The Spanish captain and his men retired to the ships with their captives; and his vessel happening to touch at Porto Rico, when the Jeronimite Fathers were there, gave occasion to Las Casas to complain of this proceeding to the Fathers, who, however, did nothing in the way of remedy or punishment.

The reader will be surprised to hear the Clerigo's authority for this deplorable narrative.

It is Juan Bono himself.

"From his own mouth I heard that which I write." Juan Bono acknowledged that never in his life had he met with the kindness of father or mother but in the island of Trinidad.

"Well, then, man of perdition, why did you reward them with such ungrateful wickedness and cruelty ?"--"On my faith, padre, because they (he meant the Auditors) gave me for destruction (he meant instruction) to take them in peace, if I could not by war."' Such was the fate of the poor gentle folk who for unknown ages had swung their hammocks to the stems of these Moriches, spinning the skin of the young leaves into twine, and making sago from the pith, and thin wine from the sap and fruit, while they warned their children not to touch the nests of the humming-birds, which even till lately swarmed around the lake.