we have had since then, for back from the fort of Buyahen, on a large lagoon, were found a number of the hostile villages, with excellent fields of rice, although it was not the season to harvest it.  I ordered them to take the stronghold of a chief named Dato Minduc, which was close to Buyahen.  Its site was such that the natives themselves say that, unless men were to come down from heaven to take it, it would be impossible to do so.  We captured it with all the artillery in it, a number of men being lost on their side, and none on ours.  After this the enemies began to lose spirit, and the friendly natives to take heart, and to hold us in greater esteem.  This was on the twenty-ninth of August.  On the very next day I brought the men down to the fort, and encouraged them all, and bade them be of good hope that the work would soon be done; and I cheered them to it, and straightway followed up the undertaking, without giving the men’s ardor a chance to cool.  I got aboard ship, and made my way along the coast.  On the eighteenth of September, I entered a river called Picon, in a well-peopled country, there being, besides the natives, a large number of the enemy, who had been scattered abroad, and had joined them.  At daybreak we arrived at the first village, close to the sea.  It was one of the finest places I have seen, with excellent houses, and a very elaborate mosque; there was a good supply of swine, fowls, goats, and fruit.  The enemy made a stand, but at the first encounter we overpowered them, and killed or captured more than two hundred persons; the troops stopped for food, and then I had the village burned.  I would have liked to attack another village, which lay a day’s march inland, and which has two thousand houses.  I left it, because I could have done nothing at that time; for the fugitives from the first village had warned them, and they had all gone to the mountains.  This stroke had terrorized the whole coast, and not a vessel appeared over its whole extent; for, as there were Indians in many places, they had all received news of it without delay.

I could remain no longer, nor pass on to other encounters which I might have had there, on account of the crops which I had discovered at Buyahen, which were urgently demanding my presence for the harvest, before their owners should gather them.  Accordingly I came back to the fort, whence, in less than four days, I again sent the same captains who had been there before, for the crops, with eighty soldiers and all the boats, besides five hundred friendly Indians, to gather the harvest, and to take another fort in the same neighborhood, of which the Indians informed them.  On the twenty-second of October they attacked it, and took it with all the artillery, killing more than a hundred and seventy of them, besides taking a number captive.  I did not come out so cheaply as the last time; for it was an extremely strong place, having, besides the usual defenses, inventions of which a