with one burning desire: to
spend himself in the service of others, to protect and save the weak and
helpless. What he himself might suffer in the performance of this work
mattered not at all.

Strange that to so many even the name of this man is unknown! Yet for
more than fifty years no one either in all the New World or in Spain was
more prominently before the eyes of all than was Las Casas, the great
"Apostle of the Indies." Not only as a missionary, but as an historian,
a philanthropist, a man of business, a ruler in the Church, he towers
above even the notable men of that most remarkable time. His noble,
self-denying, heroic life, spent in untiring service to God and man, is
an inspiration and an example much needed in this materialistic,
money-getting, ease-loving age.
ALICE J. KNIGHT.
HOOD RIVER, OREGON.
_June, 1917._

LAS CASAS

CHAPTER I

BARTOLOME THE YOUTH

Whenever we hear of a famous man,--whether he be artist, author,
statesman, soldier, scientist, great traveler, or missionary,--we like
to know what sort of a boy he was. We are curious about his home, his
school, his parents, his friends, and all the various influences that
helped to make him the man he was. Such knowledge gives us a better
understanding of his after life, and a fuller sympathy with his aims and
achievements.

Although I have headed this chapter "Bartolome the Youth," we know
comparatively little of Las Casas until he was about twenty-eight years
old. In later life we find him impetuous, loving, tireless in energy,
with a fiery temper that blazed out in quick wrath against all injustice
and cruelty toward the weak and helpless, possessing a brilliant mind
and great talents, never giving up striving against the wrong, and never
knowing when he was beaten. These qualities he must have possessed in
some measure as a boy, but, unfortunately, no historian has opened up
for us those early pages.

Bartolome was born in the city of Seville, Spain, in the year 1474. We
are not told the day of the month. Of his mother we know nothing, but
his father was Pedro de Casaus. He was of French descent, but the family
had lived in Spain for over two hundred years, and because of valuable
aid given to one of the Spanish kings in the wars against the Moors,
they had been ennobled, and after a time the name lost its French
spelling and took the Spanish form, Las Casas.