assured him they would persuade Aguilar, by fair words, to agree to it, particularly as he was always suffering from ill health, and it was perfectly evident the service of God and the true interests of his majesty must suffer in his hands. But whatever they might say to Cortes, he would not enter into their schemes, and always repeated that old Aguilar must govern alone.
Aguilar, indeed, was in a rapid decline, and so feeble, that to keep him alive he was obliged to be suckled by a Spanish woman; besides that, he drank quantities of goats' milk. He likewise about this time lost one of his sons, whom he had brought with him, of the same pestilential fever which hurried Ponce de Leon into the grave.
I must now go back in my history a little, and relate what befel the captain Luis Marin, who, with the troops under his command, had remained behind in Naco, where he was waiting to hear from Sandoval whether Cortes had embarked for Mexico or not; but we never received any tidings from him, as Saavedra, from sheer malice, had omitted to forward us the letters of Sandoval and Cortes, in which they sent us information of their intended departure for Mexico, with orders for us to march thither overland. As we had thus waited in vain for a length of time for some tidings from Truxillo, Luis Marin determined, with our unanimous consent, to despatch a few horse thither, to ascertain how matters stood. There were ten of us that left Naco on this occasion, under the command of Francisco Marmolejo. We had already fought our way through various hostile tribes up to Olancho, which at present is called Guayape, abounding in lucrative gold mines, when we happened to meet two Spanish invalids and a negro, who assured us that Cortes had set sail several days ago for Mexico, with Sandoval and all the other Conquistadores who were with him. They then added, that he had been induced to embark from the universal solicitations of the citizens of Mexico, who had despatched one of the Franciscan monks to Truxillo, to hasten his departure. Saavedra had been left behind in this latter town as commandant, and was further to subdue the surrounding country.