Page:History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/144

Rh The Padres Determine to Get to the Itzas Some Other Way. “We then, seeing all these troubles and injustices, in order to avoid the contest and disturbances which could not be remedied, together with all the inconveniences, risks and dangers which in the time of so great rains, each day brought to us, determined to return to the Province, with the intention to send word about everything to our Very Reverend Padre Provincial from the first town of the Province and to take from there the road in a different direction, which I knew of, so as to go without any noise of arms to the nation of the heathen Ytzaes, passing through the nation of the Indians of Tipu. This is a direction opposite to that which the Spaniards took; so that we could obtain in this way something of our objects and end, which we always had before us, of going alone without soldiers or armed men, for the conversion of the said heathen, to which from the beginning we had dedicated ourselves....

Letter to the Captains. “Agreeing then with my companions, the Padres, in this good suggestion, I wrote a letter to the captains, taking leave of them, without giving the reason why I returned, but stating that it was on account of a slight accident that had happened to me; they, whom their consciences must have accused, supposing that I should set forth there in this Province before the Governor, who had sent me, their improper methods of acting, determined maliciously, for their greater satisfaction, to justify themselves by forestalling me, with charges against me, as if I should pay any attention to them....

Governor Ursua Vexed by the Captains' Letter. “The Governor was vexed with this letter which the Captain Alonso Garcia wrote to him, seeing that he had chosen me to carry out his purpose, and then seeing that I gave him a slap in the face by returning without any reason, as they wrote him; for which reason he suspended judgment till he had news of my coming to the Province, to inform himself of the truth. At this time we arrived on our return, with hard work enough on account of so many wild thickets, as I spoke of in the beginning, and of all the overflowed lands, deep in water, since our return was made in the season of heaviest rains, at the first town of