Illustration: CABEZA DE VACA BUILDING THE BOAT. The next day, it was His will that one of the company should come, saying that he could make some pipe out of wood, which, with deer-skins, might be made into bellows; and, as we lived in a time when any thing that had the semblance of relief appeared well, we told him to set himself to work. We assented to the making of nails, saws, axes, and other tools, of which there was such need, from the stirrups, spurs, cross-bows, and the other things of iron that there were; and we said, that, for support while the work was going on, we would make four entries into Aute, with all the horses and men that were able to go; and that every third day a horse should be killed, which should be divided among those that had labored on the work of the boats, and those that were sick. The forays were made with the people and horses that were of any use, and in them were brought back as many as four bushels of maize; but these were not got without quarrels and conflicts with the Indians. We caused to be collected many palmettos for the benefit of the woof or covering, twisting and preparing it for use in the place of tow for the boats. We commenced to build on the 4th, with the one only carpenter in the company; and we proceeded with so great diligence, that, on the twentieth day of September, five boats were finished, of twenty-two cubits in length each, calked with the fibre of the palmetto. We pitched them with a certain resin, which was made from pine-trees, by a Greek named Don Theodoro; and from the same husk of the palmettos, and from the tails and manes of the horses, we made ropes and rigging; and from our shirts, sails; and from the savins[86] that grew there, we made the oars that appeared to us to be requisite. And such was the country in which our sins had cast us, that with very great trouble we could find stone for ballast and anchors to the boats, since in all of it we had not seen one. We flayed the horses, and took off the skins of their legs entire, and tanned them, to make bottles in which we might carry water.