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therefore prayed earnestly to God to put a stop to the sickness, and accordingly all who were sick began immediately to recover. Three days journey from thence, Orantes and Estevanillo went under the guidance of a female slave to a village in which her father lived, and where they saw the first houses that were built in any thing like regular order, the inhabitants of which cultivated kidney-beans, pompions, and maize. Cabeza de Vaca and his companions went to this place, dismissing their former conductors. At this town a new custom began among the natives. Instead of coming out to meet the Spaniards as had been the case hitherto, the inhabitants were all seated in their houses, hanging down their heads with their hair before their eyes, and all their goods in a heap in the middle of the floor, presenting all they possessed to the strangers. These natives were well shaped and industrious, and their language easily comprehended. The women and such men as were unfit for war were dressed in mantles made of deer skins. After remaining two days among these Indians, who directed them to go in the first place up a river to the northwards, where they would find abundance of wild cattle, and then to turn westwards, in which direction the natives cultivated maize. Following this direction, they proceeded for thirty-four days across the country, till they came at length to the South Sea. In this journey the Spaniards suffered prodigious hardships and were reduced to extremity by famine, having to pass through the territories of a tribe which feeds on pounded straw for a considerable portion of the year, and they had the misfortune to come among them at that period. At length they came to a better country, in which the natives had tolerable houses, with plenty of corn, pompions, and kidney-beans, the people being decently dressed in cotton mantles. From this place their former conductors returned well pleased with the things they procured according to the usual customs among the natives. Cabeza and his companions travelled above an hundred leagues with much satisfaction in this country, blessing God for having brought them at length into a land of plenty, as besides vegetable food in abundance, the natives killed venison and other game, and presented the Spaniards with cotton mantles, coral beads procured from the South Sea, turquoise stones, and several arrow heads made of emeralds, which they procured from a neighbouring nation
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