r royal Crown. Let the
Audiencias take means to be immediately and particularly informed
concerning the deceased person, his rank, merits, services, and his
treatment of his Indians and whether there is a widow or children; they
shall send us a report on the condition of the Indians and of the property
that we may order what may be best for our service and may make such
provision as may seem good to us for the widow and children of the
deceased. Should the Audiencia meanwhile perceive a need to provide for
such widow and children, they may do this out of the tribute paid by the
said Indians, giving them a moderate amount for these Indians are under
our Crown, as stated."

This article provided for the gradual and total extinction of slavery,
with due regard to the interests of the colonists, and though it did not
meet the wishes of Las Casas for the immediate and absolute correction of
the prevailing abuses, its strict application promised to produce more
slowly, the results which he sought.

On the 20th of November, 1542, Charles V. signed the Nuevas Leyes of
Valladolid, in the city of Barcelona, and their publication immediately
followed.

Las Casas was in Valencia at this time and it was there that he finished
the best known of all his writings, which was first printed in 1552 under
the title _Brevissima Relacion de la Destruycion de la Indias_, and bore a
dedication to Philip II. (52) This little book, as the reader may see from
the translation of it given at the close of this volume, is a veritable
catalogue of horrors. Man's invention has its limits, and the ways of
torturing the human body are numbered, hence, as the descriptions of the
various scenes of brutality repeat themselves over and over in the same
language, they end by becoming wearisome. The book was speedily
translated into various European languages and its dissemination aroused a
tempest of indignation against the Spanish colonial system in America.
Its contents were made to serve in the religious and political
controversies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and Las Casas was
cited as a witness both against his Church and his country.

There is no doubt that every incident that Las Casas relates as coming
within his own knowledge and observation is true, though Prescott
describes "the good Bishop's arithmetic as coming from the heart than from
the head" and historians generally have been inclined to doubt his
figures. His descriptio