He Said Farther, That After All The Horses Were Slain, About Eighty Had Assembled In A Body And Passed The First Gap On The Heaps Of Luggage And Dead Bodies; That At The Other Bridge The Few Who Now Accompanied Him Were Saved By The Mercy Of God.

I do not now perfectly recollect in what manner he passed that last aperture, as we were all more attentive to what he related of the death of Velasquez and above two hundred of our unhappy companions.

As to that last fatal bridge, which is still called _Salto de Alvarado_, or the Leap of Alvarado, we were too much occupied in saving our own lives to examine whether he leaped much or little. He must, however, have got over on the baggage and dead bodies; for the water was too deep for him to have reached the bottom with his lance, and the aperture was too wide and the sides too high for him to have leaped over, had he been the most active man in the world. In about a year after, when we besieged Mexico, I was engaged with the enemy at that very bridge which was called Alvarados Leap, where the enemy had constructed breastworks and barricades, and we all agreed that the leap was impossible. One Ocampo, a soldier who came with Garay, who used to amuse himself with lampoons, made one on this supposed feat of Alvarado, saying, "That fear made him give that prodigious leap, leaving Velasquez and two hundred more to their fate as he leaped for his life." As Cortes found, by the information of Alvarado, that the causeway was entirely filled by the enemy, who must have intercepted all the rest of our companions, he returned to Tacuba, where all who had escaped were now collected.

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