The licentiate then questioned him respecting the expedition to the Honduras, and asked him which of the Conquistadores had accompanied him on that occasion, and how they had fared; but he wished particularly to know what had become of the thirty or forty men whom he had left under the command of an officer, named Diego de Godoy, to perish of hunger at Puerto de Caballos?
This latter reproach was, unfortunately, too well founded in truth, as we shall presently see; and certainly, as men who had been present at the siege of Mexico, and assisted in the conquest of New Spain, they, at least, had merited to live quietly in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labour. Cortes ought rather to have taken along with him on that expedition those troops only which had recently arrived from Spain.
Ponce de Leon then made inquiries after the captain Luis Marin, after Bernal Diaz del Castillo, and the rest of the men who were with him.
To all these inquiries Cortes answered: "That it would have been useless for him to have attempted an expedition to countries