"He was one of the best historians of his time, and wrote a most attractive Spanish style, quaint, pithy, and nervous,--a style which goes straight to the mark and rings like true metal. I do not mean to be understood as calling it a _literary_ style. It is not graceful like that of great masters of expression such as Pascal or Voltaire. It is not seldom cumbrous and awkward, usually through trying to say too much at once. But in spite of this it is far more attractive than many a truly artistic literary style. There is a great charm in reading what comes from a man brimful of knowledge and utterly unselfish and honest. The crisp shrewdness, the gleams of gentle humor and occasional sharp flashes of wit, and the fervid earnestness, in the books of Las Casas, combine to make them very delightful. It was the unfailing sense of humor, which is so often wanting in reformers, that kept Las Casas from developing into a fanatic.... In contemplating such a life as that of Las Casas, all words of eulogy seem weak and frivolous. The historian can only bow in reverent awe before a figure which is in some respects the most beautiful and sublime in the annals of Christianity since the Apostolic age. When now and then in the course of the centuries God's providence brings such a life into this world, the memory of it must be cherished by mankind as one of its most precious and sacred possessions. For the thoughts, the words, the deeds of such men there is no death; the sphere of their influence goes on widening forever. They bud, they blossom, they bear fruit, from age to age." OF THE ISLAND OF CUBA From 'A Relation of the First Voyage'