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j 113 C H A P T E R F I F T Y- T H R E E They Put Three Crosses at the Mouth of This River The Governor ordered a number of felled trees to be placed at the mouth of this river as signals, and he had three high crosses put up, too, for the boats to use as they came into the channel behind him. He didn’t want them to miss the entrance to the river. We went on rowing for three days, at the end of which time the Governor left the river. He tried two other branches that emerged from the lake, both of which were very large indeed. On the eighth of the month, an hour before dawn, the party came across some ranges of hills that lay in the middle of the river. These ranges were quite high and round—in form or outline rather bell-shaped, and turning bloodred toward the top. These mountains are bald, with no trees or other vegetation on them at all, and vermillion in color. We think they contain a lot of metal, because the other, neighboring lands outside the confines of the river, beginning right at the shoreline, are extremely mountainous but with big trees and lots of undergrowth. As the mountains in the middle of the river are nothing like this, it seems to us a sign that they contain a great deal of metal, because where it occurs, trees and other plants will not grow. The Indians told us that in earlier times their predecessors extracted a white metal from this bald range. 1 Because the Governor had no miners or foundrymen along, nor the necessary tools to use in prospecting and reconnoitering that country, and due to the terrible illness that had befallen the party, he did not search out the metal. He left this task to his next visit, as these lands lie generally close to Puerto Reyes if you approach them by land. Traveling upriver, we entered another lagoon through a mouth of the river, and this one was more than a league and a half wide. We emerged via another mouth of the same lagoon. Then we went on up a branch of the 114 j C H A P T E R F I F T Y - T H R E E river that ran next to terra firma. That same day, at ten o’clock in the morning , we came to the entry to another lake where the Sacocies, Xaqueses, and Chaneses Indians had their principal town, the seat of their rule. The Governor did not want to go further, because it seemed to him that he should let the Indians know of his presence. So he sent off an interpreter in a canoe with a few Christians to talk with the Indians on his behalf and invite them to come to see him and palaver. The canoe and the envoys left and came back at five in the afternoon, with the news that the Indians in those towns had come out to receive them with very great pleasure . They told the interpreter they already knew our party was coming and that they very much wanted to see the Governor and his Christians. The Indians said the waters had dropped substantially and a canoe would only find its way to their settlements with great effort. For our boats to get through the low waters and make it to Puerto Reyes, the Indians said they should be unloaded and lightened up, as nothing else would work. The water was not much deeper than the width of a man’s palm, and to be able to sail the ships needed five or six palms’ worth of water if they were loaded. This kind of shallow water, or shoals that were even shallower, were found near Puerto Reyes. Onemorningsoonafter,theGovernororderedtheboatstodepart,with all their crew, Christians and Indians, propelling them by oar until they reachedtheshallowstheIndiansmentioned.Oncethey arrived, heordered everyone to get out—right into the water—which didn’t even come up to their knees. He positioned many Indians and Christians along both sides of the brigantine called the Sant Marcos—all the people he could muster there—and they lifted the boat up onto their shoulders, balancing and holding it with their arms to keep it from tumbling down. The river shallows went on for more than one and a half times the range of an harquebus shot...

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