malicious and treacherous, no message or despatch can at all be sent them.  For if it be done with few Indians, they secure and kill them; and if there are many, they fight them, and will not listen to or believe them.  If Spaniards go with an interpreter to talk to them, as I have sometimes attempted to do, they anticipate them on seeing them and no one remains in his house, but they flee from the Spaniards.  Then, if perchance they hear some arguments that are shouted out to them, they laugh, and answer that we are deceiving them, and that they will not trust us; that they know us for people of bad faith; and that we must lay aside our firearms if we wish them to approach.  And if we did that, they would employ their usual treachery and evil methods, as they generally do.

In the rainy season, that wretched race, most of whom are miners, unite with their wives and children to wash the sand of the streamlets that flow from the mountains, where with less work than in their mines, by avoiding the digging and crushing of the metal, they get some gold, although very little. [59] With what all of them get in one way or another, they go down peacefully to the villages nearest to them, to trade for certain animals or cattle.  They do not trade the gold by weight, but by sight.  Those cattle are the ones that they eat, with the solemnity above described, in a general assembly; for they do not breed any kind of cattle or any other living thing for their feast or sustenance, except certain small and very wretched dogs which we have often had a chance to see.

It is not easy for us or even for them to ascertain the strata, veins, or ores whence that product is yielded, since it is well known that it does not originate or form in the sand, which does not contain nurseries for it, since so many streamlets descend from so many ravines and slopes.  For it is not yet known that, moving about ordinarily and having signs of that product, without ascertaining or knowing any other in all the country, the natives have discovered more than five elevations or hills within a distance of five or six leguas, which they have worked during the dry season, in order to support themselves so wretchedly as is known.  Besides, those Ygolotes are indebted to the natives of the villages who are our friends, and are unable to pay those who give them credit; the wealth and wit of both peoples being so small and restricted that, although those people have no other kind of expenses, or other thing to attend to, than the product of their mines, they are very generally in debt—­a sure proof of the mistake made in believing that the gain is much, or the said mines of much importance, as has been and is demonstrated by experience.