The majority, therefore, trusting vainly, as the Curate of Los Palacios points out with fanatical joy, that God would guide them through this new wilderness, accepted exile with all its unknown horrors. The shortness of the term of grace allotted to them, and the necessity of selling or losing their property made real bargaining impossible. They went about seeking purchasers and found none who were anxious to buy; and they gave a house in exchange for an ass, and a vineyard for a length of cloth or linen, because they might not take gold nor silver. Fearful lest their misery should soften popular hatred (and even Bernaldez admits that none saw them leave their homes without pity), Torquemada had forbidden the Christians to hold any intercourse with Jews after August 1, 1492, or to allow them food or shelter as they started on their exodus. He also took care that all the old calumnies of devilish rites and of insults to Christian relics and objects of veneration should be published abroad to impress the credulous. The theft of the consecrated wafer for use in a sacrilegious plot, the murder of a Christian child as a necessary portion of the Jewish rites, the revival of these and many other such tales helped to keep fanaticism at white heat. In defiance of the law, many of the exiles hid money about their clothes and persons; but those, who were not discovered and despoiled before they left the country, spent most of it in attempts to buy the food and protection they could not obtain from friendliness and compassion. The rulers of the synagogues, who made arrangements for the future of the community, were forced also to accept asylums where they could at the owner’s price; and the weary masses, who crossed the Portuguese border, paid to its king a _cruzado_ a head, for permission to spend six months within his boundaries on their way to some permanent refuge. From there many of them crossed to the north coast of Africa to join those of their race, who had sailed direct from Spain to the kingdom of Fez; but so frightful were the sufferings they endured that numbers in despair returned home seeking baptism. Robbed and maltreated by the native guards, whom they had paid to protect them, their wives and daughters violated before their eyes, the unhappy exiles, in their feebleness and poverty, found no favour in the sight of the Moorish King and were driven from his capital. A like inhumanity was shown to those who had made Navarre or Italy their destination; and thus by the sword, pestilence, slavery, or starvation, Christian vengeance on pride of race, wealth, and unbelief was exacted to the uttermost farthing. Here is the witness of a son of one of the exiles: