Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/287

Rh with obstacles of every description, and suffering great hardship. Finally dense forests obliged them to turn back, and the band reached San Estévan half famished and in a sad condition, with little to recompense them for their five months' search, except a report that the country beyond the forests must be rich and settled.

This report was considered by Guzman to be a sufficient inducement to extend the exploration, but the means were wanting. Asa last resource he seized upon the natives, and began to export them as slaves, pleading that the public good demanded such a measure, and pointing to even worse acts by other rulers. Besides, the voices of these natives could be suppressed only by removing them from home associates and placing them under strict supervision. The argument found ready sustainers when the permission was given also to settlers to sell from twenty to thirty slaves each. Traders came by invitation to buy slaves, and others were exported by the ship-load, in chartered vessels, from the stock-yard in which they were branded and herded. A panic seized upon the poor creatures, and they began to desert the villages to seek refuge in the forests and mountains, preferring hunger and death at home to a worse fate abroad. Then hunting expeditions were sent out to ferret them, and to seize also upon Indians pertaining to Mexico. Caciques were tortured to reveal the hiding-places of their people, and to save themselves many surrendered even relatives as slaves. Some ten thousand of God's human creatures were thus carried away in more than twenty vessels, three of which foundered at sea. In their despair a large number of the kidnapped cast themselves overboard; others suffered so severely from