Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/137

Rh pomp. There were not persons wanted who whispered that so sudden a death of a late arrival was significant of poison, though the doctor under oath declared the cause to be a very prevalent disease to which a number of soldiers had succumbed.

Soon after Garay's arrival at Mexico a messenger arrived in hot haste from Pánuco with the report that all the natives were in arms, slaughtering Spaniards in every direction, and resolved not to leave one white man alive. The trouble was ascribed to Garay's men: already mutinous before his departure, they wholly ignored the son he had left i charge. A large number felt also absolved from all restraint by the absence of officers, whom Ocampo had exiled for their well-known sympathy with Velazquez, or taken with him to Mexico. Abandoning the camps assigned to them, some disbanding, they scattered over the country in small parties, pillaging the native villages of