There was boundless mutual helpfulness; the rich aided the poor and they made ready as best they could to face the perils of the unknown future. Before starting, all the boys and girls over twelve were married. Early in July the exodus commenced and no better idea of this pilgrimage of grief can be conveyed than by the simple narrative of the good cura of Palacios. Disregarding, he says, the wealth they left behind and confiding in the blind hope that God would lead them to the promised land, they left their homes, great and small, old and young, on foot, on horseback, on asses or other beasts or in wagons, some falling, others rising, some dying, others being born, others falling sick. There was no Christian who did not pity them; everywhere they were invited to conversion and some were baptized, but very few, for the rabbis encouraged them and made the women and children play on the timbrel. Those who went to Cadiz hoped that God would open a path for them across the sea; but they stayed there many days, suffering much and many wished that, they had never been born. From Aragon and Catalonia they put to sea for Italy or the Moorish lands or whithersoever fortune might drive them. Most of them had evil fate, robbery and murder by sea and in the lands of their refuge. This is shown by the fate of those who sailed from Cadiz. They had to embark in twenty-five ships of which the captain was Pero Cabron; they sailed for Oran where they found the corsair Fragoso and his fleet; they promised him ten thousand ducats not to molest them, to which he agreed, but night came on and they sailed for Arcilla. (a Spanish settlement in Morocco), where a tempest scattered them. Sixteen ships put into Cartagena, where a hundred and fifty souls landed and asked for baptism; then the fleet went to Málaga, where four hundred more did the same. The rest reached Arcilla and went to Fez. Multitudes also sailed from Gibraltar to Arcilla, whence they set out for Fez, under guard of Moors hired for the purpose, but they were robbed on the journey and their wives and daughters were violated. Many returned to Arcilla, where the new arrivals, on hearing of this, remained, forming a large camp. Then they divided into two parties, one persisting in going to Fez, the other preferring baptism at Arcilla, where the commandant, the Count of Boron, treated them kindly and the priests baptized them in squads with sprinklers. The count sent them back to Spain and, up to 1496, they were returning for baptism--in Palacios, Bernaldez baptized as many as a hundred, some of them being rabbis. Those who reached Fez were naked and starving and lousy. The king, seeing them a burden, permitted them to return and they straggled back to Arcilla, robbed and murdered on the road, the women violated and the men often cut open in search of gold thought to be concealed in their stomachs. Those who remained in Fez built a great Jewry for