Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/58

32 kind attentions and gave them white and green glass beads, signing to them also that they should bring us gold for barter and that for it we would give our goods in return. They brought gold, and this also did people from Coatzacoalcos, exchanging their ornaments—of a debased gold, however—for the green glass beads they highly valued.

Besides gold, every Indian had with him a highly polished copper axe, the handle curiously wrought as if to serve as well for an ornament as for battle use. We thought these axes were made of a low grade gold and began bartering for them, with the result that within three days we had taken more than six hundred, with which we, thinking, I say, they contained gold, were even more content than the Indians were with their green glass beads.

How I sowed some orange seeds in this place I must tell. So many mosquitos swarmed along the river that I one day went up and lay down to rest in a tall temple of the Indians. In gratitude for the quiet sleep I had, and because it was rumored that we were to come back there to settle, I planted at the foot of the temple eight orange seeds I had brought with me from Cuba. When they came up the papas of the temple must have seen they were plants different from those they knew, and they must have protected them from the ants and weeds, and watered them. For years after, when we had