He had no opportunity to become acquainted with the evils of negro slavery, but it is strange that he did not anticipate them. It was taken for granted by him that the blacks were enslaved in Africa, and he accepted too readily the popular idea that their lot was improved by transferring them from barbarous to Christian masters. Their number was so small in Hayti, and the island fell so suddenly into decay, that no formidable oppression of them occurred during his lifetime to replace his recollections of the horrors of Indian servitude. His plan did not take root, but it was remembered. Thus the single error of a noble man, committed in the fulness of his Christian aspirations, and at the very moment when he was representing to a generation of hard and avaricious men the divine charity, betrayed their victims to all the nations that sought wealth and luxury in the West, and pointed out how they were to be obtained. His compromise has the fatal history of all compromises which secure to the present a brief advantage, whose fearful accumulation of interest the future must disgrace, exhaust, and cripple itself to pay. In 1519 the colony had already begun to decay, though all the external marks of luxury and splendor were still maintained. That was the date of a famous insurrection of the remnant of Indians, who occupied the mountains, and defended themselves for thirteen years against all the efforts of the Spaniards to reduce them. It was hardly worth while to undertake their subjection. Adventurers and emigrants were already leaving San Domingo to its fate, attracted to different spots of the Terra Firma, to Mexico and Peru, by the reported treasures. That portion of the colony which had engaged in agriculture found Indians scarce and negroes expensive. There was no longer any object in fitting out expeditions to reinforce the colony, and repair the waste which it was beginning to suffer from desertion and disease. The war with the natives was ignominiously ended by Charles V. in 1533, who found that the colony was growing too poor to pay for it. He despatched a letter to the cacique who had organized this desperate and prolonged resistance, flattered him by the designation of Dom Henri[19] and profuse expressions of admiration, sent a Spanish general to treat with him, and to assign him a district to inhabit with his followers. Dom Henri thankfully accepted this pacification, and soon after received Las Casas himself, who had been commissioned to assure the sole surviving cacique and representative of two million natives that Spain was their friend! At last the Protector of the Indians has the satisfaction of meeting them with authoritative messages of peace. And this was the first salutation of Dom Henri, after his forty years' experience of Spanish probity, and thirteen years of struggle for existence: "During all this war, I have not failed a day to offer up my prayers, I have fasted strictly every