to know, their services would be recompensed and they would receive such favours as loyal vassals who had served their King and Lord merited, they became reassured, and they were and are still content with the favour which Your Highness deemed well to bestow upon me with Your Royal provisions, and they serve very willingly as the fruits of their service give testimony. They deserve, therefore, that Your Majesty should concede them great favours, which I on my part supplicate most humbly from Your Highness because I deem anything conceded to them as no less a favour than if it had been granted to me, for without them I could not have served Your Highness as I have; and especially do I most humbly supplicate Your Highness to order some recognition of their services to be sent them in writing, promising them favours; because besides paying a debt which Your Majesty owes them, they will be animated henceforth with greater good will to continue.
By a royal cedula which Your Cæsarian Majesty ordered to be given at the petition of Juan de Ribera, respecting the affair of the adelantado,[1] Francisco de Garay, it seems that Your Highness was informed that I was about to go very soon to the river Panuco to pacify that region, because it was stated that there was a good harbour there, and because the natives had killed many Spaniards, not only of those under Francisco de Garay's captain, but also those of another ship which sometime afterwards arrived on that coast of whom none escaped alive. Some of the natives of those parts had come to me, ex-
- ↑ The title given to the Governor of a province, and which, in the case of the Spanish discoverers, meant the Commander of an exploring expedition who was empowered to colonise and establish a Government of which he should be the head, in any countries he might discover. Las Casas sarcastically explained the etymology of the title saying "porque se adelantaron en hacer males y daños tan gravissimos a gentes pacificos" (because they took the lead in perpetrating such great evils and injuries on peaceful people).
