Juan Ponce likewise endured a severe check from the cannibals on the island of Guadaloupe, which is the most important of all the Carib islands.  When these people beheld the Spanish ships, they concealed themselves in a place from which they could spy upon all the movements of the people who might land.  Ponce had sent some women ashore to wash some shirts and linen, and also some foot-soldiers to obtain fresh water, for he had not seen land after leaving the island of Ferro in the Canaries until he reached Guadaloupe, a distance of four thousand two hundred miles.  There is no island in the ocean throughout the entire distance.  The cannibals suddenly attacked and captured the women, dispersing the men, a small number of whom managed to escape.  Ponce did not venture to attack the Caribs, fearing the poisoned arrows which these barbarous man-eaters use with fatal effect.

This excellent Ponce who, as long as he was in a place of safety, had boasted that he would exterminate the Caribs, was constrained to leave his washerwomen and retreat before the islanders.  What he has since done, and what discoveries he may have made, I have not yet learned.  Thus Solis lost his life, and Ponce his honour, in carrying out their expeditions.

Another who failed miserably in his undertaking the same year is Juan Ayora de Cordova, a nobleman sent out as judge, as we have elsewhere said, and who was keener about accumulating a fortune than he was about administering his office, and deserving praise.  Under some pretext or other he robbed several caciques and extorted gold from them, in defiance of all justice.  It is related that he treated them so cruelly that, from being friends, they became implacable enemies, and driven to extremities they massacred the Spaniards, sometimes openly and sometimes by setting traps for them.  In places where formerly trade relations were normal and the caciques friendly, it became necessary to fight.  When, so it is said, he had amassed a large amount of gold by such means, Ayora fled on board a ship he suddenly procured, and it is not known at this present writing where he landed.  There are not wanting people who believe that the governor himself, Pedro Arias, closed his eyes to this secret flight; for Juan Ayora is a brother of Gonzales Ayora, the royal historiographer, who is a learned man, an excellent captain, and so intimate with the governor that he and Pedro Arias may be cited amongst the rare pairs of friends known to us.  I am in very close relations with both of them, and may they both pardon me; but amidst all the troubles in the colonies, nothing has displeased me so much as the cupidity of this Juan Ayora, which troubled the public peace of the colonies and alienated the caciques.