Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/269

Rh where ships could enter safely, and he answered me that he did not know, but that he would have the coast drawn for me, with its bays and rivers, and that I might send the Spaniards to see them, and that he would give me people to guide and take them; and thus we did.

Another day they brought me a cloth, on which the whole coast was drawn, showing a river, larger than the others, flowing into the sea; this seemed to be amongst the mountain chains called Sanmin, which form such a bay, that the pilots heretofore believed it divided the province called Mazamalco. Montezuma told me I might choose whom I wished to send, and he would provide means for seeing and learning everything. I immediately named ten men, amongst them some pilots and persons acquainted with the sea. Furnished with the provisions he gave us, they left, and explored the whole coast, from the port of Chalchilmeca, which is called San Juan, where I first disembarked.

They covered about sixty odd leagues, but nowhere found a river or bay where ships could enter, although there are many very large ones on  The Spani- ards Search for a Harbour the said coast; they took soundings of all from the canoes, and finally reached the said province of Cuacalco, where was the river shown on the chart. The chief of that province, called Tuchintecla, received them very well and gave them canoes to explore the river. They found the shallowest part at its mouth, two and a half fathoms in depth, and, twelve leagues up the river, the greatest depth they found was five or six fathoms; from their observations they judged it has about the same depth for thirty leagues