Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/442

422 as rapidly as possible, living in a hut on the beach, and even laboring with his own hands.

Yet with all his eagerness the work went slowly on. For a year and a half he lived in his cabin on the sand, and though in January 1533 he reported to the king his expectation to be ready in March, it was not till the 29th of October following that his vessels, the San Lázaro and the Concepcion, left port.

The enterprise, which led to the discovery of lower California, was attended with disaster. About the middle of 1534 the Concepcion was brought into the port of Chiametla by six or seven sailors, the sole survivors of her crew, who had much to tell of mutiny and murder. She had become separated from the San Lázaro, which afterward found her way to Tehuantepec. The reports of lands discovered brought by these men excited in Nuño de Guzman a desire to continue the adventure on his own account. So he seized the vessel and held the sailors, that the news might not reach Cortés. But the marquis heard of it, and appealed to the audiencia, only to enter upon fresh complications. That body, though it issued an order in the king's name commanding Guzman to surrender the ship, and prohibiting him from prosecuting the discovery, ordered Cortés also to desist from further exploration m that direction. The marquis appealed to the crown, maintaining that