Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/225

Rh independent communities, and had acted without their consent, and they were very sorry for it, and would pay for the horses they had killed, and they wished to be my friends, and that I could go on freely, for I would be well received by them [in hora buena, viz., in a good hour], I answered that I was very thankful to them, and that I would consider them as my friends, and would advance as they advised.

That night, one league beyond where this happened, I was obliged to sleep in a dry river bed [baranca], not only because it was late, but also because my  Hostilities in Tlascala people were tired. I stayed there as well

guarded as possible, stationing my sentinels and scouts, both on horseback and on foot, and at daybreak I left, carrying my van-guard and rear-guard well organised, and my scouts on ahead.

Arriving at a very small village just at sunrise, the two other messengers came with lamentations saying that they had been bound, and would have been killed, but that they had escaped in the night. At not two stone' sthrows distance a great number of Indians appeared well armed, and with much shouting began to attack us, discharging many darts and arrows at us. When I undertook to make my requirements in due form, through the interpreters whom I had brought with me, and before a notary public, the more diligent I was to admonish and require them to keep the peace, just so much the more diligent were they in committing hostilities upon us, and, seeing that neither requirements nor protests were of any avail, we began to defend ourselves as best we could, and thus they kept us fighting, until we found ourselves in the midst of an hundred thousand warriors, who surrounded us on all sides. This went on all day long, until about an hour before sunset, when they retired. In this fight I did them a good deal of harm with about half a dozen cannon, and five or six muskets, forty archers, and thirteen