Another Part Of The Town Was Inaccessible, Being On The Summit Of
A Perpendicular Rock, On The Top Of Which The Natives Had Collected Great
Quantities Of Stones For Their Defence.
And a third quarter of the town
was defended by an impassable morass.
Yet after all these defensive
preparations, we were astonished to find the town entirely abandoned,
though every house was full of the different kinds of provisions which the
country afforded, besides which it had a magazine stocked with arms of all
sorts. While we were expressing our astonishment at these circumstances,
fifteen Indians came out of the morass in the most submissive manner, and
told us that they had been forced to the construction of this fortress as
their last resort, in an unsuccessful war with a neighbouring nation,
called the _Lazandones_ as far as I can now remember. They brought back
the inhabitants, whom we treated with kindness, and from whom we received
farther information, respecting, the Spanish settlement, to which two of
the natives of this place undertook to shew us the way. From this place we
entered upon vast open plains, in which not a tree was to be seen, and in
which innumerable herds of deer were feeding, which were so tame as almost
to come up to us. Our horsemen, therefore, easily took as many as they
pleased, and we found that the Indians never disturbed them, considering
them as a kind of divinities, and had even been commanded by their idols,
or priests rather in their name, neither to kill or frighten these animals.
The heat of the weather was now so excessive that Palacios Rubios, a
relation of Cortes, lost his horse by pursuing the deer.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 407 of 796
Words from 112519 to 112805
of 221091
