Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/259

 occupied in crossing, those Spaniards whom I had sent to Tabasco arrived with twenty canoes loaded with supplies from the large caravel which I had sent there from Coazacoalco; and I learned from them that the two other large caravels and the ship had not yet arrived in the river, having remained behind at Coazacoalco, but that they were expected soon. No less than two hundred Indians from Tabasco and Cunapa came in the said canoes, and I crossed the river without other accident than the drowning of a negro slave and the loss of two loads of iron tools of which we afterwards stood in some need.

That night, I, with all my people, slept on the other side of the river, and the next day set out to follow the track of the scouts who were opening the road, having no other guide but the river bank itself. We marched thus about six leagues, and arrived under a pouring rain in a forest, where we slept. During the night, the Spaniard who had gone up the river to the town of Çagoatan came back with some seventy Indians, natives of that place, and told me that he had opened the road on the other side, but that if I wished to take it I would have to retrace my steps for a distance of two leagues. I did this, but gave orders at the same time that the scouts, who were in advance cutting their way along the bank of the river, and who had already gone three leagues from the place where I myself had passed the night, should continue their work: they had scarcely advanced a league and a half when they reached the outskirts of the town, and, in this way, two roads were open where before there had been none.

I took the road opened by the natives, and, although it proved a hard one, on account of the torrents of rain which had fallen that day and of the many swamps we had to cross, I still managed to arrive on the same day at one of the suburbs of the said town, which, though