Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/342

 and to pick up certain Spaniards there, whom a certain Valenzuela, who had rebelled and robbed the first town which Cristobal de Olid had founded and abandoned, had left there; according to my information, they were about sixty persons. I sent the other ship, which I had lately bought in the small bay near the town, to Trinidad, on the island of Cuba, to load with maize and horses and people, and to return as quickly as possible; the other I sent to the island of Jamaica for the same purpose. The large caravel, or brigantine, which I, myself, had built, I despatched to Española, and on board was a servant of mine, bearing letters for Your Majesty and for the audiencia residing in that island. But, as afterwards appeared, none of these ships reached their destination; for the one bound to Cuba and Trinidad had to put in at the port of Guaniguanico, and her crew had to come by land to Havana, a distance of about fifty leagues, in search of cargo. This one was the first to return, and it brought me news of how the other ship, after taking on board the people at Cozumel, had been wrecked on the coast of Cuba, near a cape called San Anton, or Corrientes, everything being lost, and most of her crew drowned, including a cousin of mine, Juan de Avalos, her commander and the two Franciscan friars who accompanied my expedition, besides thirty-four more people whose names I preserved. Those who had been saved were wandering, lost in the forest, not knowing where they were, and almost all had died of starvation; so that, out of eighty odd persons, only fifteen survived, who, by good luck, reached that port of Guaniguanico where my ship was lying. Close at hand, there was a sort of farm, belonging to a resident of Havana, where my ship was being loaded, as he had a stock of provisions; and it was there the survivors found relief. God knows what sorrow I felt at this loss; for, besides losing a number of servants and relatives, and a large