FIFTH LETTER
Sacred Catholic Cæsarian Majesty:
On the 23 October of the past year, 1525, I despatched a ship to the Island Española, from the town of Trujillo, which is a port on the Cape of Honduras,[1] on board which was a servant of mine whom I ordered to cross over to Spain. I wrote to Your Majesty something of what had happened, at the gulf called Hibueras, between the two captains[2] I had sent there, and another captain called Gil Gonzalez who went there afterwards. As I was unable, when the vessel and messenger departed, to give Your Majesty any account of my journey and adventures, from the time I left this great city of Temixtitan, until I met with the people in those distant parts, it seemed to me important that Your Highness should be informed of my doings, if only for the sake of not departing from my custom, which is to withhold nothing, wherein I am concerned, from the knowledge of Your Majesty. I shall, therefore, relate events as best I can; for to describe them as they occurred is more than I could undertake to do, and, moreover, my narrative might perhaps be incomprehensible to those for whom it is
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- ↑ First discovered by Columbus in 1502, and named by him Cape Caximos, after some fruit trees, called thus by the natives; the name of the gulf is spelled in different ways; Hibueras, which is perhaps the most usual, means "pumpkins" in the provincial dialect, and these are plentiful there about. The name Honduras meaning difficulties is Spanish.
- ↑ Cristobal de Olid and Francisco de Las Casas; as explained in the Fourth Letter.
