Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/308

 canoe, two of my servants, to take a letter of mine to the Spaniards, announcing my arrival and my intention to cross that river by the ford, begging them to send me all the canoes and boats they could to help my crossing. I set out with all my people for the said ford of the river, reaching it in three days; and one Diego Nieto came there and told me that he had been condemned to exile. He brought me a boat and a canoe in which I embarked with ten or twelve of my people, and crossed that night to the town, though in great peril, for a strong wind struck us in the crossing and as the river is very broad just there at its mouth, we were in danger of being lost. It pleased our Lord to bring us safely across.

The next day, I prepared another boat, which I found in the harbour, by means of which and some other canoes  Cortes Ar- rives at Nito which I had tied securely two by two, I managed to bring over the whole of the people and horses within five or six days. The Spaniards whom I found there, some seventy men and twenty women, brought thither by Gil Gonzales de Avila, were in such a plight that it excited the greatest compassion merely to behold them, aside from seeing their rejoicing at my coming; for, of a truth, had I not arrived, everyone would have perished. For, besides being few, unarmed, and without horses, they were very ill, suffering from want and starvation, as their provisions from the island, and what they had captured from the natives when they took the town, were exhausted; they were in no condition to procure any more, for they were settled on a sort of tongue of land from which there was no issue, except by watre? as we afterwards discovered, and they had never penetrated half a league into the country from where they were. Seeing their great want, I determined to obtain some relief, until means could be provided for sending them back to the Islands, where they could recuperate, for amongst them all there were not eight fit to remain