They Started From Here Loaded
With Provisions, For They Had To Go Through A Desert Country Before
Reaching The Inhabited Region, Which The Indians Said Was More Than Twenty
Days Journey.
After they had gone twenty days, they came to the banks of
the river, which seemed to be more than three or four leagues above the
stream which flowed between them.
This country was elevated and full of
low, twisted pines, very cold, and lying open toward the north, so that,
this being the warm season, no one could live there on account of the cold.
They spent three days on this bank looking for a passage down to the river,
which looked from above as if the water was six feet across, although the
Indians said that it was half a league wide. It was impossible to descend,
for after these three days Captain Melgosa and one Juan Galeras and another
companion, who were the three lightest and most agile men, made an attempt
to go down at the least difficult place, and went down until those who were
above were unable to keep sight of them. They returned about four o'clock
in the afternoon, not having succeeded in reaching the bottom on account of
the great difficulties which they found, because what seemed to be easy
from above was not so, but instead very hard and difficult. They said that
they had been down about a third of the way and that the river seemed very
large from the place that they reached, and that from what they saw the
Indians had given the width correctly. Those who stayed above had estimated
that some huge rocks on the side of the cliffs seemed to be about as tall
as a man, but those who went down swore that when they reached these rocks
they were bigger than the great tower of Seville. They did not go farther
up the river because they could not get water. Before this they had to go a
league or two inland every day late in the evening in order to find water,
and the guides said that if they should go four days farther, it would not
be possible to go on, because there was no water within three or four days,
for when they travel across this region themselves they take with them
women loaded with water in gourds, and bury the gourds of water along the
way to use when they return, and besides this, they travel in one day
what it takes us two days to accomplish.
"This was the Tison (Firebrand) river, much nearer its source than where
Melchior Diaz and his company crossed it. These were the same kind of
Indians, judging from what was afterward learned. They came back from this
point and the expedition did not have any other result. On the way they saw
some water falling on a rock and learned from the guides that some bunches
of crystals which were hanging there were salt.
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