Having received this letter, the Governor and all the Spaniards who were
with him were filled with infinite content over the victory which the
captain had obtained, and at once he sent it, together with another, to
the city of Xauxa, to the treasurer and to the Spaniards who had
remained there in order that they might share in the gladness over the
victory of the captain. And likewise he sent despatches to the captain
and the Spaniards who were with him congratulating them much on the
victory they had won, and begging them and counseling them to be
governed in these matters more by prudence than by confidence in their
own strength, and commanding, at all events, that, having passed the
last bridge, they should await him [the Governor] there so that they
might then enter the city of Cuzco all together. This done, the Governor
set out the following day and went by a rough and tiring road through
rocky mountains and over ascents and descents of stone steps from which
all believed they could only bring their horses with difficulty,
considering the road already traversed and that still to be traversed.
They slept that night in a village on the other side of the river, which
here, as elsewhere, had a bridge of net-work. The horses crossed through
the water and the footsoldiers and the servants of the Spaniards by the
bridge. On the next day they had a good road beside the river where they
encountered many wild animals, deer and antelope; and that day they
arrived at nightfall at some rooms in the vicinity of Bilcas where the
captain who was going ahead had made halt in order to travel by night
and so enter Bilcas without being found out, as he did enter it, and
here was received another letter from him in which he said that he had
left Bilcas two days before, and had come to a river four leagues ahead
which he had forded because the bridge had been burned, and here he had
understood that the captain Narabaliba was fleeing with some twenty
Indians and that he had met two thousand Indians whom the captain of
Cuzco had sent to him as aid who, as soon as they knew of the rout at
Bilcas, turned around and fled with him, endeavouring to join with the
scattered remnants of those who were fleeing, in order to await them
[the Spaniards] in a village called Andabailla,[44] and [the Spanish
captain said] that he was resolved not to stay his course until he
should encounter them. These announcements being understood by the
Governor, he first thought of sending aid to the captain, but later he
did not do so because he considered that if there were to be a battle at
all it would have occurred already and the aid would not arrive in
time, and he determined furthermore not to linger a single day until he
should catch up with him, and in this way he set out for Bilcas which he
entered very early the following day, and on that day he did not wish to
go further. This city of Bilcas[45] is placed on a high mountain and is
a large town and the head of a province.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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