they could get, because even if they were starving they would not eat anything unless we gave it to them.

Going with these people we crossed a great river which flowed from the North. After crossing some plains thirty leagues wide, we saw many people in the distance coming to welcome us. And they came out to the path we were going, to take and greeted us in the same way the others had done.

CHAPTER THIRTY

How the Custom of Welcoming Us Changed

From this point on, the custom of receiving changed with regard to looting, and the people who came out to the roads to bring us something were not robbed by those who were with us. After we had entered their homes, they offered us everything they had, including their dwellings. We would give all these things to their leaders for them to distribute. The people who had lost things always followed us, and the number of people wishing to make up their loss was growing larger. Their leaders told them to take care not to hide any of their belongings, saying that if we found out we might cause them all to die because the sun would tell us to do so. Their leaders made them so fearful that for the first few days that these people were with us they did nothing but tremble without daring to speak or to look up towards the sky.

These people guided us through more than fifty leagues of uninhabited and rugged mountains. Since it was such dry country, there was no game in it, and for this reason we suffered a great deal of hunger. After this we crossed a very large river, with water up to our chests. From this point on many of the people we had with us began to suffer from the great hunger and hardship they had endured in those mountains, which were extremely barren and harsh. These