But it was in vain for Nuñez to be innocent; it was in vain that he indignantly repudiated the charge brought against him, pointing out that had he for a moment entertained the views attributed to him he would never have allowed himself to be entrapped into his present position. The mind of Pedrarias was hopelessly prejudiced against him, and the vindictive old man urged on the unwilling judge from day to day, heaping charge upon charge, until at length a sentence of death was pronounced against the accused. The judge recommended him to mercy on account of his services, or begged that at least he might be allowed to appeal. But these recommendations were lost on Pedrarias, and Nuñez was condemned to die. In the same sentence were included several of his officers as well as Arguello, who had written a letter to put him upon his guard. The informer Garabito was pardoned. In the public square of _Acla_, at the hands of the common headsman, the discoverer of the Southern Sea, at the early age of forty-two, expiated the crime of having aroused the jealousy of a narrow-minded official superior. The blow which then fell affected not Nuñez alone, but the whole Peruvian nation; for had he been permitted to carry out his proposed expedition, he would certainly have anticipated the discoveries of Pizarro, and, in view of the character of the two men respectively, who can doubt that the conquest of Peru would have had a widely different result? CHAPTER IV. _LAS CASAS; HIS COLONY ON THE PEARL COAST._ 1515-1521. The history of the northern coast of South America, from the Gulf of _Paria_ to the Isthmus of _Darien_, is intimately connected with the history of slavery during the century which succeeded the date of the discovery of the New World. Modern slavery in Europe (not including the Ottoman dominions) seems to have dated from the war between the Spaniards and the Moors, when such of the latter as were made prisoners were, under Ferdinand, as a matter of course, sold as slaves. It was a period when the Church was all in all as regards the European polity. Whatever the head of the Church chose to say was right, and became therefore right in the eyes of the sons of the Church. The will of the Sovereign Pontiff became law, and was appealed to as an ultimate court of reference throughout Christendom. The state of public morality then existing amongst Christian nations, in respect to people and races not within the pale of Christianity, was more or less what it had been in the time of the Crusades. There was at the best merely a truce existing at any one time between the Christian and the Moslem powers. Their principles were antagonistic and incompatible. The days had not yet arrived when the Turk was to be called in as an ally by one Christian power fighting against another.