at the cost of the settlers in these parts, without any expense to your Highness; and if your Highness would command that everything should be supplied which I have asked for, it would be a great advantage, and the land would be provided with all that is necessary. Your Highness should receive all this from me as your loyal servant, and should give it credence because your Highnesses service will thus be advanced. I do not desire to make towers of wind like the governors whom your Highness sent out, for between them both they have lost eight hundred men, and those whom I have rescued scarcely amount to fifty, and this is the truth. Your Highness will consider all that I have done, and discovered, and endured with these people, without any help but from God and my own industry.
"If I have erred in anything in working for the service of your Highness, I beseech your Highness that my earnest desire to serve your Highness may be considered. Although, most puissant Lord, I have not succeeded in doing all that is necessary in this land, I can certify that I know how to administer better than all those who have come here hitherto: and that your Highness may understand this, you must consider how little other governors have discovered until today, and how they have all failed, and left these shores very full of graves, while, although many Christians may lie underground, it is true that most of those that have died have been eaten by dogs and crows. I do not desire to enlarge upon this, but your Highness should know what each man has been able to do and has done up to this time.
"Most puissant Lord,—I have sent Sebastian del Campo, that your Highness may be better informed of all that has passed here; and I entreat your Highness to give him full credence, for he has been informed by me of the whole truth concerning all that can be done in the service of your Highness, and of that which ought to be done for this land.
"Your Highness must know that formerly there were
