La Relación - page 30

La Relación - page 30

When morning came, many Indians in canoes came to us asking us to give them the two men they had left as hostages. The Governor said he would hand them over when they brought back the two Christians they had taken. Five or six chiefs came with these people and they seemed to us to be the handsomest people, and with the most authority and composure we had yet seen, although they were not as tall as the others we had described. They wore their hair loose and long and wore sable mantles like those we had already obtained. Some of them were made in a very strange fashion with laces made from tawny skins and they appeared very attractive. They entreated us to go with them, saying that they would hand over the Christians and give us water and many other things. All the while many canoes were approaching us, trying to secure the mouth of the inlet. Because of this and because the country was too dangerous for us to remain, we put out to sea, where we remained with them until midday. As they would not return our Christians, and for this reason neither would we hand over the Indians, they began to throw sticks and sling rocks at us. They gave signs of wanting to shoot arrows at us, but we saw only three or four bows among all of them. While we were engaged in this skirmish, a chilly wind came up and they turned away and left us.

We sailed that day until the hour of vespers, when my boat, which was in the lead, saw a point of land on the other side of which could be seen a very large river. I put up at an islet at the tip of the land to wait for the other boats. The Governor did not want to approach it, and instead entered a bay very close-by in which there were many islets. We gathered there and in the sea took on fresh water, because the river emptied out into the sea in a torrent. We landed on that island because we wanted to toast some of the corn we were carrying, since we had been eating it raw for two days.

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