How Cortes entered the town founded by Gil Gonsalez de Avila; the great joy of the inhabitants at his arrival, and what he further did there.
The town of Buena Vista, which Avila had founded in this neighbourhood, lay about eight miles from the broad river of the Golfo Dulce, near to the sea shore, whither Cortes immediately repaired with his small body of men, after crossing the river. When he entered the town, the arrival of strangers on horseback and others on foot, in the first moments, spread a great consternation among the inhabitants, but as soon as they learnt that it was the man whose fame was spread through the whole of these provinces and New Spain, they were almost overcome with joy. All the inhabitants instantly assembled to wait upon him and to congratulate him upon his safe arrival. Our general received them in the kindest manner possible, and then ordered the commandant Nieto to load the two boats belonging to the town, and all the canoes he could get with cassave bread, and despatch them to Sandoval. The commandant immediately set about to fulfil these commands, but was unable to collect more than fifty pounds of this bread, as the colonists had had no other food than the fruits which they gathered from the trees, some vegetables, and what fish they could catch. Even this small quantity of cassave bread had been set apart for their voyage to Cuba.
With these provisions the two boats, manned with eight sailors, left for the place where Sandoval was encamped with our troops. Cortes, in a letter to the latter officer, desired that he, with Luis Marin, should cross the last over the broad river, and was particularly cautioned not to allow more than a certain number of the men to be ferried across at a time on account of the rapidity of the stream. No horses were to be taken across by the canoes, and even the boats were not to take more than two at a time.