Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/207

 The alcalde mayor wrote to the adelantado, that if he desired anything else, to let him know, as he was returning to Mexico where I was; and the adelantado sent a messenger to say that he had not been able to get ready to sail, as six ships were wanting, and those which remained were not seaworthy, and that he was preparing a statement which would prove to me how impossible it was for him to leave the country. He told him at the same time that his people raised a thousand objections, pretending that they were not obliged to follow him, and that they had appealed from the commands which my alcalde mayor had given them, saying they were not obliged to comply with them for sixteen or seventeen reasons which they assigned; one of them was that some of his people had already died of starvation, and other not very weighty reasons touching his own person. He likewise stated that all his precautions to keep his men together were useless, as they disappeared in the evening without coming back next morning, and those who were one day delivered to him as prisoners again deserted the next day when they got their liberty; and it had happened that between night and morning two hundred men had left. For this reason, the adelantado besought my alcalde mayor most earnestly not to leave until they had seen each other, because he wished to come with him to this city to see me, and said that, if the alcalde mayor left him thus he would drown himself in despair. After receiving this letter the alcalde mayor decided to wait for him, and, two days later, when he arrived, they sent a messenger to me, by whom the alcalde made known to me that the adelantado was coming to see me in this city, and that they would come slowly as far as Cicoaque, which is on the border of this province, where they would await my answer. The adelantado also wrote me, describing the bad condition of his ships and the ill-will his people displayed, and said that he believed I might