The cause of ruin in these islands--which is very menacing, although it is not declared in España--is that both the villages of your Majesty and those of encomenderos are places where the curacy is so ill-supplied with chalices and ornaments that it is a shame to see them. Many of the churches are so indecent that when I visited them, from pure shame I was obliged to command that they be torn down; they were not fit to be entered by horses. There are two principal causes for this: the first is that the encomenderos are penurious and allow little for the proper ornamentation of the church; and the second, that some or the majority of the encomiendas are so small that they do not suffice to support their encomenderos, who thus cannot attend to matters of divine worship. Consequently, the natives come to regard the things of God as of little worth, and have little esteem for our faith and the Christian religion, seeing that we who profess to be Christians pay so little attention to them. Moreover, the natives of these islands are so harassed and afflicted with public and private undertakings, that they are not able to take breath; nor do they have time to observe the instruction, and hold it of so little account that when they lack for anything, it must be in the instruction and not in temporal affairs. I cannot picture to your Majesty, nor declare what I feel in my heart about this matter. Moreover, I am very sure that all the chastisements given us by God, the hardships, misfortunes, and calamities sent us, all are because of evil treatment of the Indians and the little heed taken for the principal reason for our coming--that is, their conversion and protection. The remedy therefor is not that your Majesty send decrees and orders charging good treatment of the Indians, as in the letters which have already been received here; but that a number of the best religious be sent. They can deal with these natives, and defend them from the labors imposed by the Spaniards, and from the outrages that they inflict upon them. Again, it is of even more importance that, if your Majesty, as is rumored here, is to send hither a governor or president, he be a man free from all human interests, whose head could not be turned by the great gains in this country. He should not be married, nor should he bring with him relatives or followers for whom to provide. For under any one of the aforesaid conditions it is impossible to avoid the destruction of this country, beyond the power of your Majesty to remedy it. I have written this to your Majesty several times before, and now I repeat it, since it is the most necessary thing for the betterment of this land, which would be surely destroyed by its lack.