In Three or Four Months time I being there present, Six Thousand Children and upward were murder'd, because they had lost their Parents who labour'd in the Mines; nay I was a Witness of many other stupendous Villanies.
But afterward they consulted how to persecute those that lay hid in the Mountains, who were miserably massacred, and consequently this Isle made desolate, which I saw not long after, and certainly it is a dreadful and depolorable sight to behold it thus unpeopled and laid waste, like a Desert.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Year 1514, a certain unhappy Governour Landed on the firm Land or Continent, a most bloody Tyrant, destitute of all Mercy and Prudence, the Instrument of God's Wrath, with a Resolution to people these parts with _Spaniards_; and although some Tyrants had touched here before him, and Cruelty hurried them into the other World by several wayes of Slaughter, yet they came no farther than to the Sea Coast, where they comitted podigious Thefts and Robberies, but this Person exceeded all that ever dwelt in other Islands, though execrable and profligate Villains: for he did not only ravage and depopulate the Sea-Coast, but buried the largest Regions and most ample Kingdoms in their own Ruins, sending Thousdands to Hell by his Butcheries. He made Incursions for many Miles continuance, that is to say, in those Countries that are included in the Territories of _Darien_ and the Provinces of _Nicaraqua_, where are near Five Hundred Miles of the most Fertil Land in the World, and the most opulent for Gold of all the Regions hitherto discover'd. And although _Spain_ has bin sufficiently furnished with the purest Gold, yet it was dig'd out of the Bowels and Mines of the said Countries by the _Indians_, where (as we have said) they perished.
This Ruler, with his Complices found out new inventions to rack, torment, force and extort Gold from the _Indians_. One of his Captains in a certain Excursion undertaken by the Command of his Governeur to make Depraedations, destroy'd Forty Thousand Persons and better exposing them to the edge of the Sword, Fire, Dogs and variety of Torments; of all which a Religious Man of the Order of St. _Francis, Franciscus de S. Romano_, who was then present was an Eye-Witness.