This Lake
Was Navigable For Six Leagues, All The Adjacent Country Being Subject To
Be Inundated; But On Endeavouring To Proceed Higher, The Current Became
Stronger, And He Came To Certain Shallows, Which Prevented The Vessels
From Proceeding Any Farther.
Cortes now landed with his soldiers, and
advanced into the country by a narrow road which led to several villages
of the natives.
In the first of these he procured some guides, and in the
second he found abundance of corn, and many domesticated birds, among
which were pheasants, pigeons, and partridges, which last are often
domesticated by the Indians of America. In prosecuting his route, he
approached a large town called _Cinacan Tencintle_, in the midst of fine
plantations of cacao, where he heard the sound of music and merry-making,
the inhabitants being engaged in a drunken feast. Cortes waited a
favourable opportunity, concealed in a wood close by the town, when
suddenly rushing out, he made prisoners of ten men and fifteen women. The
rest of the inhabitants attacked him with their darts and arrows, but our
people closed with them and killed eight of their chiefs, on which the
rest submitted, sending four old men, two of whom were priests, with a
trifling present of gold, and to petition for the liberation of the
prisoners, which he accordingly engaged to give up on receiving a good
supply of provisions, which they promised to deliver at the ships. A
misunderstanding took place afterwards between Cortes and these Indians,
as he wished to retain three of their women to make bread, and hostilities
were renewed, in which Cortes was himself wounded in the face, twelve of
his soldiers wounded, and one of his boats destroyed.
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