CHAPTER CLXXVIII.

certainly no news could have been more welcome to us all; for we now fully believed that all our fatigues and perils were at an end, and we never thought for a moment that we should have to suffer even greater hardships than we had hitherto. Alonso de Ortiz was well rewarded for the haste he had made, for Cortes presented him with a fine gray horse, which we generally termed the Moor's head; besides this, every one of us gave him some other little presents. Shortly after, Sandoval himself arrived, with the other Spaniards, who told Cortes what I have above mentioned. They also informed him that two miles further on there was a harbour, in which a vessel was being fitted out, to convey the colonists to Cuba. The commandant Armenta, they added, had obstinately refused to allow them to depart; for which reason, and because he had scourged a Spanish priest, who had caused an insurrection in the town, the inhabitants rebelled against him, hung him, and appointed a certain Antonio Nieto commandant in his stead. In the meantime, at the town of San Gil de Buena Vista, there was nothing but lamentation and grief, when the Spaniards, who had been sent out in quest of provisions, did not return in the evening, and every one thought they must either have been massacred by the Indians or devoured