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272 ; and with orders that all the blacksmiths should come to Tlaxcala to do the forging. With the help of more than a thousand Indian porters to carry the loads, Santa Cruz brought everything over the mountains, even cauldrons for boiling the pitch with which to caulk the sloops. Our Indians did not know how to extract tar, and here we were at a loss till Cortes picked four sailors who understood the work and sent them off to some pine woods to make it.

As soon as Cortes saw that the croakers with their infection of others with cowardice were off for Cuba, and that the timber was preparing for the sloops, he determined to march with all our soldiers to Texcoco, after Mexico one of the largest cities of New Spain. Whether Texcoco was the best place for putting together and launching the sloops we discussed at great length, for some of the soldiers claimed that Ayotzingo, near Chalco, had better canals, while others maintained that Texcoco was better, standing as it did near many other towns, and that when we once got it in our power we should be better able to plan our operations against Mexico.

We had scarcely settled on the town I have said when some soldier brought news from Vera Cruz that a large ship had run in from Spain and the Canaries, laden not only with crossbows and cross-