How mighty wonders have been clearly seen in the discovery of these Indies, how our Sovereign Lord God desires to watch over the Spaniards, and how He also chastises those who are cruel to the Indians.

BEFORE finishing this first part, it seems good that I should here mention some of the marvellous works which our Lord God has seen fit to display in the discovery which the Christian Spaniards have made in these kingdoms, as well as the punishments he has inflicted on certain notable persons. For they will teach us how we must love Him as a father, and fear Him as a just Judge and Lord.

Passing over the first discovery made by the admiral Don Christoval Colon, and the successes of the Marquis Don Fernando Cortez, and of other captains and governors who discovered Tierra Firme, because I only wish to mention the events of the present time, I come to the marquis Don Francisco Pizarro. How many hardships did he and his companions suffer, without discovering anything beyond the land north of the river San Juan, and the succours brought by the adelantado Don Diego de Almagro did not suffice to enable him to press forward. Then it was that the governor Pedro de los Rios, learning from the couplet which was written to him:—

that Almagro came to bring people to the shambles of these hardships, where Pizarro would butcher them, sent Juan Tafur of Panama to bring them back. They all returned with him except thirteen Christians[543] who remained with Don Francisco Pizarro in the island of Gorgona, until Don Diego Almagro sent them a ship with which to continue the voyage. It pleased God that, though they had made no discovery during the three or four previous years, they discovered all in ten or twelve days. Thus these thirteen Christians, with their leader, discovered Peru. Afterwards, at the end of some years, when the same marquis with 160 Spaniards invaded the country, he could not have prevailed against the multitude of Indians, if God had not permitted that there should be a very cruel war between the two brothers Huascar and Atahualpa, at the time. When the Indians rose against the Christians at Cuzco, there were not more than 180 Spaniards mounted and on foot, to resist the attacks of Manco Ynca at the head of more than 200,00 Indians. It was a miracle how they escaped from the hands of the Indians during a whole year, and some of the Indians themselves affirm that sometimes, when they were fighting with the Spaniards, they saw a celestial figure which did them great mischief. When the Indians set fire to the city, and the flames began to approach the church, it was seen to reach it three times, and to be put out as often, the place where the flames touched it being covered with dry straw.

The captain Francisco Cesar, who set out from Carthagena in the year 1536, and traversed great mountains and deep rivers, with only sixty Spaniards, reached the province of Guaca, where there was a principal house dedicated to the devil, and he collected thirty thousand pesos of gold from a tomb near it.[544] When the Indians saw how few Spaniards there were, more than twenty thousand assembled and surrounded them. As the Spaniards were so few and weak, having eaten nothing but roots, God still favoured them so that they killed and wounded many Indians, without losing a man. Not only did God work this miracle for the Christians, but he was also served by guiding them to a road which took them to Uraba in eighteen days, when they had wandered on the other for a whole year.

We have seen many more of these miracles, but it must suffice to say that a province containing thirty or forty thousand Indians is held by forty or fifty Christians. And in lands where there are heavy rains or continual earthquakes, we see clearly the favour of God, as soon as Christians enter them. For the rains abate, the lands become profitable, and there are fewer storms than in the times before the Christians arrived.

Another thing must also be noted, which is, that those who carry the standard of the cross as their guide must not make their discoveries as tyrants, for those who do so receive heavy chastisement. Of those who have been tyrants, few have died natural deaths, such for instance as those who compassed the death of Atahualpa. All these have perished miserably. It would even appear that the great wars in Peru have been permitted by God, to punish the conquerors, and thus Carbajal may be looked upon as the executioner of His justice. He lived until God’s chastisement was complete, and then paid with his life for the grave crimes he had committed. The marshal Don Jorge Robledo consented to allow great harm to be done to the Indians in the province of Pozo, and many to be killed with crossbows and dogs. And God permitted that he should be sentenced to death in the same place, and have for his tomb the bellies of the Indians.[545] The comendador Hernan Rodriquez de Sosa and Baltasar de Ledesma died in the same way, and were also eaten by the Indians; they having themselves been previously very cruel to them. The Adelantado Belalcazar killed many Indians in Quito; and God permitted that he should be driven from his government by the judge who came to try him, and that he should die at Carthagena on his way to Spain, poor, and full of sorrow.[546] Francisco Garcia de Tobar, who was so much feared by the Indians by reason of the number he had killed, was himself killed and eaten by them.

Let no one deceive himself with the belief that God has not punished those who were cruel to these Indians; for not one of them failed to receive chastisement in proportion to the offence. I knew one Roque Martin, an inhabitant of the city of Cali, who gave the dead bodies of the Indians to the dogs, and afterwards the Indians killed, and, I even believe, ate him. I could enumerate many other examples, but I shall conclude by saying that our Lord favours us in these conquests and discoveries; but if the discoverers afterwards become tyrants, He chastises them severely, as I have myself seen, some of them dying suddenly, which is a thing most to be feared.