bed and assassinated along those coasts took it ill, and detested
so dreadful a deed because they lost the asylum and dwelling place
they had had there as though in their own houses.
25. To abbreviate, I omit the narration of the tremendous wickedness and
fearful deeds that have been committed, and are committed to-day in
these countries.
26. They have taken more than two million ruined souls from that
populous seacoast to the island of Hispaniola, and to that of San
Juan, where they have likewise caused their death in the mines and
other works, of which there were many, as has been said above. And
it excites great compassion and sorrow to see all that most
delightful coast deserted and depopulated.
27. It is certainly true, that never does a ship sail loaded with
kidnapped and ruined Indians (as I have told) without the third part
of those that embarked, being thrown dead into the sea, besides
those that they kill in effecting their capture.
28. The reason of this is, that as they need many men to accomplish
their aim of making more money from a greater number of slaves, they
carry but little food and water, so as to save expense to the
tyrants, who call themselves privateers; they have enough for only a
few more people than the Spaniards who man the ships to make the
raids; as these miserable Indians are in want and die of hunger and
thirst, the remedy is to throw them in the sea.
29. And in truth, one of them told me, that from the Lucayan Islands,
where very great havoc of this sort was made, to the Island of
Hispaniola, which is more than sixty or seventy leagues, a ship is
supposed to have gone without compass or nautical chart, finding its
course by the trail of dead Indians who had been thrown out of ships
and left in the sea.
30. When they are afterwards disembarked at the island where they are
taken to be sold, it is enough to break the heart of whomsoever has
some spark of compassion to see naked, starving children, old
people, men, and women falling, faint from hunger.
31. They then divide them like so many lambs, the fathers separated from
the children, and the wives from the husbands, making droves of ten
or twenty persons and casting lots for them, so that each of the
unhappy privateers who contributed to fit out a fleet