sired. The Pope had also
recently issued a Bull forbidding all good Catholic subjects to make
slaves of the Indians, and this was a great help to Las Casas. Some new
laws were passed for their benefit, among them one that forbade any lay
Spaniards to enter The Land of War for five years. This royal order was
solemnly proclaimed, at Las Casas' request, from the steps of the
cathedral of Seville.

And now, his business being finished and the Franciscan and Dominican
monks he had procured for Guatemala being ready to sail, Las Casas
prepared to start back to the New World; but at the last moment he was
detained by the president of the Council of the Indies, who needed the
clerico's advice. The Dominicans were kept back with him, as he was
their vicar-general, but the Franciscans went, and with them Father Luis
Cancer, taking with him a copy of the new laws. These laws were a great
triumph for Las Casas, and their acceptance was due to his wonderful
personal influence.

The clerico was now seventy years old. He had crossed the ocean twelve
times. Four times he had gone to Germany to see the Emperor, and we must
remember that traveling then was a much more difficult and unpleasant
experience than anything we can conceive of now. In his case poverty
made it still more of a hardship. But none of these things mattered to
this earnest "apostle" if only he could lighten the hard lot of those
for whom he labored and suffered.

One Sunday evening, while he was in Barcelona, the Emperor's secretary
called on him to tell him that it was the royal wish to make him Bishop
of Cuzco, the largest and richest of all the dioceses in the New World.
But Las Casas would accept no reward for his work, and for fear he
should be urged, he left Barcelona. Not long after, however, the
diocese of Chiapa[2] was established, and the bishop appointed to it
having died on his way out, this bishopric was offered to Las Casas. In
contrast with the bishopric of Cuzco, it was the _poorest_ in the New
World,--so poor indeed that the Emperor had to help out the salary of
the bishop with a royal grant. Such a field, however, appealed far more
to the Protector of the Indians than the former one, and he accepted the
offer and was consecrated in Seville on the 8th of March, 1544, and at
once prepared to leave, taking with him forty-four Dominicans. The
voyage proved to be a very trying and dangerous one, but at length the
holy men arrived at San Domingo. The D