Note 1015 — Chapter V

There is a variance in the dates assigned by historians for the visits of both Las Casas and his father to the Indians. Irving, following Navarrete, says that Antoine returned to Seville in 1498, having become rich (Columbus iii. 415). He also says that Llorente is incorrect in asserting that Bartholomew in his twenty-fourth year accompanied Columbus in his third voyage, in 1498, returning with him in 1500, as the young man was then at his studies at Salamanca. Irving says Bartholomew first went to Hispaniola with Ovando in 1502, at the age of about twenty-eight. I have allowed the dates to stand in the text as given by Llorente, assigning the earlier year for the first voyage of Las Casas to the New World as best according with the references in writings by his own pen to the period of his acquaintance with the scenes which he describes.