e of slaves and the selling them to the
ships that brought their wine, clothing and other things, and with
the usual tyrannical servitude from the year 1524 till 1535, ruined
those provinces and that kingdom of Naco and Honduras, which truly
seemed a paradise of delight, and was better peopled than the most
populous land in the world. We have now gone through these
countries on foot and have beheld such desolation and destruction as
would wring the vitals of the hardest-hearted of men.

In these eleven years they have killed more than two million souls,
and in more than a hundred leagues square, they have not left two
thousand persons, whom they are now daily exterminating by the said
servitude.

32. Let us again speak of the great tyrant captain, (92) who went to the
kingdom of Guatemala, who, as has been said, surpassed all past and
equalled all present tyrants. The provinces surrounding Mexico are,
by the route he took (according to what he himself writes in a
letter to his chief who sent him), four hundred leagues distant from
the kingdom of Guatemala: he advanced killing, ravaging, burning,
robbing and destroying all the country wherever he came, under the
above mentioned pretext, namely, that the Indians should subject
themselves to such inhuman, unjust, and cruel men, in the name of
the unknown King of Spain, of whom they had never heard and whom
they considered to be much more unjust and cruel than his
representatives. He also gave them no time to deliberate but would
fall upon them, killing and burning almost at the same instant that
his envoy arrived.

The Province and Kingdom of Guatemala

When he reached this kingdom, he began with a great massacre.
Nevertheless the principal lord, accompanied by many other lords of
Ultatlan, the chief town of all the kingdom went forth with
trumpets, tambourines and great festivity to receive him with
litters; they served him with all that they possessed, and
especially by giving him ample food and everything else they could.
2. The Spaniards lodged outside the town that night because it seemed
to them to be strong, and that they might run some risk inside it.
The following day, the captain called the principal lord and many
others, and when t