The number of negroes who reached the islands under this regime is not ascertainable.

It was clearly almost negligible in comparison with the increasing demand.[11] [Footnote 11: The chief authority upon the origin and growth of negro slavery in the Spanish colonies is J.A.Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud de la Raza Africana en el Nuevo Mundo y en especial en los Paises Americo-Hispanos_.

(Barcelona, 1879.) This book supplements the same author's _Historia de la Esclavitud desde los Tiempos remotos_ previously cited.] The policy of excluding negroes fresh from Africa--"bozal negroes" the Spaniards called them--was of course a product of the characteristic resolution to keep the colonies free from all influences hostile to Catholic orthodoxy.

But whereas Jews, Mohammedans and Christian heretics were considered as champions of rival faiths, the pagan blacks came increasingly to be reckoned as having no religion and therefore as a mere passive element ready for christianization.

As early as 1510, in fact, the Spanish crown relaxed its discrimination against pagans by ordering the purchase of above a hundred negro slaves in the Lisbon market for dispatch to Hispaniola.