they brought them back to the enclosure and tortured them with hunger and thirst to make them ransom themselves again. 15.15. Many who were captured were ransomed two and three times. Others who could not, because they had given all the gold they possessed and had not enough left, he left languishing in the enclosure till they died of hunger. 16.16. By this deed, he left ruined, desolate, and depopulated, a most populous province most rich in gold, which has a valley of forty leagues, where he burnt a town that had a thousand houses. 17.17. This infernal tyrant determined to go inland, as he eagerly desired to discover the hell of Peru in those parts. To make this unhappy journey, he, and the others brought numberless Indians, chained to one another, carrying loads of sixty, and seventy pounds each. 18.18. If one tired, or fainted from hunger, fatigue, and weakness, they at once cut off his head at the collar of the chain so as not to stop to loosen the others in the line; and the head fell to one side and the body to the other, and they distributed his load among the other bearers. 1919. To tell of the provinces he destroyed, the towns, and places he burnt (for all the houses are built of straw)—the people he killed, the cruelty he displayed in the several massacres during this journey, would make an incredible and terrifying story, but it would be true, nevertheless. 20.20. These journeys were afterwards undertaken by other tyrants who followed in the same Venezuela, and others from the province of Santa Marta, animated by the same holy intention of discovering this holy house of gold in Peru; and they found all the country for more than two hundred leagues, so much burnt, depopulated, and deserted, from formerly being most populous and prosperous, as has been said, that though they themselves were cruel tyrants, they marvelled and were horrified to behold the traces of such lamentable devastation. 21.21. Many witnesses have proved these things before the chancellor of the exchequer of the India Council and the proofs are in the possession of the same Council but they have never burnt alive any of these nefarious tyrants. 22.22. But what has been proven is as nothing compared to the massacres and great wickedness that have been committed, because all the officers of justice in the Indies are so mortally blind that they do not investigate the crimes, destruction, and slaughter that have been, and are to-day wrought by all the tyrants of the Indies, beyond declaring that as such and such a one has used cruelty towards the Indians, the King’s revenue has lost so many thousand crowns; they are satisfied with little proof, and that of a very general and confused character. 23.23.