"The best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft agley." So it was in this case.

When the Jeronimite fathers arrived in Hispaniola they failed to do what was expected of them. They did something, it is true; for they took from those officers of the court, who were not living in the Indies, all their Indian slaves and tried to give them to others who would treat them kindly; but they did not set them free, neither did they bring the judges to trial for their evil deeds.

The clerico was of course very indignant with them, and we may be sure that he never gave them any peace, so that they must have learned to dread the very sight of him. He preached constantly, in the pulpit and on the streets, wherever he went, that the Indians must be free; and when Zuaco came, the two brought charges against the judges, causing them to be tried; but we do not know whether or not they were punished. Probably not.

We must not be too hard upon the monks, however. It was no easy task they had been asked to perform. What Las Casas wanted them to do, and what the law required also, was to take away all the Indians from the Spaniards and set them free. This meant to ruin the owners, since all they had came through the forced labor of the natives. The monks were not men of the determined character necessary for such an act, nor were they endowed with the courage to face the storm it would have brought about their ears. Few men are like the clerico, who was afraid of nobody.

Just after Las Casas reached the Indies a man named Juan Bono, a shipmaster, arrived there with a shipload of Indians, whom he had kidnaped in the island of Trinidad. He himself told the clerico how it was done.

He had gone to the island with sixty men and told the Indians that they had come to live with them. The Indians received them kindly, brought them food, and, as Bono said himself, treated them like brothers. Bono told them that the white men would like a large house to live in, and the Indians at once went to work to build it for them. When it was nearly done, Bono invited all the natives to come and see it.

Some four hundred of them came, all unarmed and quite unsuspecting and happy. When all were gathered in the house, the Spaniards surrounded it, and Bono told the Indians that they must give themselves up or they would be killed. Some of them tried to run away, some to resist, and in a few minutes the swords of the Spaniards had filled the place with the dead and dying. One hundred and eighty of them were put in chains and taken to the ship. About a hundred shut themselves up in another house and tried to defend themselves there, but the Spaniards set fire to it and the natives were all burned alive.

This was the return Bono and his men made to the innocent, gentle Indians, who had been so kind to them. No wonder the heart of the clerico was on fire with indignation when he heard the story. He went at once to the three fathers and told them the dreadful tale. They listened, but did nothing,—as usual. Not one of the one hundred and eighty kidnaped Indians was set free, and neither Bono nor any of the judges who had sent him was punished.

One day a priest came to the Protector of the Indians to tell him how the native laborers in the mines near San Domingo were abused. He said he had seen them lying in the fields, sick from overwork, covered with flies, and nobody cared enough to give them food or drink; but their owners allowed them to lie there and die in this way. Las Casas took him by the hand and led him to the fathers, to whom he repeated this story; but they only tried to excuse the cruelty of the mine owners.

The heart of the clerico burned within him as he saw so much suffering and misery about him and could not get the three commissioners to put a stop to it. Something, he felt, must be done. The fathers had now been in the islands six months and things were no better than they had been before their coming; so he resolved to go again to Spain and seek a remedy for this state of things. When the fathers heard what he intended to do they were much alarmed, but as they could not stop him, they sent one of their number to Spain also, to speak on their behalf.

For some time there had been on the island of Hispaniola a number of Franciscans,—or "Gray Friars," as they were sometimes called because of the color of their robes, just as the Dominicans were called "Black Friars," because they wore black and white. Both orders were sworn to poverty, and both did splendid missionary work in their day. The Franciscans had not always been in sympathy with Las Casas, but seem now to have been as anxious as he to have something done to set matters right. Some of them were well known to the Grand Chancellor, and they gave the clerico letters to that official, who was at once interested; and as Las Casas came to see more of him, the two became great friends. The Chancellor spoke to the King about the matter, and the King commanded that he and Las Casas should consult together and find a remedy for the evils of the Indies.

The plan that they proposed was this:

That colonists should be sent out at the expense of the King and be cared for until they should be able to manage for themselves, when they should begin to pay tribute to the crown. In order to supply laborers, Las Casas suggested that each Spaniard should have permission to import twelve negro slaves. This he did because the Indians died by hundreds from the hard labor in the mines, while he had observed that the negroes endured it much better. Afterward Las Casas confessed with sorrow that he had done wrong in this, as it was no more right to hold the negroes in slavery than to so treat the Indians.

The Bishop of Burgos, who was, you will remember, always bent on opposing the clerico in everything he undertook, laughed at this plan. He said he had been trying for years to get men to go out to the Indies and could not find twenty that were willing to venture. However, Las Casas was not stopped by this, and set to work at once to see what he could do. A man named Berrio was appointed to go with him and assist him; but this Berrio turned out to be anything but a help, refusing to obey the clerico's orders, and finally leaving him, without permission.

Berrio got together about two hundred vagabonds, not at all the right sort of people for colonists, and sent them to Seville, to be shipped to the Indies. Las Casas was not informed of the matter, and as no one had any instructions with regard to these colonists, they were sent out with no supplies for their necessities. When Las Casas heard of it, he insisted upon having provisions sent after them; but it was too late to benefit many of them, for numbers had died of the hardships suffered, and those who lived and stayed in the Indies proved a very bad addition to the white population.

Meanwhile, the Grand Chancellor had died, and Bishop Fonseca was again at the head of Indian affairs, much to the clerico's grief. Fonseca refused to do anything at all for the colonists, and as Las Casas would not allow them to go under such conditions of neglect, the plan fell through. But no sooner was he defeated in one scheme than he immediately began to devise another. There was no such thing as discouraging Las Casas.