Seignior, says he, the Spaniards are, in some respects, the worst nation under the sun; they are cruel, inexorable, uncharitable, voracious, and, in several cases, treacherous; but, in two things, they are to be depended upon beyond all the nations in the world; that is to say, when they give their honour, to perform anything, and when they have a return to make for any favour received. And here he entertained me with a long story of a merchant of Carthagena, who, in a sloop, was shipwrecked at sea, and was taken up by an English merchant on board a ship bound to London from Barbadoes, or some other of our islands; that the English merchant, meeting another English ship bound to Jamaica, put the Spanish merchant on board him, paid him for his passage, and desired him to set him on shore on the Spanish coast, as near to Carthagena as he could. This Spanish merchant could never rest till he found means to ship himself from Carthagena to the Havannah, in the galleons; from thence to Cadiz in Old Spain; and from thence to London, to find out the English merchant, and make him a present to the value of a thousand pistoles for saving his life, and for his civility in returning him to Jamaica, &c. Whether the story was true or not, his inference from it was just, namely, that a Spaniard never forgot a kindness. But take it withal, says the doctor, that I believe it is as much the effect of their pride as of their virtue; for at the same time, said he, they never forget an ill turn any more than they do a good one; and they frequently entail their enmities on their families, and prosecute the revenge from one generation to another, so that the heir has, with the estate of his ancestors, all the family broils upon his hands as he comes to his estate. From all this he inferred that, as this Spaniard found himself so very much obliged to me, I might depend upon it that he had so much pride in him, that if he could pull down the Andes for me to go through, and I wanted it, he would do it for me; and that nothing would be a greater satisfaction to him, than to find some way or other how to requite me.