As they approached the shore, they heard the sound of falling timber, which indicated that the Tabascans were making preparations for defence; but by the wise policy of Grijalva the chiefs were brought to a peaceful consultation, and, though in great force, they received the Spaniards kindly. They brought them a great quantity of provisions, such as boiled fish, fowls, fruit, and maize bread, and what little gold they possessed, in the shape of golden lizards and birds, and three golden necklaces, not of very great value. The great object of the Spaniards, in all their expeditions, being the discovery of the precious metals, at whatever cost of life or labor to the Indians, they inquired eagerly where it could be obtained. They were told that away in the interior, a long ways off to the west, was a country called Acolhua, or Mexico, where there was a great abundance of gold.
[A.D. 1518.] This was the first intimation the Spaniards ever had of Mexico; a fact it would be well to bear in mind in its connection with subsequent events.
The Spaniards had with them the two Indians captured on the expedition of Cordova the year previous, who served as interpreters up to this point. These young men had been baptized, and christened Julian and Melchor. They had also taken off an Indian woman of Jamaica, whom they had found at Cozumel, whither she had been driven in a boat by the currents, and where her husband and companions had been sacrificed.
We may well believe that the imaginations of Grijalva and his followers were all aflame as they coasted this new country, as virgin and unexplored as was Cuba when discovered by Columbus, twenty-five years previously. At the river Goazcoalcos they saw Indians with shields of tortoise-shell, which, flashing back the sun from their polished surfaces, they took to be of gold. Indians came down
