“The tyranny exercised by the Spaniard upon the Indians in fishing pearls is as cruel and damnable a thing as can be found in the world. On land there is no life so desperate and infernal in this century that may be compared with it, although that of digging gold in the mines is in its kind exceedingly severe and difficult. They let the Indians down into the sea, three and four and five fathoms deep, from the morning till sunset, where they are swimming under water without respite, gathering the oysters in which the pearls grow; they come up to breathe, bringing up little nets full of oysters. There is a very cruel Spaniard in a boat, and if they linger resting, he beats them with his fists, and, taking them by the hair, throws them into the water to go on fishing.... Their food is fish, and the fish that contain the pearls, and a little cazabi, or maize bread, which are kinds of native bread; the one gives very little sustenance, and the other is very difficult to make, so with such food they are never sufficiently nourished. Instead of giving them beds at night, they put them in stocks on the ground to prevent them from running away. [Sidenote: Dangers of the deep] “Many of the Indians throw themselves into the sea while fishing or hunting for pearls, and never come up again, because dolphins or sharks, which are two kinds of very cruel sea animals that swallow a man whole, kill and eat them.... With this insupportable toil, or rather infernal trade, the Spaniards completed the destruction of all the Indians of the Lucayan Islands, who were in the islands when they set themselves to making these gains.” III [Sidenote: Companions of Pedrarias] A number of persons who became especially conspicuous in colonial affairs, besides Oviedo, accompanied Pedrarias on his expedition to the Isthmus. Among these were Bishop Quevedo; Enciso, some time governor of Darien and author of _Suma de geografía_; Benalcázar, who became governor of Popayán; Hernando de Soto; and Pascual de Andagoya, whose varied experience and the events associated with Pedrarias form the matter of a document which has been translated into English by Sir Clements R. Markham. The title of Markham’s translation is _Narrative of the proceedings of Pedrarias Dávila in the provinces of Tierra Firme, or Castilla del Oro, and of what happened in the discovery of the South Sea, and the coasts of Peru and Nicaragua_.[13] [Illustration: Title page of Fernández de Enciso’s “Suma”] [Sidenote: Andagoya]