de Puerta Latina. Upon landing, the town which existed there was found to be deserted, as though it had never been inhabited, and the Captain Fernando Cortes, wishing to know the cause of that place being deserted, brought the people on land, and quartered them in that town. While there with his people he learned from three Indians, who had been taken in a canoe[1] at sea while going to Yucatan, that the caciques of that Island, seeing the Spaniards were approaching, had, out of fear of them (not knowing with what purpose, and in what disposition they came), abandoned their town, and gone with all their Indians into the woods.
Fernando Cortes, speaking to them through the medium of an interpreter who accompanied him, told them we were not going to do them any evil
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or injury, but only to instruct them, and win them to the knowledge of our Holy Catholic Faith, so that they might become vassals of Your Majesties, serving and obeying them, as had all the Indians of these parts which the Spaniards have settled, who are likewise vassals of Your Royal Highnesses. The said Captain, having thus reassured them they put aside their fears, in great part, and said that they would go and call the caciques who had gone into the woods; and the Captain immediately gave them a letter, so that the said caciques might come in all confidence, and, the Captain having given them a term of five days in which to return, they went off thus.
But while the Captain was waiting for the reply the Indians were to bring, and as already three or four days beyond the five which he had stipulated had elapsed, and he saw that they did not come, he determined, in order that the Island might not remain deserted, to send
- ↑ Their canoes were made of tree-trunks, hollowed, and were sometimes large enough to hold forty or fifty men (Bernal Diaz, cap. ii.).
