At this time Captain Juan de Gusman was in Panama raising soldiers for the service of the viceroy; but he found it advisable to retire on the arrival of Bachicao, with whom all these soldiers now inlisted.  Bachicao likewise got possession of the artillery which had belonged to the vessel in which Vaca de Castro escaped from Lima.  Seeing himself master of Panama, Bachicao who was a brutal passionate fellow, exercised the command there in a cruel and tyrannical manner, disposing at his will of the goods and properties of every one, violating every rule of law and 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 the court of Spain, he was allowed to remain a prisoner at large in the city and territory of Valladolid, till his cause was finally adjuged [13].

[Footnote 13:  We learn from Garcilasso, that Vara de Castro was in the end honourably acquitted, and that in the year 1461, when Garcilasso was at Madrid, De Castro was senior member of the council of the Indies.  His son, Don Antonio, was made knight of St. Jago, and had a grant of lands and Indians in Peru to the extent of 20,000 pieces of eight yearly.—­E.]