Voices in Time

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By the grace of our Lord, on the morning of Wednesday, July 9, six months after leaving Salamanca, we hastily scrambled aboard the small boats that carried us out to the ships on which the remaining members of our order were booked for passage. For all of us, however, it was disheartening because the weather was no longer favorable for sailing, even though the fleet, consisting of twenty-seven vessels, including caravels and a galleon, was now ready to depart. Embarking all on the same ship at this time was the largest group of our order ever sent to the Indies. There were over forty-eight friars and many other secular clergy as passengers, and chief among us was the Bishop of Chiapas, the Very Reverend Bartolomé de las Casas. Having triumphed over the Council of the Indies, he came armed with royal authority to remedy the ills of the Indians and to free the slaves. Also aboard our ship was the wife of the viceroy, Maria de Toledo, who was returning to the island of Hispaniola; rather inopportunely, she demanded that two priests travel with her. After considerable difficulty, the matter was finally adjusted by assigning to her Friar Juan de Cabrera de Cordoba from our monastery in Valladolid and Friar Alonso de Vallisante, its vicar. Her brother, Friar Antonio de Toledo, of the same order also joined her retinue, and collectively they were made comfortable and their needs well attended to. The Father Prior of the island and city of Santo Domingo was also with our group, though not on our ship.

We came aboard joyously chanting litanies and other prayers, thus beginning our permanent exile from our country with as much gaiety as travelers customarily display at homecoming after years of hardships and wandering abroad. We did this because we anticipated pleasant rewards both on earth and in heaven for our coming trials and tribulations. Immediately, we spent the whole day broiling in the sun, but with a slight breeze the sails were hoisted the next day, because the seamen alleged that once we were out on the high sea, we would start sailing with any kind of wind.

We endured such scorching heat that I do not know how to describe it. We suffered particularly because we had just left very comfortable quarters, and because it made the ship’s pitch ooze between the planking.

Since there were so many of us, the Father Vicar had arranged to have us all travel together, thinking in this way we would be a comfort to each other, help each other, and that we would thus get along with less baggage and fewer provisions. But it was a great mistake, for when only two or three clergymen are on a single ship, they are waited upon, cared for, and treated with great respect, even though they bring no supplies with them. But with all of us together, they treated us like negroes, making most of us go below deck to sleep, and tramping over us as we were seated or lay sprawled about the deck floor. And often it was not just our ecclesiastical habits that they stepped on but right on our beards and faces without the least consideration for us as holy friars. And there were a lot of other annoyances and outrages that I hardly know how to describe. The first day we chanted all the services, but because of such harassment, we sang only the Salve the second day, and each one recited the canonical hours whenever he could manage to do so.

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