Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/215

Rh whom I would learn what they had been doing, and where they had been, intending, that if they had done any harm in the country, to send them to Your Sacred Majesty; but neither they nor anyone else ever landed. Seeing that they did not come, I made some of my Spaniards put on the clothes of those who had come to make me the requirements, and directed them to go to the beach, and signal to those on board the ships. As soon as these were observed by those on board, a barque, carrying some ten or twelve men, armed with arquebuses and muskets, came towards the land. The Spaniards who were calling from the shore retired from the beach to some bushes near by, as if to take shelter in their shade, and thus four landed, two men with arquebuses, and two with muskets. These were surrounded, and taken prisoners by the people whom I had placed on the beach. One of the captives, the master of the ship, tried to fire his weapon, and would have killed my captain of Vera Cruz, but that, by Our Lord's will, the fuse did not burn. Those who had remained in the boat, put to sea, but before they could reach their ships, sail had been set, without waiting, or troubling to hear anything about them.

I learned from my prisoners, how they had arrived at a river, which is some thirty leagues down the coast, after passing Almeria, and had had a good reception there from the natives, and had traded for some provisions, and seen some gold which the Indians wore, although it was scarce, that they had obtained by trading, as much as three thousand castellanos worth of gold, and that they had not landed, but had seen certain towns on the banks of the river so near, that they could distinguish them well from the ships, and that there were no buildings of stone, the houses being of thatch, but very high and well built. All this I knew more fully afterwards, through