Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/180

160 and, having agreed upon this amongst ourselves, we selected as our procurators Alonso Hernandez Portocarrero, and Francisco de Montejo, whom we send to Your Majesties with all this, that they may kiss Your Royal hands on our behalf, and that, in our names, and in that of this town, and its Council, they may pray Your Royal Highnesses to favour us as may be agreeable to God, and to Your Majesties, and for the coming good of this town, as will appear at greater length from the instructions which we have given them. We humbly beg Your Majesties, with all the respect which is becoming, to receive them, to give them Your Royal hands to kiss on our behalf, and to grant them all the favours they may ask and supplicate on behalf of this Council, and ourselves, because, in doing this Your Majesties, besides rendering service to Our Lord, and this town and Council, will bestow on us the special favour which we daily hope that Your Royal Highnesses will grant us.

In one chapter of this letter, we have already said that we would send an account to Your Royal Highnesses, by which Your Majesties might be  Description of the Country perfectly informed of everything about this country, its condition, riches, the people who possess it, and of the law and sect, rites and ceremonies which they observe. This country, Most Potent Princes, where we now are in the name of Your Majesties, has fifty leagues of coast on the one side and the other of this town, the seacoast being low with many sand-hills, some of which are two leagues or more in length. The country beyond these sand-hills is level, with many fertile plains, in which are such beautiful river banks, that in all Spain there can be found no better; these are as grateful to the sight as they are productive in everything sown in them, and very orderly and well kept with walks, and facilities for grazing all kinds