Cortes Summoned All The Chiefs And Priests Of The Indians, To Whom He Made A Long Harangue, Giving Them To Understand That He Had Come Among Them To Induce Them To Abandon The Cruel And Abominable Practices Of Their False Religion, And To Embrace The Only True Faith.

He also enlarged upon the power and dignity of our great emperor, to whose government he required their submission.

He was followed by the reverend fathers, who exhorted them to become proselytes to the holy catholic religion, the principles of which they explained. After all this, the people readily agreed to obey our general, and to become vassals to Don Carlos; and Cortes enjoined them to provide the settlement with provisions, especially fish, which are caught in great abundance in the sea about the islands of _Guanojes_[4]; he likewise ordered them to send a number of labourers to clear the woods in front of the town of Truxillo, so as to open a view of the sea. Cortes likewise ordered a number of sows with young to be turned loose in these islands, by which, in a few years, they were amply stocked. The natives cleared the woods between Truxillo and the sea in two days, and built fifteen houses for the colonists, one of which for Cortes, was sufficiently commodious. Cortes became feared and renowned over all the districts, as far as _Olancho_, where rich mines have been since discovered; the natives giving him the name of _Captain Hue-hue de Marina_, or the old captain of Donna Marina. He reduced the whole country to submission, excepting two or three districts in the mountains, against which he sent a party of soldiers under Captain Saavedra, who brought most of them under subjection, one tribe only named the _Acaltecans_ holding out.

As a great many of the people along with Cortes became sick through the unhealthiness of the climate, he sent them by a vessel to Hispaniola or Cuba for the recovery of their healths. By this opportunity, he sent letters to the royal audience of St Domingo and the reverend brothers of the order of St Jerome, giving an account of all the events that had recently happened, and in particular of his having left the government of Mexico in the hands of deputies, while he proceded to reduce de Oli who had rebelled. He apprised them of his future intentions, and requested a reinforcement of soldiers, to enable him to reduce the country where he now was to subjection; and that they might attach the greater credit to his report of its value, he sent a valuable present of gold, taken in reality from his own side-board, but which he endeavoured to make them believe was the produce of this new settlement. He entrusted the management of this business to a relation of his own, named Avalos, whom he directed to take up in his way twenty-five soldiers who, he was informed, had been left in the island of Cozumel to kidnap Indians to be sent for slaves to the West Indian islands.

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