As Cortes wished to examine this great river, he caused one of the brigantines belonging to Avila which had been stranded to be fitted out; and embarking with thirty soldiers and eight mariners belonging to the vessel lately arrived, having likewise a boat and four double canoes, he proceeded up the river to a spacious lake with good anchorage. This lake was navigable for six leagues, all the adjacent country being subject to be inundated; but on endeavouring to proceed higher, the current became stronger, and he came to certain shallows, which prevented the vessels from proceeding any farther. Cortes now landed with his soldiers, and advanced into the country by a narrow road which led to several villages of the natives. In the first of these he procured some guides, and in the second he found abundance of corn, and many domesticated birds, among which were pheasants, pigeons, and partridges, which last are often domesticated by the Indians of America. In prosecuting his route, he approached a large town called _Cinacan Tencintle_, in the midst of fine plantations of cacao, where he heard the sound of music and merry-making, the inhabitants being engaged in a drunken feast. Cortes waited a favourable opportunity, concealed in a wood close by the town, when suddenly rushing out, he made prisoners of ten men and fifteen women. The rest of the inhabitants attacked him with their darts and arrows, but our people closed with them and killed eight of their chiefs, on which the rest submitted, sending four old men, two of whom were priests, with a trifling present of gold, and to petition for the liberation of the prisoners, which he accordingly engaged to give up on receiving a good supply of provisions, which they promised to deliver at the ships. A misunderstanding took place afterwards between Cortes and these Indians, as he wished to retain three of their women to make bread, and hostilities were renewed, in which Cortes was himself wounded in the face, twelve of his soldiers wounded, and one of his boats destroyed. He then returned after an absence of twenty-six days, during which he had suffered excessive torment from the mosquitoes. He wrote to Sandoval, giving him an account of all that had occurred in his expedition to Cinacan, which is seventy leagues from Guatimala, and ordered him to proceed to Naco; as he proposed to remain himself on purpose to establish a colony at _Puerto de Cavallos_[3], for which he desired Sandoval to send back ten of the Coatzacualco veterans, without whose assistance nothing could be done properly. Taking with him all the Spaniards who remained at St Gil de Buena Vista, Cortes embarked in two ships, and arrived in eight days sail at Puerto de Cavallos, which had a good harbour, and seemed every way well calculated for a colony, which he established there under the command of Diego de Godoy, naming the town Natividad. Expecting by this time that