The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz Del Castillo
Description:... Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: boasted of the discoveries he had made, and of the vast expense it had put him to. This actually obtained credit, and the bishop of Burgos, Don Juan Rodriguez de Frouseca, who also bore the title of archbishop of Rosano, and was president of Indian affairs, wrote in that strain to his majesty, in Flanders, vastly extolling the merit of Diego Velasquez, at the same time not as much as even mentioning the names of any of us who had really discovered the country. I will, however, break off here, and relate in the following chapter what further fatigues I and three more of my companions in arms had to undergo. CHAPTER VII. The fatigues I had to undergo, until my arrival in the town of Trinidad. I Have already above related that I with some other soldiers who had not quite recovered from our wounds remained behind in the Havannah. As soon as the latter began to heal a little we three made up our minds to go in company with a certain Pedro d'Avila, an inhabitant of the Havannah, to the town of Trinidad. This man was going to make a voyage in a canoe along the south coast, and had taken a lading of cotton shirts, which he intended to dispose of in Trinidad. As I have above stated, these canoes are hollowed out of the trunks of trees, after the manner of our bakers' troughs: in this country they are used for coasting; and we had to pay Pedro d'Avila ten dubbloons for the voyage. As we were coasting along, sometimes rowing, sometimes sailing, we arrived after the eleventh day in sight of an Indian village, subject to the Spaniards, and called Cannareon; there arose at night-time such a terrible gale of wind, that, although we rowed with all our strength, we could not keep the sea any longer. Notwithstanding every exertion of Pedro d'Avila, of some Indians from the Havannah, ..
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