sper and grant a long and happy life to
Your Highness. Amen. Seville 20th April 1544. Your humble servant who
kisses Your Royal hands.

To-night the following occurred--an Indian came to me complaining that
notwithstanding his certificate of freedom, given him by Gregorio Lopez,
his owner kept him in slavery and treated him worse than a slave, sending
him out with a donkey to carry and sell water. He showed me his
certificate of freedom, in the presence of ten or twelve monks. I told
him to go to-day to the Casa de Contractacion so that its officials might
correct the abuse, and I sent a servant with him to show him the
building--because if his master found out, he would keep him until he
called in the officials. Finally his owner discovered him and took the
letter and tore it up. He said "bring chains and put them on this dog."
The Indian escaped through a window and they cried after him, "Thief,
thief," so that somebody down below came and beat him, and stabbed him in
the jaw. He managed to reach a place where some of my servants were, and
they are trying to cure him: but he is dying. One of my servants went to
the assistant to tell him what had happened, but the latter answered that
he was not astonished that people killed the Indians, because they stole
and did much harm. I beg Your Highness to note how destitute they are of
any pity. With judges so cruelly unjust and tyrannical, Your Highness may
imagine what sort of things happen over there [in the colonies] with the
Spaniards against the Indians, when they dare do these things in Seville
where, the other day a judge ordered an Indian to be stabbed to death.

FRAY BARTHOLOMEW DE LAS CASAS, BISHOP OF CHIAPA.

The voyage began badly, for the _San Salvador_ was poorly ballasted and
only arrived at Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, after considerable
difficulty and danger, on the 19th of July, and was detained there for ten
days until the ship was made seaworthy. Some of the friars who were
unfamiliar with sea-voyages conceived such mistrust of the _San Salvador_
that they refused to again go aboard her, so it was necessary to
distribute these nineteen timid souls amongst the other ships. The 30th of
July saw the fleet again at sea, and the voyage to Hispaniola continued
without any untoward incident, until the 9th of September, when they
arrived in the harbour of Santo Domingo, where the same vessel on which
Las Casas and the twenty-seven friars we