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158 j C H A P T E R S E V E N T Y- T W O Hernando de Ribera Returns from His Exploration Along the River On January 30 of the year 1543, Captain Hernando de Ribera returned with the ship and entourage that the Governor had sent with him to explore upriver. And as the Governor found the captain and all his men very ill with chills and fevers when they came back, Ribera could give him no account of his discoveries. 1 In that season the river’s waters had risen so much that they flooded—simply drowned—all the countryside. 2 This, of course, was the reason no one could go back and complete the exploration and discovery of those lands. The Indians native to the place told us and swore to the fact that the high water lasted four months of the year and was so deep that it covered the land with five or six fathoms of water. 3 As I mentioned earlier, what they do is this: the locals go around in the wet season with their houses in their canoes looking for something to eat, with no chance of landing on dry ground. 4 Throughout that country the natives follow their custom of killing and eating each other. When the waters finally subside, they go back and rig up their houses where they were before the flooding began. The land, however, remains pestilential. The stench of the place with its great heat and all the dead fish rotting on its surface is difficult to bear. ...

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