us. And, scarcely had we eaten and told them to come to guide us, when suddenly they turned back, without our being able to get anything from them, except that an Indian came about half a mile, to set us upon that obscure path, which led towards the direction of Tipu, telling us that up to that place, we had to speed on the way twelve days, from sunrise to sunset; and that, two leagues before that, we should come across a great river, which we had to pass, but he did not tell us how nor where.
The Padres Suffer Hardships and Lose their Way. "With this he returned to his house and we went on with twenty maize tortillas which we had kept, of those which they had brought us to eat. With these we sustained ourselves, seven people of us, for five days, at the end of which we came across a great river, having before this met with many and very large aguadas and having passed many ridges and hills, with so many other evident dangers that some fatality might happen to us. Notwithstanding this, we took some pleasure at having found this great river,—first, because we thought that we had not lost ourselves, since we had found the river with signs which they gave us; and second, because we found ourselves (as it appeared to us) near Tipu, where we could remedy the want of supplies from which we were suffering. But our pleasure was marred, since, following the footsteps or obscure path, along the banks of this river, on the fifth day of our following them, and on the tenth day of the want of supplies from which we suffered, we found ourselves entirely lost, in a greater perplexity than any human being could find himself;-that is, surrounded on one side by the great full and broad river and surrounded on the other sides by another multitude of little streams with great density of low trees, so that it did not appear possible that we could pass through them; and on another side were some cliffs and very high ridges so that we were not able, by making use of the trees, to climb up the heights. In the midst of this struggle determined to follow the direction to the Northwest, so as to reach the deserted town of Chanchanha, and to cross the head streams of the great rivers and aguadas which surround it, since in this direction it was not possible for us to
