killed and burnt many people, and stole other fifty or sixty thousand castellanos, and the prince, or lord fled to escape death or capture. 14.13. He quickly assembled all the people he could, and in two or three days came upon the Christians, who were carrying away his hundred and thirty or forty (86) thousand castellanos, and fell upon them manfully, killing fifty Christians, recapturing all the gold while the others escaped badly wounded. 15.14. Afterwards, many Christians turned on the said lord and destroyed him and many of his people; they killed the rest with the usual servitude, so that to-day there is neither sign nor any vestige whatsoever that there was ever a town or born man where formerly was thirty leagues of dominion well populated. The murders and destruction done by that miserable man and his company in that kingdom which he devastated, are without number. The Province of Nicaragua 1. In the year 1522 or 1523 this same tyrant invaded the most delightful province of Nicaragua to subjugate it; it was an unlucky hour when he entered it. Who could adequately set forth the happiness, healthfulness, agreeableness, prosperity, and the number of dwellings and concourse of the people that were there? it was truly a marvellous thing to see how full it was of towns, stretching for a length of nearly three or four leagues, thickly planted with the most marvellous fruit trees; which was the reason that there was such an immense population. 2.2. So much injury and assassination, so much cruelty, wickedness and injustice, was done to those people by that tyrant, together with the others, his companions, that human language would not suffice to relate it; for he was accompanied by all those who had helped to destroy all the other kingdom. The land being flat and open, the natives could not hide in the mountains, and their country was so delightful, that it was with difficulty and great grief that they brought themselves to abandon it; for this reason they suffered, and will suffer great persecutions, and they tolerated the tyranny and the slavery of the Christians to the extent of their endurance, and because they are naturally a very humble and pacific people. 3.3. He sent fifty mounted soldiers, and had the inhabitants of a whole province, larger than the country of Rusenon(87) killed with lances, without leaving man nor woman, old nor young alive. He did this for a very trifling reason; such as because they did not come as soon as he called them, or because they did not bring him enough loads of maize, (which is the grain of that country) or enough Indians to serve him or some other of his company: the land being flat, no one