h of his children; and to force them the more,
he commanded that nothing whatever should be given them to eat,
until they brought him the gold he demanded as ransom.
14. Many who were able, sent to their houses for gold and redeemed
themselves. They were set free, and returned to their occupations
and to their houses to provide themselves with the necessaries of
life. The tyrant sent certain villainous Spanish thieves to
recapture these miserable Indians, who had once ransomed themselves;
they brought them back to the enclosure and tortured them with
hunger and thirst to make them ransom themselves again.
15. Many who were captured were ransomed two and three times. Others
who could not, because they had given all the gold they possessed
and had not enough left, he left languishing in the enclosure till
they died of hunger.
16. By this deed, he left ruined, desolate, and depopulated, a most
populous province most rich in gold, which has a valley of forty
leagues, where he burnt a town that had a thousand houses.
17. This infernal tyrant determined to go inland, as he eagerly desired
to discover the hell of Peru in those parts. To make this unhappy
journey, he, and the others brought numberless Indians, chained to
one another, carrying loads of sixty, and seventy pounds each.
18. If one tired, or fainted from hunger, fatigue, and weakness, they at
once cut off his head at the collar of the chain so as not to stop
to loosen the others in the line; and the head fell to one side and
the body to the other, and they distributed his load among the other
bearers.
19 To tell of the provinces he destroyed, the towns, and places he
burnt (for all the houses are built of straw)--the people he killed,
the cruelty he displayed in the several massacres during this
journey, would make an incredible and terrifying story, but it would
be true, nevertheless.
20. These journeys were afterwards undertaken by other tyrants who
followed in the same Venezuela, and others from the province of
Santa Marta, animated by the same holy intention of discovering this
holy house of gold in Peru; and they found all the country for more
than two hundred leagues, so much burnt, depopulated, and deserted,
from formerly being most populous and prosperous, as has been sa