[Footnote 161:  Perhaps this ought to have been triangular pointed heads.—­E.]

Three days afterwards Soto sent twenty Spaniards up the river in two canoes at the request of the daughter to seek her mother, under the conduct of an Indian who offered to conduct them to her place of concealment.  While on this expedition, the Spaniards recollected that Peter and Mark had reported there was both gold and silver in that province; but upon search they found much copper of a golden colour, and great plates of ore[162] which was very light and mouldered away like earth, which probably had deceived the young Indians.  A wonderful quantity of pearls were found, and the old lady gave them leave to go into a sacred house where the chiefs or nobles of the tribe were buried, to take what pearls were there, and to another temple, or sepulchre rather, near the town, in which the bodies of her own ancestors were reposited, where they found pearls in still greater abundance.  In these repositories of the dead they found a number of wooden chests in which the bodies were laid; and beside them in baskets made of reeds there were great quantities of large and seed pearls, as also garments both for men and women, made of skins and fine furs.  So great was the abundance of pearls found on this occasion, that the kings officers weighed five hundred pounds weight.  As Soto was unwilling to encumber his troops with so much additional weight, he proposed that no more than fifty pounds should be then taken, to send to the Havannah to learn their value; but as they were already weighed, the officers begged that they might be all carried away, to which he consented, and gave his captains two handfuls of pearls as large as pease to make strings of beads or rosaries.

[Footnote 162:  These large plates of ore, were probably silver-coloured mica; and the golden-coloured copper in the text may have been bright yellow pyrites.—­E.]

Leaving Cofachiqui, the army came to another town called Tolomeco, in a temple or charnel-house more properly of which place, opposite the residence of the chief, they found strings of large pearls hanging on the walls, and others in chests, with many fine garments like those formerly mentioned; and in rooms over this charnel-house were great numbers of pikes with copper heads resembling gold, and clubs, staves, and axes of the same metal, and bows, arrows, targets, and breast-plates.  Soto would not take away any of these, being resolved to continue his march.  Accordingly, taking leave of the princess of Cofachiqui, he divided the army into two parts for the better convenience of provisions, retaining the immediate command of one, and confiding the other to the charge of Baltasar de Gallegos.  In this order they moved on to the province of Chalaqui; and next day were exposed to such a storm of wind, lightning, and hail, that many of them must have perished, but for the shelter afforded by the trees, as the hail-stones were as