In their accounts of the Porto Rico slaughtering the historians of the time cannot sufficiently praise the cunning and courage of a great hound, named Bezerillo, and the astonishing deeds he performed. He knew, they said, how to distinguish the Indian friends and enemies of his masters. The Indians were more afraid of ten Spaniards with this dog than of a hundred without him. Before the outbreak they used to give the Spaniards all the provisions, gold, and even slaves they asked for to save themselves from being harmed by the dog. The following story of his cunning is also told: Some inhuman Spaniards took delight in tormenting an old Indian woman whom they disliked. Upon one occasion they sent her off with a letter. She had hardly set out before Bezerillo was let loose to run her down. He fiercely pursued her but the woman threw herself upon her knees, showed the dog the letter, and said: “O, gracious Sir Hound! I pray your grace, spare me! I must deliver this letter to the Christians!” The dog, as if he clearly understood her, wagged his tail and trotted back to his masters without doing her any harm. The happiness of these poor natives was gone forever. The discoveries and conquests of the Spaniards rapidly increased. The first step which Diego took for the extension of his sway and the increase of the royal possessions was the founding of a colony on the island of Cubagua, discovered by his father, to engage in pearl fisheries. These pearls grow in certain mussels and oysters, not only in the sea but also in rivers, and have to be taken from the bottom. Some think that they come from a disease of the shellfish, but this much is certain, that the material of the pearls at first is a juice which comes from the body of the fish and gradually hardens. The pearl-fishers, who are mostly poor men, dive into the water and bring them up. Diego conceived that the work of these Indians, who were used to swimming and diving, could be more profitably employed in this manner than in mining. He sent a number of them with the necessary European overseers to Cubagua, where his father had found that the waters abounded in pearls. The profits of the fisheries both for the King and the governor were exceedingly large, but the unfortunate natives employed in the fishing found the work so unhealthy and dangerous that most of them were lost. The general barrenness of the island soon compelled the colony to leave and settle in the adjacent island of Margarita.