ound with their hands, and kissed it. Cortes, with great dignity
and earnestness depicted in his countenance, returned them the following
answer through our interpreters: "He had certainly great cause to refuse
them a hearing, or to make any compact of friendship with them; for,
upon our first entering into their country, he had offered them peace,
and announced that he intended to assist them against their enemies the
Mexicans; yet they would not believe him, and had even been upon the
point of killing our ambassadors, and had made three murderous attacks
upon us; and, by way of a finish, had also sent spies into our camp. In
the battle we had fought with them, we could have killed many more of
the troops; and we even grieved for those whose lives had thus been
sacrificed, but we had been driven to it. He had resolved to carry the
war into the very town where the old caziques dwelt; but as they now
came to sue for peace, he was willing to receive them kindly in the name
of our emperor, and was also pleased to accept of the provisions which
they had brought. They should now tell their chiefs to repair hither in
person, or send him some better warranty of peace. If they refused to
come, he would put his army in motion, and attack them at their very
doors. They were, moreover, to approach our camp during daytime only,
for if they came at night, we would put them all to the sword without
mercy."

After Cortes had given them this answer, he presented the messengers
with blue beads for the caziques, in token of peace. They then took
leave, and turned off to some Indian dwellings which lay in the
neighbourhood, leaving there the Indian females whom they had brought
along with them to prepare the bread, fowls, and a dinner for us;
besides this there were twenty Indians who furnished the wood and water
for cooking; and indeed they prepared us a most delicious meal. Being
now convinced that they earnestly desired peace, we returned hearty
thanks to God, who had thus ordered things: indeed it was high time, for
we were all in a terrible state of exhaustion, and were sick of a war to
which there seemed no end, as the good reader may well imagine.

With respect to these proceedings, Gomara has again mixed up many
untruths. One time he makes Cortes mount up to the top of a mountain,
and thence look over the township of Zumpanzingo, and yet it lay quite
close to our camp, and he must have been blind indeed who could not see
it strai