of our officers and soldiers who were unhurt. They did not go far. Alvarado, on foot, for he had lost his brown mare, and with him a few soldiers and Tlaxcalans, all dripping with blood, met them. The eyes of Cortes were wet with tears when he saw their woeful plight and learned that Leon and many other gentlemen lay dead, and that these few men had crossed the opening in the causeway upon dead bodies of men and the horses and the boxes with which it was choked.
Now that we, or the remnant of us, were at Tacuba we were not escaping attack, and we sought to quit the terrible neighborhood. Although the Mexicans continually harassed us with arrows, darts and slings, we marched by a bye-road, of which our Tlaxcalan friends knew, to a temple built like a fort. Here we halted and lighted fires and eased our sore bodies. Grievous it was to see our aching wounds, swollen by the cold, as we bound them with cloths. But what was more grievous was the loss of our brave companions. I do not name them. It would take long, so great was the number missing. Most of the men of Narvaez met death at the bridge because of the weight of gold which they had taken when Cortes offered the treasure.
Only twenty three horses escaped. We had not a grain of powder and our cannon were lost. We at once might make arrows, but our crossbows were
