on board, eight soldiers, a mare, six crossbows and twine for bowstrings, he forwarded. Our pleasure at the coming of the new guests was greater even than at those of a few days before, and Cortes paid them much honor and gave each man something to do.
We thanked God most heartily for this strengthening of our forces with soldiers, crossbows and horses. But still more aid arrived; for ships which Francisco de Garay had sent to form a settlement on the river Panuco came to harbor, the first bearing sixty soldiers. They had fortunately escaped, re-embarked and come to our port after Indians had massacred the settlers on the Panuco and set fire to the ships. These sixty soldiers were all of them ill and got to our camp very slowly, for they had been so weakened by hunger they could scarcely walk. When Cortes saw them so swollen in body he knew they were no material for fighting men, and that we should hardly be able to cure them, but he gave them to our care and did them every possible kindness. Many of them died.
The next ship to come to our port had also been sent by Garay to succor his Panuco colony, but when the captain ran up the Panuco and found no trace of the settlers, and also learned from Indians that they had been slain, he hoisted sail and made for Vera
