mmunity and had been
pronounced with his full approbation. The colonists became only the more
enraged at this answer and declared that, unless the preacher retracted,
the monks should pack their goods and return to Spain, to which the prior
with quiet irony replied: "Of a truth, gentlemen, that will give us little
trouble"; which indeed was the fact, for Las Casas says that all they
possessed of books, vestments, and clothing would have gone into two
trunks. The most that the Prior would concede was that the subject should
be treated again on the following Sunday.

Fray Antonio once more ascended the pulpit and before the assembled colony
announced his text: "Repetam scientiam meam a principio et operatorem meum
probabo justum" (Job xxxvi. 3). Not only did he repeat the sense of what
he had already said, but he elaborated still more forcibly his theme, and
ended by announcing that the sacraments of the Church would henceforth be
refused to all who persisted in the evil courses he denounced, and defying
his hearers to complain of him in Spain.

Amongst the men on whose startled ears these denunciations fell, were
hidalgos of high birth, reduced by reckless courses to expatriate
themselves in search of fortunes with which to return and resume their
extravagances in Spain; contemptuous of all forms of labour, they passed
their enforced exile in gambling, dicing, and debauchery in the company of
their Indian mistresses, chosen among the native beauties. They
alternately courted the favour of the Viceroy or intrigued against him as
seemed most profitable to their interests; they displayed few of the
virtues and most of the vices common to their class in Spain. Others
belonged in the unfailing and numerous category of adventurers, ever ready
to play a new stake in a new country; they constituted an equally reckless
but more resourceful element in the colony, though their contribution to
the moral tone of the community was likewise insignificant. Columbus had
sought and obtained an authorisation to deport from Spain criminals under
sentence of either partial or perpetual banishment, while other
delinquents had had their sentences remitted on condition that they would
emigrate to the Indies. So dissolute was the general tone of the colonies
and so depraved the habits of many of the colonists that Columbus could,
with sincerity, exclaim, "I vow that numbers of men have gone to the
Indies who did not deserve water from Go