alive. 9.9. Before they captured that ruler, they had been received in many, nay in all the provinces, wherever they went, with singing and dances and many gifts of large quantities of gold; the payment they made the Indians was to put them to the sword and cut them to pieces in order to terrorise the whole country. 10.10. Once, when the inhabitants had come out to meet him in the aforesaid way, the tyrant German captain put a great number of people into a large straw louse and cut them to pieces. As the house had some beams at the top and many climbed up to escape from the bloody hands and swords of those men or pitiless beasts, this infernal man caused fire to be set to the house; thus all who remained were burnt alive. This action caused the depopulation of a great number of towns as all the people fled to the mountains where they hoped to be safe. 11.11. They came to another large province on the borders of the province and kingdom of Santa Marta, where they found the Indians in their towns and houses, peaceably occupied with their affairs. They stayed with them a long time, eating their substance while the Indians served them as though it were their duty to give them life and succour; they bore with their continual oppressions and usual exactions, which are intolerable, for one parasite Spaniard eats as much in one day as would be sufficient for an Indian household of ten persons for a month. 12.12. During this time, the Indians spontaneously gave them great quantities of gold, besides the best of treatment. At last when the tyrants wished to depart, they determined to repay their hospitality in this following manner. 13.13. The German governor, who was a tyrant and, for what we know also a heretic—for he never attends mass neither does he let many others go, besides which, other signs mark him as a Lutheran,—ordered his men to capture all the Indians they could, with their wives and children, and to confine them in a large yard or wooden enclosure prepared for the purpose; he then announced that whoever wished to go out and be free, must ransom himself according to the will of the iniquitous governor, giving so much gold for himself, so much for his wife and for each of his children; and to force them the more, he commanded that nothing whatever should be given them to eat, until they brought him the gold he demanded as ransom. 14.14. Many who were able, sent to their houses for gold and redeemed themselves. They were set free, and returned to their occupations and to their houses to provide themselves with the necessaries of life. The tyrant sent certain villainous Spanish thieves to recapture these miserable Indians, who had once ransomed themselves;