Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/189

 to know, their services would be recompensed and they would receive such favours as loyal vassals who had served their King and Lord merited, they became reassured, and they were and are still content with the favour which Your Highness deemed well to bestow upon me with Your Royal provisions, and they serve very willingly as the fruits of their service give testimony. They deserve, therefore, that Your Majesty should concede them great favours, which I on my part supplicate most humbly from Your Highness because I deem anything conceded to them as no less a favour than if it had been granted to me, for without them I could not have served Your Highness as I have; and especially do I most humbly supplicate Your Highness to order some recognition of their services to be sent them in writing, promising them favours; because besides paying a debt which Your Majesty owes them, they will be animated henceforth with greater good will to continue.

By a royal cedula which Your Cæsarian Majesty ordered to be given at the petition of Juan de Ribera, respecting the affair of the adelantado, Francisco de Garay, it seems that Your Highness was informed that I was about to go very soon to the river Panuco to pacify that region, because it was stated that there was a good harbour there, and because the natives had killed many Spaniards, not only of those under Francisco de Garay's captain, but also those of another ship which sometime afterwards arrived on that coast of whom none escaped alive. Some of the natives of those parts had come to me,