lamentable complaints of his cruelty: how he had divided the island and
given to every soldier a part; that he made the ancient caciques, which
were lords of the country, to be their slaves; that he kept them in
chains, and dropped their naked bodies with burning bacon, and such
other torments, which I found afterwards to be true. For in the city,
after I entered the same, there were five of the lords or little kings,
which they call caciques in the West Indies, in one chain, almost dead
of famine, and wasted with torments. These are called in their own
language acarewana, and now of late since English, French, and Spanish,
are come among them, they call themselves captains, because they
perceive that the chiefest of every ship is called by that name.
Those five captains in the chain were called Wannawanare, Carroaori,
Maquarima, Tarroopanama, and Aterima. So as both to be revenged of the
former wrong, as also considering that to enter Guiana by small boats,
to depart 400 or 500 miles from my ships, and to leave a garrison in my
back interested in the same enterprise, who also daily expected supplies
out of Spain, I should have savoured very much of the ass; and therefore
taking a time of most advantage, I set upon the Corps du garde in
the evening, and having put them to the sword, sent Captain Caulfield
onwards with sixty soldiers, and myself followed with forty more, and so
took their new city, which they called St. Joseph, by break of day. They
abode not any fight after a few shot, and all being dismissed, but
only Berreo and his companion (the Portuguese captain Alvaro Jorge), I
brought them with me aboard, and at the instance of the Indians I set
their new city of St. Joseph on fire. The same day arrived Captain
George Gifford with your lordship's ship, and Captain Keymis, whom
I lost on the coast of Spain, with the galego, and in them divers
gentlemen and others, which to our little army was a great comfort and
supply.