he poor, who are unable to secure any
interest therein except for a wretched bundle which is allowed them as
cargo. If I were to go into the multitude of evils which are connected
with this, I should have to proceed _ad infinitum_. There are going
to your court those who have themselves experienced them; and one of
them even, for having preached with Christian zeal, was persecuted by
the governor, who was the cause of this and of other great evils. His
vices are so many and so low and obscene that if one were to seek
faithfully over all Espana for a man of most debauched conscience,
even the vilest and most vicious, to come to this country and corrupt
it with his example, there could not be found one more so than he. A
priest told me yesterday--Sunday, the twenty-first of June--that it
was public talk that no woman had escaped from him with her honor, when
he could accomplish her ruin; and that further, through his great and
scandalous incontinence, he twice ordered the priest to marry him to
his own niece, and used every means with the priest and Father Soria
to secure a dispensation, although the latter showed him how little
that measure profited. He has so tyrannized over this colony by his
actions that, in order that nothing should be lacking, he has taken
away the offices of regidor from honorable men who held them; and put
his kinsmen, whom he brougnt with him from Espana, into the regimiento,
so that information of his evil ways cannot be given to your Majesty
in the name of the city; nor can they write to ask your Majesty that
you should send a successor to him. Likewise he asked his regimiento,
and also me (but may God deliver me from such treason!), to write
to your Majesty that it was expedient that he should remain in this
country, on account of the experience which he has here. Nevertheless,
if such a letter should go, your Majesty would consider it suspicious;
because it would be signed by some who would wish to see him undone,
only because they do not dare to do otherwise; for he treats them
like negro slaves when they swerve a point from his desires. About
eight days ago he had called to his house all the honorable people,
even to the master-of-camp and all the captains; and when they were
before him, standing bareheaded, he treated them worse than he would
his cobbler, speaking in these terms: "You don't realize that I can
have all your heads cut off, and you think that I don't know that you
have written