So many and so monstrous have bene the Spanishe cruelties, suche straunge slaughters and murders of those peaceable, lowly, milde, and gentle people, together with the spoiles of townes, provinces, and kingdomes, which have bene moste ungodly perpetrated in the West Indies, as also divers others no lesse terrible matters, that to describe the leaste parte of them woulde require more than one chapiter, especiall where there are whole bookes extant, in printe, not onely of straungers, but also even of their owne contreymen (as of Bartholmewe de las Casas, a bisshoppe in Nova Spania); yea such and so passinge straunge and excedinge all humanitie and moderation have they bene, that the very rehersall of them drave divers of the cruel Spanishe, which had not bene in the West Indies, into a kinde of extasye and maze, so that the sayenge of the poet mighte therein well be verified:— Quis talia fando, Myrmidonum Dolopumue aut duri miles Vlissis, Temperet a lachrimis? Nevertheless I will repeate oute of that mightie masse and huge heape of massacres some fewe, that of them you may make an estymate of the rest, and consider what small remainder of those moste afflicted Indians have to revolte from the obedience of the Spaniardes, and to shake of from their shoulders the moste intollerable and insupportable yoke of Spaine, which in many places they have already begonne to do of themselves, withoute the helpe of any Christian prynce. Nowe because these moste outeragious and infinite massacres are put downe by Don Bartholmewe de las Casas, the bisshoppe above mentioned, and dedicated to Kinge Phillippe that nowe ys, which author testifieth that to his inspeakable grefe he was an eye witnesse of many of them, therefore it seemeth best unto me to bringe him in, which in his firste chapiter describeth the same in manner followinge:—