[37] Historia de las Indias, Dec. II, Lib. 3, Cap. 14. [↑]
[38] The Pearl Coast extends from Coro to the Gulf of Paria, a distance of more than five hundred miles. [↑]
[39] Padre A. Caulin, Historia coro-grafica, natural y evangelica de la Nueva Andalucia, Madrid, 1779, and Conversion en Piritu de Indios Cumanogotos y Palenques, por el P. Fr. Matias Ruiz Blanco O. S. F. seguido de Los Franciscanos en las Indias, por Fr. Francisco Alvarez de Vilanueva, O. S. F., Madrid, 1892. [↑]
[40] Even Captain John Hawkins, “an atrocious slave dealer,” is forced to pay his tribute of praise to the gentle and peaceful character of the Indians of this part of Venezuela, for of them he writes: “The people bee surely gentle and tractable, and such as desire to liue peaceablie, or else had it been vnpossible for the Spaniards to haue conquered them as they did, and the more to liue now peaceable, they being many in number, and the Spaniards of few.” Op. cit., Vol. III, p. 28. [↑]
[41] F. A. MacNutt’s Bartholomew de las Casas, His Life, His Apostolate and His Writings, Chaps. VIII, XI, XII, New York, 1909. [↑]
[42] Antonio de Remesal, Historia de la Provincia de Son Vicente de Chyapa, 1619. [↑]
[43] In his last will he writes “Inasmuch as the goodness and the mercy of God, whose unworthy minister I am, called me to be the protector of the inhabitants of the countries, which we call the Indies, who were once the lords of those lands and kingdoms, ... I have labored in the court of the Kings of Castile, going and coming from the Indies to Castile and from Castile to the Indies many times for about fifty years—i. e., from the year 1540, for the love of God alone and through compassion seeing those great multitudes of rational men perish, who originally were approachable, humble, meek and simple, and well fitted to receive the Catholic faith and practice all manner of Christian virtues.” Fabié, op. cit., Tom. I, pp. 234, 235. [↑]
[44] “In contemplating such a life,” writes Fiske, “as that of Las Casas, all words of eulogy seem weak and frivolous. The historian can only bow in reverent awe before a figure which is in some respects the most beautiful and sublime in the annals of Christianity since the Apostolic age. When now and then in the course of the centuries God’s providence brings such a life into this world, the memory of it must be cherished by mankind as one of its most precious and sacred possessions. For the thoughts, the words, the deeds of such a man, there is no death. The sphere of their influence goes on widening forever. They bud, they blossom, they bear fruit, from age to age.”—The Discovery of America, Vol. II, p. 482. [↑]
[45] Dec. 1, Book 8. The same writer informs us that the sailors of Pedro Alonzo Niño, on leaving Curiana to return to Spain, “had three score and XVI poundes weight (after VIII vnces to the pownde) of perles, which they bought for exchange of owre thynges, amountinge to the value of fyve shyllinges.” [↑]
[46] Of these gems of the ocean, “tears by Naiads wept,” one could then repeat, as well as now, the words of Pliny, “The richest merchandise of all, and the most soveraigne comoditie throughout the whole world, are these perles.”—Naturalis Historia, Lib. IX, Cap. 35. [↑]