we should live or die. Thereupon I embarked the next day and
went up the river to cut landan; [4] for I felt myself fortunate if
I could get plenty of this even. We passed several days in this way,
and when it appeared to me that the men were settled, and less anxious
about the proposed movement, I had a few vessels launched; and in
them I sent two captains with fifty men to the villages of Lumaguan,
who is the most friendly to us, that they might be fed there, and
together with the natives reconnoiter some of the enemies' villages
in the neighborhood. When they were setting out against the latter
one night, they attacked the very friends who were guiding them,
and killed several. They had thought that they were being deceived,
and betrayed to the enemy. The mistake made much trouble, and it would
have been worse if they had not taken the utmost pains to remedy it,
giving satisfaction to the injured, making them presents, and giving
them whatever they had with them. As they were truly friendly to us,
this sufficed to put them on the former footing, as they have since
demonstrated in all earnestness. So I persevered in the undertaking,
changing, however, the leader whom I had sent; and it pleased God that
this expedition should be the beginning of so much good fortune as we
have had since then, for back from the fort of Buyahen, on a large
lagoon, were found a number of the hostile villages, with excellent
fields of rice, although it was not the season to harvest it. I ordered
them to take the stronghold of a chief named Dato Minduc, which was
close to Buyahen. Its site was such that the natives themselves say
that, unless men were to come down from heaven to take it, it would
be impossible to do so. We captured it with all the artillery in it,
a number of men being lost on their side, and none on ours. After this
the enemies began to lose spirit, and the friendly natives to take
heart, and to hold us in greater esteem. This was on the twenty-ninth
of August. On the very next day I brought the men down to the fort,
and encouraged them all, and bade them be of good hope that the work
would soon be done; and I cheered them to it, and straightway followed
up the undertaking, without giving the men's ardor a chance to cool. I
got aboard ship, and made my way along the coast. On the eighteenth of
September, I entered a river called Picon, in a well-peopled country,
there being, besides the natives, a large number of the enemy,