"Oh my companions and loyal friends!--I well believe that none of you are ignorant of the great merits, valour and liberality of the Adelantado Don Diego de Almagro, my father, or unaware that his was the first sword to reclaim from their savagery the multitude of barbarians in this region and in those which extend as far as the river Maule, thus bringing many of them under the Spanish yoke and into the royal service. He was the ladder by which the Pizarros rose, in recompense for which he was most cruelly deprived of his life. Afterwards, through lack of attention in Spain in providing for the administration of justice for which we waited, and finding, as was publicly known, that the Judge who was coming would be disposed only to add to our troubles and forlorn condition, and would not afford us justice (as he had been appointed through the influence of that warm befriender of the Pachacama party, Cardinal Loaysa) and seeing that we were denied on all sides the justice we had so long been expecting, it pleased God to lift the veil from his hidden judgments and, that they might be known now and for ever, to let the Marquis pay with his life for the death which through his cruelty and that of his traitor brother had been inflicted on my father. Well! since our Lord put such fortitude and spirit into your hearts that without difficulty you became indomitable men ready for any deed of strength, willing to suffer great hardships, hunger, cold and heat, I entreat you, in all earnestness, not to fail now, when fortune calls upon us to defend our lives and honour, which are poised but on the points of our lances and in the bullets of our arquebuses. Therefore I bid ye sally forth from this fort with willing heroism to seek out our enemies, and to let them understand the gallantry and courage with which our persons are endowed. And should it not please God to give us the glory of victory, we shall at least sell our lives at such a price that no one else will care to purchase them, whilst winning perpetual fame by our deeds. Upon that soldier who shall bring me an enemy's head, from that moment I will bestow the lordship of his victim's _repartimiento_, and, if he should have been a married man, the victor shall step into his place in the marriage chamber, and enjoy the society of the widow."