Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/302

 spot) there was the large town of a province, called Tahuyecal, where we would find abundant provisions of maize, cacao, and fowls, and that he would give us a guide to lead us there. I immediately sent one of my captains with thirty foot soldiers and more than one thousand of the Indians who came with us thither, and our Lord was pleased that they should find a great abundance of maize, and plenty of people, so that we supplied ourselves, although it was with difficulty on account of the distance.

From this hamlet, I sent certain crossbowmen with a native guide to explore the road we were to take to the province, called Acuculin; and they reached a village of the said province some ten leagues from where I had stopped and six from the chief town of the province, whose lord is called Acahuilguin. They arrived there unnoticed, and in one house they surprised seven men and a woman, whom they brought to me, saying that though the road they had taken was bad and somewhat rough, it appeared to them very good in comparison with that over which we had come. I questioned the Indian prisoners to obtain information about the Christians whom I sought, and one of them, who was a native of Acalan, told me that he was a trader, having his principal trade in the town of Nito where those Spaniards lived, that there was a large traffic carried on there by merchants from all parts of the country, and that his own people of Acalan lived in a quarter of their own, having as their chief a brother of Apaspolon, the lord of Acalan. He said that the Christians had come there one night, captured the town, and robbed the inhabitants of all they had, besides much valuable merchandise belonging to traders from all parts who were in the town. In consequence of this, which had happened about the year before, the people had abandoned the place and gone to other provinces, while he