Leaving that place, the Spaniards marched for five days through a desert country which they thought had been devastated by war, for though the greater part of it was fertile, it was neither inhabited nor cultivated.  On the fifth day they perceived in the distance two heavily laden natives, approaching them.  Marching upon them, they captured the men, and found that they were carrying sacks of maize on their shoulders.  From the answers of these men they gathered that there were two caciques in these regions, one on the coast, called Periqueta, another in the interior, called Totonogo; the latter being blind.  These two men were fishermen who had been sent by their cacique Totonogo, to Periqueta, with a burden of fish, which they had traded for bread.[8] Trade is thereabouts carried on by exchange in kind, and not by means of gold, which claims so many victims.  Led by these two natives, the Spaniards reached the country of Totonogo, the cacique whose country extends along the west side of the gulf of San Miguel on the south sea.  This chieftain gave them six thousand castellanos of gold, partly in ingots and partly worked; amongst the former was one which weighed two castellanos, proving that gold exists in abundance in this region.

[Note 8:  There has evidently at some time been an error of transcription:  the cacique Totonogo, who is first mentioned as ruling along the sea-coast, is now described as sending fish to his neighbour Periqueta.]

Following along the western coast, the Spaniards visited the cacique Taracuru, from whom they obtained eight thousand pesos; a peso, as we have already said, corresponding to an unminted castellano.  They next marched into the country of his brother Pananome, who fled and was seen no more.  His subjects declared the country to be rich in gold.  The Spaniards destroyed his residence.  Six leagues farther on they came to the country of another cacique called Tabor, and then to that of another called Cheru.  The latter received the Spaniards amicably, and offered them four thousand pesos.  He possesses valuable salt deposits, and the country is rich in gold.  Twelve miles farther they came to another cacique called Anata, from whom they obtained twelve thousand pesos, which the cacique had captured from neighbouring chieftains whom he had conquered.  This gold was even scorched, because it had been carried out of the burning houses of his enemies.  These caciques rob and massacre one another, and destroy their villages, during their atrocious wars.  They give no quarter, and the victors make a clean sweep of everything.[9]

[Note 9:  This was everywhere the case on the mainland; while it does not excuse the cruelties inflicted by the Spaniards upon the native populations in their rapacious struggle for wealth, it may temper the undiscriminating sympathy of the emotional to reflect that oppression, torture, extortion, and slavery, not to mention human sacrifices and cannibalism were practised among them with a hideous ingenuity upon which no refinement introduced by the Spaniards could improve.]