Other leaders marched against the dwellers on the other side of the gulf; one of whom, Francisco Bezerra, crossed the head of the gulf and the mouth of the Dabaiba River. His band consisted of two officers and a hundred and fifty well-armed soldiers. His plan was to attack the Caribs in the country of Caribana itself. He first marched against the village of Turufy, of which I have spoken when describing the arrival of Hojeda. He was provided with engines of war, three cannon firing lead bullets larger than an egg, forty archers, and twenty-five musketeers. It was planned to fire upon the Caribs from a distance because they fight with poisoned arrows. It is not yet known where Bezerra landed nor what he did; but it was feared at Darien when the vessels were leaving for Spain, that his expedition had turned out badly. Another captain, called Vallejo, carried on operations along the lower part of the gulf, crossing over by another route than that taken by Bezerra; thus one of them menaced Caribana from the front and the other from behind. Vallejo has come back, but out of seventy men he took with him, forty-eight wounded were left in the power of the Caribs. This is the story told by those who reached Darien, and I repeat it. On the eve of the ides of October of this year, 1516, Roderigo Colmenares, whom I have above mentioned, and a certain Francisco de la Puente belonging to the troop commanded by Gonzales de Badajoz came to see me. The latter was amongst those who escaped the massacre executed by the cacique Pariza. Colmenares himself left Darien for Spain after the vanquished arrived. Both of them report, one from hearsay and the other from observation, that a number of islands lie in the South Sea to the west of the gulf of San Miguel and the Isla Rica and that on these islands trees, bearing the same fruits as in the country of Calicut, grow and are cultivated. It is from the countries of Calicut, Cochin, and Camemor that the Portuguese procure spices. Thus it is thought that not far from the colony of San Miguel begins the country where spices grow. Many of those who have explored these regions only await the authorisation to sail from that coast of the South Sea; and they offer to build ships at their own cost, if they only be commissioned to seek for the spice lands. These men think that ships should be built in the gulf of San Miguel itself, and that the idea of following the coast in the direction of Cape San Augustin should be abandoned, as that route would be too long, too difficult, and too dangerous. Moreover it would take them beyond the fortieth degree of the southern hemisphere.