hair before their eyes, and all their goods in a heap in the middle of the floor, presenting all they possessed to the strangers.  These natives were well shaped and industrious, and their language easily comprehended.  The women and such men as were unfit for war were dressed in mantles made of deer skins.  After remaining two days among these Indians, who directed them to go in the first place up a river to the northwards, where they would find abundance of wild cattle, and then to turn westwards, in which direction the natives cultivated maize.  Following this direction, they proceeded for thirty-four days across the country, till they came at length to the South Sea.  In this journey the Spaniards suffered prodigious hardships and were reduced to extremity by famine, having to pass through the territories of a tribe which feeds on pounded straw for a considerable portion of the year, and they had the misfortune to come among them at that period.  At length they came to a better country, in which the natives had tolerable houses, with plenty of corn, pompions, and kidney-beans, the people being decently dressed in cotton mantles.  From this place their former conductors returned well pleased with the things they procured according to the usual customs among the natives.  Cabeza and his companions travelled above an hundred leagues with much satisfaction in this country, blessing God for having brought them at length into a land of plenty, as besides vegetable food in abundance, the natives killed venison and other game, and presented the Spaniards with cotton mantles, coral beads procured from the South Sea, turquoise stones, and several arrow heads made of emeralds, which they procured from a neighbouring nation in exchange for various coloured plumes of feathers.

In this country the women were more modestly clothed than any they had hitherto seen.  Every person, whether sick or well, came to the Spaniards to be blessed, believing them to be men come down from heaven, so that their authority was unbounded among the natives.  It fortunately happened that the Spaniards could make themselves understood wherever they went, although they only knew six of the Indian languages, which would have been of little use if Providence had not preserved them, considering the vast multiplicity of languages spoken among the detached tribes of America.  Wherever they travelled, the tribes who happened to be at war immediately made peace at their approach, that they might have the opportunity of seeing the Christians; who thus left them all in amity, and exhorted them wherever they went to worship the one only true God who had created the heaven and earth, the sun, moon, and stars, and all other things, and from whom proceeded all blessing.  The Spaniards likewise earnestly urged them to refrain from injuring one another by going to war or taking away the goods of others, with many similar instructions, all of which were well received.  The whole country along this coast