others. About two hundred Cuban Indians, together with some native women and negro slaves, were brought for service, despite the prohibitory clause in the instructions. Sixteen horses receive the minute description and glowing encomium of the soldier Diaz, and play an important part in the coming campaign.
The supplies included some five thousand tocinos, or pieces of salt pork, six thousand loads of maize and yucca, fowl, vegetables, groceries, and other provisions. For barter were beads, bells, mirrors, needles, ribbons, knives, hatchets, cotton goods, and other articles.22
The force was divided into eleven companies, each under a captain having control on sea and land. The names of the captains were Alonso Hernandez Puertocarrero, Alonso de Ávila, Diego de Ordaz, Francisco de Montejo, Francisco de Morla, Escobar, Juan de Escalante, Juan Velazquez de Leon, Cristóbal de Olid, Pedro de Alvarado, and Cortés, with Anton de Alaminos as chief pilot.23
From this list it will be seen that those but lately regarded as of the Velazquez party received their full share in the command. This cannot be attributed so much to the captain-general’s sense of fairness, which forbade him to take advantage of interests voluntarily intrusted to his care, as to a studied policy whereby he hoped to win for his purposes certain men of influence,
whom it would, for that matter, have been dangerous to remove.
Before the review, Cortés addressed his soldiers in a speech as shrewd and stirring as that of Marcius at Corioli. * Pointing to the thousands of unbaptized, he awakened their religious