Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/163

 de Alvarado left this said city the last of January of this present year, and, with the people he took from here, and with those he got in the province of Guaxaca, he united forty horsemen, two hundred foot soldiers, aided' by forty archers and musketeers, and two small field pieces. Twenty days later, I received letters from the said Pedro de Alvarado, saying that he was on the road towards the province of Tututepeque, and he told me that he had captured certain native spies, and obtained information from them; for they had told him that the lord of Tututepeque and his people were expecting him on the field and he was determined to do in that journey all he possibly could to pacify that province, and besides the Spaniards had collected many and good warriors.

While waiting to hear the end of all this business, I received letters on the 4th of the month of March of the same year from the said Pedro de Alvarado in which he reported to me that he had entered that province, and that three or four towns of it had set themselves to resist him, but had not persevered in it, and that he had entered the town and city of Tututepeque, and had been well received as far as appearances went; and that the chief had asked him to lodge there in some of his great houses, which were thatched with straw, but that, inasmuch as the place was not very suitable for the horsemen, he had not accepted, but had come down to a part of the city which was more level; that he had also done this because he had learned that the chief had planned to kill him and all of them, by setting fire at midnight to the houses where the Spaniards were lodged.

When God had disclosed this baseness, he had feigned ignorance and, as if accidentally, had carried the chief and his son with him and had decided to keep them in his power as prisoners; they had given him twenty-five thousand castellanos and from what the vassals of that chief had told him, he believed there were great