all the energy and
unflagging perseverance of Las Casas to keep his affairs to the front and
save them from being forgotten; as it was, even he had moments of
discouragement in which he was tempted to drop the whole matter and retire
from the Court. His faithful Flemings, however, did not fail him, and
with their aid, he managed to get no less than seven days in the month of
May devoted to Indian affairs, before the sovereign sailed from Coruna.

During one of these sittings of the Council, Cardinal Adrian contrived to
overcome the opposition which was still active against Las Casas, by a
masterly discourse, in which he proved that by all natural and divine
laws, the policy so far pursued in the Indies was a mistaken one, and that
the Indians must be civilised and converted by humane and peaceful means.
The desired grant was finally made and consisted of two hundred and sixty
leagues of coast between Paria and Santa Marta, inclusively, and extending
inland in a direct line from its two extremities to the South Sea. The
text of this grant, which Charles V. signed in Coruna on May 19, 1520,
fills several chapters of the third part of the _Historia General de las
Indias_.

All the necessary formalities having been complied with and all obstacles
overcome, Las Casas was at last ready to launch his colonial venture.
Friends in Seville advanced him loans of money and others presented him
with a quantity of article of trade, of small enough value in Spain but of
great worth in the eyes of the Indians. The fifty men who were to adopt
the white habit of the Knight of the Golden Spur had not been selected,
but it was thought well to begin the settlement with labourer and perhaps
to choose the candidates for the new knighthood from amongst the Spaniards
already settled in the Indies. He sailed with his little company from San
Lucar de Barrameda on November 11, 1520, and after an uneventful voyage
reached the island of Puerto Rico, called by the Indians Boriquen, and
first named San Juan by the Spaniards.

While Las Casas had been sustaining his long struggle in Spain in behalf
of the Indians, a series of disastrous events had occurred in America,
which created serious obstacles in the way of his scheme for colonisation.
In 1518 some Dominican and Franciscan friars had founded two convents on
the Pearl Coast, the former at Chiribichi and the latter at Maracapana,
some seven leagues distant at the mouth of the Cumana River and j