Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/295

Rh mine, and another from the alcalde and the municipal officers of the city of Vera Cruz who were with me, addressed to the captain and people who had arrived at that port. In these letters we informed him very fully of all that had happened to me in this country; that I held many cities and ports conquered and pacified, subject to the royal service of Your Majesty; that I had taken the principal lord of all these regions prisoner, and that I was in the capital. We wrote all about its character, and the gold and jewels I had obtained for Your Highness, and how I had given an account to Your Majesty of the country. I asked them to let me know who they were, and if they were rightful subjects of the kingdom and lordships of Your Highness, to write to me whether they had come to this country by a royal mandate to settle permanently, or intended to advance or return; adding that, if they needed anything, I would have them provided with everything possible. I said also that, if they came from any place outside the dominions and kingdoms of Your Highness, to likewise let me know, for if they needed anything I would also supply it, if I could. If they refused to inform me, I required them on the part of Your Majesty to leave your countries, and not to land in them, with the threat that, if they persisted, I would march against them with all the force I had, both Spaniards and natives, and would take them, and kill them as foreign invaders of the kingdoms and dominions of my king and sovereign.

Within five or six days after the religious had gone with the despatch, twenty Spaniards, whom I had left in the city of Vera Cruz, arrived in the  Designs of Panfilo de Narvaez city of Temixtitan, and brought me a cleric and two other laymen whom they had taken in the said city. From them I learned, that the armada and people in the port belonged to Diego Velasquez, and had come by his orders, under a certain