The sufferings of Narvaez’ men were great; the country was poverty-stricken; there was no wealthy province to conquer, no fertile lands for settlement. Aute (a harbor) was said to be nine days’ march to the southward; and to this, after nearly a month spent at Apalache, the disheartened Spaniards turned their course, following the Magdalena River. On the 31st of July they reached the coast at a bay which Narvaez styled Bahia de Cavallos; and seeing no signs of his vessels, he set to work to build boats in which to escape from the country. The horses were killed for food; and making forges, the Spaniards wrought their stirrups, spurs, and other iron articles into saws, axes, and nails. Ropes were made of the manes and tails of the horses and such fibres as they could find; their shirts were used for sailcloth. By the 20th of September five boats, each twenty-two cubits long, were completed, and two days afterward the survivors embarked, forty-eight or nine being crowded into each frail structure. Not one of the whole number had any knowledge of navigation or of the coast. Running between Santa Rosa Island and the mainland, they coasted along for thirty days, landing where possible to obtain food or water, but generally finding the natives fierce and hostile. On the 31st of October they came to a broad river pouring into the Gulf such a volume of water that it freshened the brine so that they were able to drink it; but the current was too much for their clumsy craft. The boat commanded by Narvaez was lost, and never heard of; that containing Father Xuarez and the other friars was driven ashore bottom upward; the three remaining boats were thrown on the coast of western Louisiana or eastern Texas. The crews barely escaped with life, and found themselves at the mercy of cruel and treacherous savages, who lived on or near Malhado Island, and drew a precarious living from shellfish and minor animals, prickly-pears and the like. They were consequently not as far west as the bison range, which reached the coast certainly at Matagorda Bay.[831] Here several of the wretched Spaniards fell victims to the cruelty of the Indians or to disease and starvation, till Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, the treasurer of the expedition, escaping from six years’ captivity among the Mariames, reached the Avavares, farther inland, with two companions, Castillo and Dorantes, and a negro slave. After spending eight months with them, he penetrated to the Arbadaos, where the mesquite is first found, near the Rio Grande; and skirting the San Saba Mountains, came to the bison plains and the hunter nations; then keeping westward through tribes that lived in houses of earth and knew the use of cotton and mined the turquoise, he finally came upon some Spanish explorers on the River Petatlan; and thus on the 1st of April, 1536, with hearts full of joy and gratitude, the four men entered the town of San Miguel in Sinaloa.