ed Ahtec, spoke to me. Hardly had we accepted the invitation, when
all the Indian women went to their houses, to make something for us to
eat; and in a short time they came back, each one of them with her bowl
of meat, according to what they had, with many _tortillas_, so that we,
with the Indians who accompanied us, should eat; the Indians promising
us that some of them would accompany us. And, scarcely had we eaten and
told them to come to guide us, when suddenly they turned back, without
our being able to get anything from them, except that an Indian came
about half a mile, to set us upon that obscure path, which led towards
the direction of Tipu, telling us that up to that place, we had to
speed on the way twelve days, from sunrise to sunset; and that, two
leagues before that, we should come across a great river, which we had
to pass, but he did not tell us how nor where."

The Padres Suffer Hardships and Lose their Way. "With this he returned
to his house and we went on with twenty maize tortillas which we had
kept, of those which they had brought us to eat. With these we
sustained ourselves, seven people of us, for five days, at the end of
which we came across a great river, having before this met with many
and very large _aguadas_ and having passed many ridges and hills, with
so many other evident dangers that some fatality might happen to us.
Notwithstanding this, we took some pleasure at having found this great
river,--first, because we thought that we had not lost ourselves, since
we had found the river with signs which they gave us; and second,
because we found ourselves (as it appeared to us) near Tipu, where we
could remedy the want of supplies from which we were suffering. But our
pleasure was marred, since, following the footsteps or obscure path,
along the banks of this river, on the fifth day of our following them,
and on the tenth day of the want of supplies from which we suffered, we
found ourselves entirely lost, in a greater perplexity than any human
being could find himself;--that is, surrounded on one side by the great
full and broad river and surrounded on the other sides by another
multitude of little streams with great density of low trees, so that it
did not appear possible that we could pass through them; and on another
side were some cliffs and very high ridges so that we were not able, by
making use of the trees, to climb up the heights. In the midst of this
struggle determined to follow t