the
world's mysteries that so powerfully influenced him, he nurtured dreams of
religious propaganda, another crusade to recover the Holy Sepulchre, and
the conversion of all the heathen to the faith.

"He fasted with strictest observance on the fasts of the church; he
confessed and received communion frequently; he recited the canonical
hours like an ecclesiastic or a monk; most inimical to blasphemies and
oaths, he was most devoted to Our Lady and to the seraphic Father, St.
Francis{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}most jealous of the Divine honour, eager and desirous for the
conversion of these peoples, and that the faith of Jesus Christ should be
everywhere spread, and singularly given and devoted to God that he might
be made worthy to help in some way to win the Holy Sepulchre."(12)

Patient, long-suffering, prone to forgive injuries, Columbus was a man of
courageous soul and high aspirations, always pervaded with infinite
confidence in Divine Providence and never failing in loyalty to the
sovereigns whom he served.

Such were the qualities of the man whose great discovery prepared the
scene on which Las Casas was to play the noblest part of all; such were
the influences which promised to shape his actions in conformity with the
intentions of the saintly Queen who sustained him. These influences are
seen to be first and always religious; religious in the prevailing
conception of a century, when the interpretation of the command "go ye and
teach all nations" admitted of no shirking an obligation laid by the
Divine command on each Christian, whether priest, king or subject. An
infallible Church provided the one ordained channel of divine grace and
salvation for mankind, dissent from which meant damnation, and hence into
that Church all nations must be gathered.

Bearing these conditions of the age and these convictions which dominated
both the Queen and Columbus well in mind, we shall later have occasion to
observe the startling contradiction of essential principles of
Christianity shown in the acts of the latter in his dealings with the
Indians; for he not only prepared the stage Las Casas was to tread, but he
likewise provided the tragedy of iniquity to be thereon enacted.

The first soil on which Columbus landed was that of a beautiful island
some fifteen leagues in length, fruitful, fresh, and verdant like a fair
garden, in the midst of which was a lake of sweet water. The weary eyes
of the mariners, strained for wee