Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/338

 acting as my lieutenant, had appointed; all of which fully satisfied them, and banished their fear of ever again being questioned for their past faults.

As they assured me that the said bachelor, Moreno, would soon return with many people, fully empowered by the audiencia, residing in Española, I did not leave the port. I was informed by the residents that they had had certain conflicts with the natives, some six or seven leagues distant in the interior, when they had gone to search for food. They said that some of the natives, however, were more peaceably inclined than others; for, although they had no interpreter through whom to talk with them, they had shown their good will and friendship by means of signs; also that no doubt these people, being spoken to by one who knew their language, might be easily won over, although they had been several times ill-treated, as the Spaniards had taken from them certain women and boys whom the bachelor, Moreno, had branded with a hot iron as slaves, and carried off in his ship.

God knows how grieved I was by this news, knowing the great mischief that would ensue from it. I wrote,  Cortes Writes to the Audiencia therefore, to the audiencia of Española by the vessels I sent to that island, complaining a bout the bachelor, Moreno, and enclosing a written statement of all his misdeeds in that town and its neighbourhood, besides certain legal requirements on the part of Your Majesty, in which I demanded that the bachelor be sent here a prisoner in chains (and with him all the natives of this country who had been carried off as slaves) because he had outraged all the laws, as they could see by the proofs I remitted to them. I do not know what they will do about it, but I will communicate their decision to Your Majesty.

Two days after I arrived at this port of Trujillo, I sent