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196 a province, Zacatula, on the south coast, ten or twelve days' journey from Mexico. There they washed the earth in gourds and the gold sank to the bottom of the vessel. Then they also brought him gold from another province, Tustepec, near where we had landed on the north coast, where natives gathered it from beds of rivers and also worked good mines in a land near by not subject to him. If Cortes wished to send some of his men there, Montezuma continued, he would give caciques to go with them. Thanking the monarch for his offer, Cortes dispatched Gonzalo de Umbria to Zacatula, and a young officer, Pizarro (Peru was still unknown), to the mines in the north. Soldiers accompanied each officer, who was given forty days to go and return.

At this time, too, the great Montezuma gave our captain a hennequen cloth on which draughtsmen had very accurately painted all the rivers and bays along the coast from Panuco to Tabasco, for towards a distance of five hundred and sixty miles, and also the river Coatzacoalcos. We knew well all the harbors and bays described on the cloth from our voyage with Grijalva, but we knew little of the Coatzacoalcos, which the Mexicans said was broad and deep. Cortes determined to send some one to take soundings at its mouth and learn what sort of country was about it. Diego de Ordas, a man of intelligence and courage and one of our officers, proffered