Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/162

 island of Hispaniola he had refrained from coming, without first consulting Your Majesty, and making known the condition of things in these parts. For he had learned from the ships I had sent to the said island for help, and knew clearly that the scandal it was hoped to create by the coming of the armada of Panfilo de Narvaez had been remedied, principally by what the governors and royal council of Your Majesty had provided; and more still, for the said Tapia had been required many times by the Admiral and the judges and officials of Your Majesty who reside in the said island of Hispaniola not to interfere in these parts without Your Majesty first being informed of everything that had happened, and hence they forbade his coming under certain penalties; but by scheming and looking more to his private interest than to Your Majesty's service he obtained the revocation of the prohibition. I relate all this to Your Majesty, because, when the said Tapia left, the procurators and myself did not send a report, for he would not have been a good carrier of our letters, and also that Your Majesty may see and believe that, in not having received the said Tapia, Your Majesty had been well served, as will be more fully proven as often as may be necessary.

In a chapter before this, I made known to Your Majesty that the captain, whom I had sent to conquer the province of Guaxaca, was waiting there for my commands, and, as he was needed, and was judge and lieutenant in the town of Segura de la Frontera, I wrote to him to give the eighty men and ten horsemen whom he had to Pedro de Alvarado. The latter I had sent to subjugate the province of Tututepeque, forty leagues beyond Guaxaca near the South Sea, where they did much damage to, and made war against, those who had given themselves as Your Majesty's vassals, and to those of the province of Tututepeque, because they had allowed us to come through their country to discover the South Sea. Pedro