Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/251

 treasurer and accountant of Your Highness, and to the licenciate Alonzo de Zuarzo. I provided this city with sufficient artillery, ammunition, and a garrison, and also placed artillery at the dockyard, ordering the brigantines to be made ready, and a military governor to have charge of any operations necessary for the defence of the city. All this being settled I left this city of Temixtitan with the said design, and, while engaged at Espiritu Santo, which is a town in the province of Coazacoalco, one hundred and ten leagues from this city, in settling the internal affairs of the community, I sent messengers to Tabasco and Xicalango to inform the chiefs of these provinces of my intended journey, ordering them to meet me or to send persons to whom I might give my instructions, adding that their deputies should be honourable men of good understanding, who would repeat faithfully to them the sense of my instructions. They did exactly as I directed, and received my messengers with due honour, sending me seven or eight responsible men with full authority, as is their habit on such occasions. After enquiring of them respecting things I wished to know about the country, they told me that on the seacoast, beyond the country called Yucatan, towards the Bay of Asumption, there were some Spaniards who molested them; for, besides burning their villages and slaying their people, in consequence of which many had fled to the forests, they had totally destroyed the trade which formerly flourished on that coast. Some who had been in those parts described to me most of the villages on the coast as far as the residence of Pedrarias de Avila, Your