justice, oppressing the liberties of the community, and holding every
individual under such slavish constraint, that no one dared to act
otherwise than as he pleased to dictate. Learning or suspecting that two
of his captains had formed the design of putting him to death, he
ordered them both to be beheaded without any form of trial; and in
similar acts of injustice, and in every transaction, he used no other
formality than ordering it to be intimated by the public crier, "That
Captain Ferdinand Bachicao had ordained such and such to be done." He
thus usurped supreme and absolute authority, paying not the smallest
regard to the laws, or even to the external forms of justice.

The licentiate Vaca de Castro, who was at Panama when Bachicao arrived,
fled immediately across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios on the Atlantic,
where he embarked accompanied by Diego Alvarez de Cueto and Jerom
Zurbano. Doctor Texada and Francisco Maldonado escaped likewise to the
same port, where they all embarked together for Spain. Texada died on
the voyage while passing the Bahamas. On their arrival in Spain,
Moldonado and Cueto went directly to Germany, where the emperor Don
Carlos then was, where each gave an account of the business with which
they were entrusted. Vaca de Castro remained for some time at Tercera in
the Azores; whence he went to Lisbon, and afterwards to the court of
Spain; alleging that he did not dare to go by way of Seville, on account
of the influence in that place of the brothers relations and friends of
Juan Tello, whom he had put to death after the defeat of the younger
Almagro. On his arrival at court, De Castro was put under arrest in his
own house by order of the council of the Indies. He was afterwards
brought to trial on a variety of accusations, in the course of which he
was kept prisoner for five years in the citadel of Arevalo. He was
afterwards removed to a private house in Simanca, from which he was not
permitted to go out: And in consequence of a subsequent revolution in