Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/263

 swamps; one especially we found so perilous that, though a bridge was built over it two or three Spaniards were very nearly drowned. After two days of such fatigues, we reached the said village of Tepetitan, which we also found burned and deserted, thus causing us double hardship. We found some fruits of the country inside and some fields of maize in the neighbourhood, unripe, though it was taller than that at Chilapan; we also discovered under the burnt houses, some granaries which contained small quantities of maize; this was of great help in the extreme necessity to which we were reduced. At this village of Tepetitan, which stands at the foot of a mountain chain, I remained six full days, causing excursions to be made in search of natives who might be induced to return peaceably to their dwellings and point out to us the road ahead; but we never could catch but a single man and some women from whom I learned that the chief and natives of the town had been induced by the people of Çagoatan to burn their village and fly to the woods. The man said that he did not know the road to Iztapan, the next place on my map, there being, as he said, no road overland, but that he would guide us more or less towards the vicinity in which he knew it was.

With this guide, I sent thirty Spaniards on horseback and thirty men on foot with instructions to discover the village of Iztapan, and, once there, to write me a description of the road I was to follow; for I decided not to leave the place where I had camped until I heard from them. They left, but, at the end of two days, having received no letters, nor other news, from them, and seeing, moreover, the extreme want to which we were reduced, I decided to follow them without a guide and with no other indication of the road they had taken than their footsteps in the fearful, miry swamps, with which the country is covered; for I assure Your Majesty that, even