I would wait for them in the prickly pear fields until the time of the full moon. That day was the first of September and the first day of the new moon. I told them that if they did not appear at the time we agreed upon, I would go away without them. So we left, each with his own Indians. I was with mine until the thirteenth day of the moon, and I had decided to flee to other Indians once the moon was full.
On the thirteenth day of the month, Andrés Dorantes and Estebanico came to where I was and told me how Castillo was nearby with other Indians called the Anagados. They told me that they had had great difficulties and had gotten lost and that on the following day our Indians had moved towards where Castillo was. They were going to Join the others and become friends, since they had been at war until then. In this manner we found Castillo.
The whole time that we ate the prickly pears we were thirsty. To quench our thirst we drank prickly pear Juice. We squeezed the juice into a hole we made in the ground, and when it was filled we drank until we were satisfied.
The juice is sweet and has the color of syrup. The Indians do it this way because they have no vessels. There are many kinds of prickly pears, some of them very good, although they all seemed good to me, since my hunger never allowed me the luxury of being selective or thinking about which were better. The great majority of these people drink rain water collected in various places. Although there are rivers, the people do not settle in one place, since they do not have any known or reliable sources of water. Throughout this country there are very large and beautiful pasturelands, with good grazing for cattle, and I think that it would be a very fruitful land if it were cultivated and inhabited by civilized people. We did not see any mountains the entire time we were there. Those Indians told us that there were others further away towards the coast called the Camones, who had killed all the men that came in Penalosa and Tellez's boat. They said that the men were so weak that, while they were being killed, they did not fight back, and so the Indians finished them off.
