Let us now return to Pacra, from whom we have somewhat wandered. After having entered the boios (that is to say, the house) abandoned by the cacique, Vasco sought to induce him to return by means of envoys who made known the conditions already proposed to other caciques; but for a long time Pacra refused. Vasco then tried threats, and the cacique finally decided to come in, accompanied by three others. Vasco writes that he was deformed, and so dirty and hideous that nothing more abominable could be imagined. Nature confined herself to giving him a human form, but he is a brute beast, savage and monstrous. His morals were on a par with his bearing and physiognomy. He had carried off the daughters of four neighbouring caciques to satisfy his brutal passions. The neighbouring chiefs, regarding Vasco as a supreme judge or a Hercules, a redresser of injuries, complained of the debaucheries and the crimes of Pacra, begging that he should be punished by death. Vasco had this filthy beast and the other three caciques, who obeyed him and shared his passions, torn to pieces by dogs of war, and the fragments of their bodies were afterwards burnt. Astonishing things are said about these dogs the Spaniards take into battle. These animals throw themselves with fury on the armed natives pointed out to them, as if they were timid deer or fierce boars; and it often happens that there is no need of swords or javelins to rout the enemy. A command is given to these dogs who form the vanguard, and the natives at the mere sight of these formidable Molossians[4] and the unaccustomed sound of their baying, break their ranks and flee as though horrified and stupefied by some unheard-of prodigy. This does not occur in fighting against the natives of Caramaira or the Caribs, who are braver and understand more about war. They shoot their poisoned arrows with the rapidity of lightning, and kill the dogs in great numbers; but the natives of these mountains do not use arrows in warfare; they only use machanes,[5] that is to say, large wooden swords, and lances with burnt points. [Note 4: _Torvo molossorum adspectu_. Referring to the dogs of Epirus, called by the Romans, Molossi.] [Note 5: The _maquahuitle of the Mexicans; a flat wooden club, in which blades of _iztli_, or flint, were set on the opposite edges; it was their most formidable weapon in hand-to-hand encounters.] While Pacra was still alive they asked him where his people obtained gold, but neither by persuasion nor threats nor tortures could they drag this secret from him. When asked how he had procured what he had possessed,--for he had offered a present of thirty pounds of gold out of his treasury--he answered that those of his subjects who, either in the time of his parents or in his own, had mined that gold in the mountain were dead, and that since his youth he had not troubled to look for gold. Nothing more could be obtained from him on this subject.