hand, and I have wished to warn you of it in order that you may fix upon a remedy." The Governor at once placed all the soldiers upon the alert, and, although it was already noon, when he knew the needs of the situation, he did not wish to delay even to eat, but journeyed with all the Spaniards straight toward Cuzco, which was four leagues from that place, with the intention of establishing his camp near the city so as to enter it early the next day. And when he had travelled two leagues, he saw rise up in the distance a great smoke, and when he asked some Indians the cause of it, they told him that a squadron of the men of Quizquiz had come down a mountain and set fire [word missing]. Two captains went ahead with some forty horsemen to see if they could catch up with this squadron, which speedily joined with the men of Quizquiz and the other captains who were on a slope a league in front of Cuzco waiting for the Christians in a pass close to the road. Seen by the captains and Spaniards, they [the Indians] could not avoid an encounter with them, although the Governor had them made to understand that they [the Spaniards] would wait for the rest to join them, which they would have done, were it not for the fact that the Indians incited each other with much spirit to encounter them. And before they [the Spaniards] could be attacked, they fell upon them on the skirt of a hill, and in a short time they routed them, forcing them to flee to the mountain and killing two hundred of them. Another squad of cavalry crossed over another slope of the mountain where were two or three thousand Indians who, not having the pluck to wait for them, threw down their lances in order to be able to run the better, and fled headlong. And after those first two squads broke and fled, they [the Spaniards] made them flee to the heights; and [at the same time] two Spanish light horsemen saw certain Indians return down the slope, and they set themselves to skirmish with them. They perceived that they were in great danger, but they were helped, and the horse of one of them was killed, from which the Indians derived so much encouragement that they wounded four or five horses and a Christian, and they made them retreat as far as the plain. The Indians who, until then, had not seen the Christians retire, thought that they were doing it in order to attract them to the plain and there attack them as they had done at Bilcas, and they said so among themselves and were cautious, not wishing to go down and follow them. By this time the Governor had arrived with the [rest of] the Spaniards and, as it was already late, they set up their camp on a plain, and the Indians maintained themselves an arquebuse-shot away on a slope until mid-night, yelling, and the Spaniards spent all that night with their horses saddled and bridled. And the next day, at the first ray of dawn, the Governor arranged the troops, horse and foot, and he took the road