The President Cerrato, out of gratitude to Las Casas, made all the provision for the return journey and the five friars set out, probably by the same road by which Las Casas had come. In 1534, he was in Nicaragua, where he left three of his companions in the convent of St. Paul at Santiago, while he and Fray Luis Cancer and Fray Pedro de Angulo continued on their way to Peru. Embarking at the port of Realejo on board a small vessel, they were overtaken by a furious storm and such continued bad weather that, after many days of misery and danger, the ship was obliged to put back, and they found themselves again at their port of embarkation. Their journey to Peru being thus frustrated, the friars returned to their convent at Leon where, in the early days of 1534, a letter reached Las Casas from Don Francisco Marroquin, who had recently been appointed Bishop of Guatemala after the renunciation of Fray Domingo de Betanzos. His diocese was vast but its clergy consisted of himself and one priest, and in his letter he entreated Fray Bartholomew, since his journey to Peru had been abandoned and the diocese of Nicaragua was reasonably provided with priests, to come with his companions to Guatemala, where there was a great field open for apostolic work and no labourers to occupy it. Las Casas at once responded to this invitation and in Santiago de los Caballeros, the trio of Dominicans established their convent, being joined somewhat later by Fray Rodrigo de Ladrada who came thither from Peru. The first essential was to learn the Guatemalan language in order to preach and catechise the Indians, and this was the more easily accomplished because the Bishop Marroquin was already master of it, and undertook their instruction. It was this same bishop who published in Mexico in 1556, a catechism of Christian Doctrine in the Utlateca tongue, commonly called Quiché, a little book which has become extremely rare and valuable. CHAPTER XIV. - THE LAND OF WAR. BULL OF PAUL III. LAS CASAS IN SPAIN. THE NEW LAWS The next few years passed in successful missionary work, without offering any events of particular interest in the life of Las Casas. During this period he composed his work, _De Unico modo vocationis_, in which he argued that Divine Providence had instituted only one way of converting souls, viz., convince the intelligence by reasoning and win the heart by gentleness. (46) The ground principle of all his teaching was unalterably the same, and he eloquently insisted upon his doctrine of peace and kind treatment of the Indians, whom he never ceased to declare were reasonable people of unspoiled nature, who were to be converted by gentleness and justice—not by brutality and oppression. His theories provoked the same ridicule and opposition in Guatemala as elsewhere, though there was not the same bitterness of feeling towards him as existed in the Islands.