Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/583

Rh congress as an independent republican, and served one term, 18G7-'9. He was the only republican in the house that voted against the impeachment of President Johnson. On 18 May, 1876, he was nominated for vice-president of the United States, with Peter Cooper as the candidate for president, by the independent party, commonly known as the national greenback party. He has been interested in the temperance and labor reform movements.

CASAL, or CAZAL, Manuel Ayres de, Portuguese geographer, b. after 1750 ; d. in Lisbon, before 1850. He received a good education, and took holy orders, but afterward devoted himself to the exploration of Brazil, and has been called the "father of Brazilian geography." His"Coro- grafia Brasilica" (2 vols., Rio de Janeiro, 1817) was much admired by Humboldt.

CASANATE, Pedro Porter de (cah-sah-nah'- tay), Spanish naval officer, flourished in the 17th century. In 1(585 he explored the coasts of South America, in order to rectify the charts, and in 1640 was given the exclusive right to navigate the gulf of California and make discoveries on its coasts. After he had held the office of governor of Sinaloa, and finished his explorations in California, he was sent to Chili as governor and re-establishhd order in the region. Casanate left several geographical and nautical works which are highly esteemed, in- cluding •' Diecionario Nautico," " Reparo a los Er- rores de la Navegacion Espanola," " Relaciones y Cartas de viajes a California," " Relacion de la Campafia de Chile," and " Sentencias notables de la Perfecta Razon de Estado."

CASAS, Bartolomé de las (bar-tol-o-may'), missionary, b. in Seville, Spain, in 1474; d. in Madrid in 1566. His father was one of the adventurous spirits that accompanied Columbus on his principal voyages. Bartolomé was a student at the University of Salamanca until he was nineteen years old, and had distinguished himself by his brilliant gifts. He accompanied his father on all but the first of his voyages with Columbus, and, on his return to Spain, became a Dominican, with a view to devoting his life to the conversion of the American Indians. He was ordained at Santo Domingo in 1510, and appointed to a parish in Cuba, where he acquired such notable influence over the natives that he attracted the attention of the governor. In 1516 he went to Spain to obtain safeguards for the natives against their European oppressors. Cardinal Ximenez, then regent, sent out a commission, which proved ineffectual, and Las Casas went again to Spain on the same errand. But his efforts produced no lasting result. After this he essayed an independent colony, receiving a grant of 250 leagues of land from Charles V.; but this too failed, and he retired in

despair to a Dominican convent, where his energetic spirit would not long suffer him to remain. He found his true vocation as a missionary preacher, travelling through Nicaragua, Guatemala, Peru, and Mexico, and making many alleged converts, and earning the title of &ldquo;the apostle to the Indians.&rdquo; Charles V., wishing to reward his zeal, appointed him to the rich bishopric of Cuzco, in Peru, but Las Casas, possessed by the spirit of self-abnegation, refused a life of luxury, and accepted the poverty-stricken see of Chiapa, Mexico. He assumed this charge at the age of seventy, and, by his zeal in behalf of the natives, provoked hostility from court officers and from colonists, to whom he refused the sacrament if they enslaved the Indians. His enemies proved too strong for him, and in 1551 he returned to Spain and retired to a cloister, where he devoted himself to writing accounts of his experiences. As a statistician, Las Casas is untrustworthy. His estimates of the native population of the West Indies, and of the number of lives destroyed by the tyranny of the Spaniards, are evident exaggerations, prompted, as the historian Prescott suggests, by the author's heart rather than by his head. His untrustworthiness seems, however, to be confined mainly to this department of his work. His first book, &ldquo;Sumario,&rdquo; descriptive of the West Indies, appeared in 1526. In 1535 he began to publish his &ldquo;Historia general de las Indias,&rdquo; continued through a large number of volumes, and never finished. These were published in nearly all the European languages as well as in Latin. In 1552 the series of nine tracts began, usually known as &ldquo;The Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies&rdquo; (the title properly belongs only to the first tract). This work, and especially the statistics contained in it, are considered to be apocriphal by Montalvo, Nuix, Beristain, and other authorities. Complete sets of these are very rare and command fabulous prices. The original manuscript of the &ldquo;Historia&rdquo; is still preserved in the academy of history at Madrid. See Sir Arthur Help's &ldquo;Spanish Conquest of America&rdquo; and &ldquo;Life of Las Casas,&rdquo; Hubert Howe Bancroft's &ldquo;Central America&rdquo; and &ldquo;Mexico,&rdquo; and Winsor's &ldquo;Narrative and Critical History of America&rdquo; (Boston, 1884).

CASAS Y ARAGORRI, Luis de las, governor-general of Cuba, b. iu Sopuerta, Spain, 25 Aug., 1745 ; d. in Cadiz, 14 July, 18U0. In 1769 he came to Louisiana under the Spanish Gen. O'Reilly, where he remained six years as commander of the garrison. In 1774 he returned to Spain, took part in several wars, and was appointed in 1790 gov- ernor-general of Cuba. During his administration the prosperity and welfare of the island had a great development. To him was due the creation of the first newspaper ever published in Cuba, the "Papel Periodico," the first nurnber of which appeared 31 Oct.. 1791. Casas himself was one of the most con- stant conti'ibutors. Under his administration were established the charity asylum, the patriotic society for intellectual, industrial, and agricultural devel- opment, the first public library in Cuba, and the first census was taken. He caused to be con- structed many public roads and bridges, and found- ed public schools, contributing with his own purse toward their support. He was the first to recom- mend to the Madrid government the wise policy of opening the ports of the island of Cuba to foreign commerce. Casas returned to Spain in 1796 as poor as when he had first arrived at Plavana, and died in absolute poverty.

CASE, Augustus Ludlow, naval officer, b. in Newburg, N. Y., 3 Feb., 1813 ; d. in Wasliington,