cuts In a huge silk-cotton[1] tree which stood In the courtyard, and crying at the same time that if any should dispute It he would defend the possession of this country with sword and shield. Thereupon all of us present cried out that he did right in taking possession In the king's name and we would aid him In defence of the right. Of our number followers of Diego Velasquez alone found fault, and that because the governor's name was not included in the act.
In this attack the Indians had wounded fourteen of our men (I being one who had got an arrow in the thigh), and in the water we found eighteen of their dead. With sentinels posted we slept in the courtyard that night. The next morning, when Cortes wished to use as Interpreter the Indian we had taken and taught and named Melchior in baptism, he was nowhere to be found. We conjectured that he had run off the night before with the people of Tabasco, because we found his Spanish clothes hanging in a tree in the palm grove. So In fact it proved, for that day, when two of our chief officers went out with companies to explore the country, vast numbers of Indians fell upon them and killed and wounded a few of our men. One of the prisoners of that day, when
- ↑ The Borabax Ceiba grows to gigantic proportions in tropical America, sometimes sending to a height of one hundred feet a column-like shaft twenty-five to thirty feet in circumference, and then throwing out many horizontal branches.
