducing the people to congregations of villages formed on suitable and
healthy sites which had formerly been on crags and rocks where they were
neither taught nor received spiritual instruction. In such places they
lived and died like wild savages, worshipping idols as in the time of
their Inca tyrants and of their blind heathenism. Orders were given to
stop their public drinking bouts, their concubinage and worship of their
idols and devils, emancipating and freeing them from the tyrannies, of
their _curacas_, and finally giving them a rational life, which was
before that of brutes in their manner of loading them as such.

[Note 19: Don Francisco de Toledo was Viceroy of Peru, from Nov.
16th, 1569, to Sept. 28th, 1581, and in some respects a remarkable man.
He was a younger son of the third Count of O