der, constrained by a royal edict to
surrender his human property.

Upon his return from Salamanca to Seville Las Casas found himself, through
his father's relations with Columbus, in daily intercourse with the men
whose voyages and discoveries were thrilling Europe. Amongst these
navigators was his uncle Francisco de Penulosa, and it was but natural
that his eager temperament should catch the adventurous fever which
prevailed throughout Spain and notably in Andalusia. Salucchi, in his
Latin treatise on Hebrew coins, says that Las Casas accompanied his father
on the second voyage of Columbus in 1493 and brought back the Indian slave
himself. Llorente, who has been followed by several modern writers,
asserts that his first voyage to America was made with Columbus on his
third expedition. He deduces this conclusion from a statement at the
close of the Thirty Propositions which Las Casas addressed to the Royal
India Council in 1547 and from a sentence in the First Motive of his Ninth
Remedy which he presented to the Emperor in 1542. The first of these
passages reads "Thus, most illustrious Sirs, have I thought since
forty-nine years, during which I have witnessed evil-doings in America and
since thirty-four years that I have studied law." The passage merely
refers to Columbus having permitted certain Spaniards who had rendered
important services during his voyage to bring back each an Indian and
concludes, "And I obtained one."

[Illustration: Christopher Columbus]

Christopher Columbus

From an engraving by P. Mercuri after a contemporary portrait

The deductions of both these learned writers would seem to require more
positive corroboration. Not only are they destitute of confirmation, but
in the second chapter of his _Historia General_, Las Casas gives the names
of many persons who did accompany Columbus in 1493, describing several
incidents connected with that expedition and concluding by saying that he
heard all these things "from my father who returned [to America] with him,
when he went to found settlements in Hispaniola." In the preface which he
wrote in 1552 to accompany the publication of his history, _Destruycion de
las Indias_, which had been composed ten years earlier, he speaks of his
experience extending over more than fifty years, but in his _Historia
General_, which is almost a diary of the first half of his life in
America, the first voyage