and arrows, went to meet the Spaniards, and to ask them who they were, and what they wanted.  Juan Bono replied, that his crew were good and peaceful people, who had come to live with the Indians; upon which, as the commencement of good fellowship, the natives offered to build houses for the Spaniards.  The Spanish captain expressed a wish to have one large house built.  The accommodating Indians set about building it.  It was to be in the form of a bell, and to be large enough for a hundred persons to live in.  On any great occasion it would hold many more.  Every day, while this house was being built, the Spaniards were fed with fish, bread, and fruit by their good-natured hosts.  Juan Bono was very anxious to see the roof on, and the Indians continued to work at the building with alacrity.  At last it was completed, being two storeys high, and so constructed that those within could not see those without.  Upon a certain day, Juan Bono collected the Indians together—­men, women, and children—­in the building, “to see,” as he told them, “what was to be done.”

’Whether they thought they were coming to some festival, or that they were to do something more for the great house, does not appear.  However, there they all were, four hundred of them, looking with much delight at their own handiwork.  Meanwhile, Juan Bono brought his men round the building, with drawn swords in their hands; then, having thoroughly entrapped his Indian friends, he entered with a party of armed men and bade the Indians keep still, or he would kill them.  They did not listen to him, but rushed to the door.  A horrible massacre ensued.  Some of the Indians forced their way out; but many of them, stupefied at what they saw, and losing heart, were captured and bound.  A hundred, however, escaped, and snatching up their arms, assembled in one of their own houses, and prepared to defend themselves.  Juan Bono summoned them to surrender:  they would not hear of it; and then, as Las Casas says, “he resolved to pay them completely for the hospitality and kind treatment he had received,” and so, setting fire to the house, the whole hundred men, together with some women and children, were burnt alive.  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."’