s unpromising joint-commission sailed from San Lucar on November 11,
1516, but in separate vessels, the Jeronymites keeping aloof from Las
Casas, who they contrived should not embark on the same ship with
themselves. Their vessel reached Hispaniola thirteen days earlier than
the other, which had been obliged to stop at Puerto Rico to discharge
freight.

By detaching themselves from Las Casas at the very outset, the three
Jeronymites doubtless intended to affirm the impartial and independent
attitude essential to the judicial character of their mission. They were
not carried to the Indies on any such wave of righteous zeal and
indignation as bore the impetuous reformer on its crest. They were
cloister-bred men, cautious and prudent in their decisions and deliberate
in their acts, and they doubtless felt that for them to arrive in company
with Las Casas would be to prejudice the impartiality of their proceedings
in the eyes of all the colonists. They were sent to the colonies to carry
out instructions of a most delicate and difficult nature and it was their
obvious preference to fulfil their mission, as far as possible, without
friction. In this exercise of caution, Las Casas beheld weakness and even
treachery. His passionate nature chafed and raged at the deliberateness
with which these impassive monks moved, and he was not slow to denounce
them as having been won over by the blandishments of the colonial
officials to betray the mission with which they were entrusted. His
passion for justice, associated as it was with unrealisable ideals,
refused to take account of the multifarious difficulties in the way of the
reforms on which his heart was set, and he despised the obstacles to their
consummation, through which he would have crashed, regardless of the
consequences. Despite the sincerity of these one-sided views of the great
Protector, it must be conceded that the problems confronting the
Jeronymites were complex and difficult of solution. The prompt and
reckless execution of their instructions would have overturned the entire
economic system of the colonies which, however unjust in its principles,
was the established condition of things, and would have certainly brought
financial ruin as the first consequence. The situation was one which
called for all their circumspection if the Jeronymites were to make their
authority effective and their decisions operative. They were the first of
all the men sent by the Sp