Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 2.djvu/92

 ten horsemen took the causeway road to our camp. Upon his arrival he found us fighting, so he and his men joined in and began to fight with the people on the causeway with whom we were engaged. When the alguacil mayor began to fight, the enemy pierced his foot with a dart, but, although he and some others were wounded that day, we did such harm amongst them with the large field pieces and cross-bows and muskets, that neither those in the canoes, nor those on the causeway, dared come near us, but showed more fear and less pride than they had formerly exhibited. Thus we remained six days, having daily combat with them, and the brigantines set fire to all the houses they could in the outskirts of the city, for they discovered canals by which they could enter the outskirts and environs, and penetrated to the heart of it.

This produced a very desirable effect, as they put a stop to the movements of the canoes, none of which dared to come within a quarter of a league of our camp. The next day, Pedro de Alvarado, captain of the garrison at Tacuba, reported to me that the people of Temixtitan came in and out as they pleased by a highway which leads to some towns on the mainland, and by another small one which joins it, and he believed that should they find themselves hard pressed, they would escape by that way. Although I desired their departure more than they themselves did, as we could more easily overcome them on the mainland than in the big fortress they had on the water, nevertheless in order to completely shut them in so that they could not profit by anything from the mainland, I ordered the alguacil mayor (although he was wounded), to go and plant his camp at a little village at the end of one of the two causeways. He left with twenty-three horsemen, a hundred foot soldiers, eighteen archers and musketeers, leaving me fifty other soldiers for my company; and,