Las Casas was present at the close of this expedition, and he speaks of frequent burnings and hangings of the inhabitants. Many committed suicide to escape the enforced working in the mines. The following item in his indictment deserves to be reproduced: “There was,” he says, “an officer of the king in this island to whose share 300 Indians fell, and by the end of three months he had, through labor in the mines, caused the deaths of 270; so that he had only 30 left, which was the tenth part. The authorities afterwards gave him as many again, and again he killed them; and they continued to give and he to kill.... In three or four months, I being present, more than 7000 children died of hunger, their fathers and mothers having been taken to the mines.” The concentration of the conquerors on economic success may be gathered from the experience of Las Casas himself, who, though he had done all in his power to restrain the commission of cruel deeds, wherever he was present, did not hesitate to take advantage, priest though he was, of the “repartimiento” system, under which he received a valuable piece of land and a number of Indians to work it, in recognition of the services he had rendered in conciliating the natives. Columbus, it must be remembered, received an authorization to deport from Spain criminals under sentence of either partial or perpetual banishment. Other delinquents had had their sentences remitted provided they agreed to go to the Indies. The result among such a motley crowd, released from the ordinary pressure of social obligations, was a laxity and dissoluteness such as was seen in the nineteenth century among frontier communities. Even Columbus spoke with no admiration of the colonists. “I know,” he said, “that numbers of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water from God or man.” Despite the fact that the exploration and subjugation of the larger Antilles went on with feverish energy, Puerto Rico and Jamaica both being taken in 1509, the profits of the colonial system were most disappointing. The expeditions were costly, there was no economy in organization; at home and abroad, there were a host of officials who had to receive salaries. The gold mines were poor in quality. The native population, by war and disease, had been so much diminished that labor became scarce. The smaller islands were then drawn upon to keep up the supply of labor in Hispaniola, and as the death-rate still continued excessively high, the place of the natives was filled by negroes imported from the Portuguese colonies in Africa. Some negroes were taken to Hispaniola as early as 1505. In 1517 the African slave traffic was authorized by Charles V.