to pass, but he did not tell us how nor where." The Padres Suffer Hardships and Lose their Way. "With this he returned to his house and we went on with twenty maize tortillas which we had kept, of those which they had brought us to eat. With these we sustained ourselves, seven people of us, for five days, at the end of which we came across a great river, having before this met with many and very large _aguadas_ and having passed many ridges and hills, with so many other evident dangers that some fatality might happen to us. Notwithstanding this, we took some pleasure at having found this great river,--first, because we thought that we had not lost ourselves, since we had found the river with signs which they gave us; and second, because we found ourselves (as it appeared to us) near Tipu, where we could remedy the want of supplies from which we were suffering. But our pleasure was marred, since, following the footsteps or obscure path, along the banks of this river, on the fifth day of our following them, and on the tenth day of the want of supplies from which we suffered, we found ourselves entirely lost, in a greater perplexity than any human being could find himself;--that is, surrounded on one side by the great full and broad river and surrounded on the other sides by another multitude of little streams with great density of low trees, so that it did not appear possible that we could pass through them; and on another side were some cliffs and very high ridges so that we were not able, by making use of the trees, to climb up the heights. In the midst of this struggle determined to follow the direction to the Northwest, so as to reach the deserted town of Chanchanha, and to cross the head streams of the great rivers and _aguadas_ which surround it, since in this direction it was not possible for us to fail in finding it. We went three days in this direction, and from thinking that, if we missed the convent of Chanchanha, in this direction, there was afterwards no place to have recourse to, on account of the great distance that we were from a town on all sides, a great sadness came over my companion Padres, so that they told me that we should change our direction, since, if we did not, it was certain that we should perish in these forests, and that the best thing was to try to strike the road which was being opened from this Province to that of Guatemala, which runs from North to South. To please them I yielded the opinion which I had determined on. From there we took the direction to the West, although the distance in leagues and forests which we intended to traverse was more than sixty or seventy. This distance was a great one, for us to be able, breaking through such bad thickets and suffering from hunger for thirteen days, to come through alive, without exaggeration."