e Mine-works: Upon this Account, or Temptation it was, that from
the Year 1540, to 1542, abundance of Tyrants sailed thither, laying
waste the whole Country by their Depredations, slaughtering the
Inhabitants at a prodigious and bloody rate; and robbing them of all
their Gold, who dayly fled to their Ships for Refuge, moving sometime
to one place, and sometime to another. And thus those Provinces were
laid waste, the greatest Outrages being committed on the Sea-shore,
which lasted till the Year 1523, whither the _Spaniards_ then came to
seat themselves, and fis their intended Habitation. And becuase it is
a plentiful Region and Opulent withal; it was subjected to several
Rulers, who like Infernal Fiends contended who should obtain the Palm,
by out-staining the Sword of his Predecessor in Innocent Blood;
insomuch, that from the Year 1529 to this very day, they have wasted
and spoiled as much good ground as extended Five Hundred Miles, and
unpeopled the Countrey.

If I design'd to enumerate all the Impieties, Butcheries, Desolations,
Iniquities, Violences, Destructions and other the Piacula and black
Enormities committed and perpetrated by the _Spaniards_ in this
Province, against God, the King, and these harmless Nations; I might
compile a Voluminous History, and that shall be compleated, if God
permit my Glass to run longer, in his good time. It may suffice for
the present to relate some passages written in a Letter to our King
and Lord by a Revernd Bishop of these Provinces, Dated the 20th of
_May, An. Dom._ 1541. wherein among other matters he thus words it.

I must acquaint your Sacred Majesty, that the only way to succour and
support this tottering Region is to free it from the Power of a Father
in Law, and marry it to a Husband who will treat her as she ought to be,
and lovingly entertain her, and that must be done with all possible
Expedition too, if not, I am certain that she will suddenly decay and
come to nothing by the covetous and sordid Deportment of the Governours,
_&c._ And a little after he writes thus, By this Means your Majesty
will plainly know and understand how to depose the Prefects or Governours
of those Regions from their Office if they deserve it, that so they may
be alleviated and eas'd of such Burthens; which if not perform'd, in
my Opinion, the Body Politick will never recover its Health. And this I
will make appear to your Majesty that they are not Christians, but Devils;
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