Cortés made his arrangements to take it by surprise on the following morning. To quote his own words:—"I had laid down on some straw, in order to rest, when one of the scouts came to me, and said that by the road communicating with the village he saw a body of armed men coming down upon us; but that they marched without any order or precaution, speaking to each other, and as if they were ignorant of our being on their passage. I immediately summoned my men up, and made them arm themselves as quickly and noiselessly as they could; but as the distance between the village and the place where we had encamped was so short, before we were ready to meet them the Indians discovered the scouts, and letting fly on them a volley of their arrows began to retreat towards their village, fighting all the time with those of my men who were foremost. In this manner we entered the village mixed up with them; but the night being dark, the Indians suddenly disappeared in the streets, and we could find no enemies. Fearing some ambush, and suspecting that the people of the village had been somehow informed of our arrival, I gave orders to my men to keep well together, and marching through the place, arrived at a great square, where they had their mosques and houses of worship; and as we saw the mosques and the buildings round them just in the manner and form of those of Culúa, we were more overawed and astonished than we had been hitherto, since nowhere since we left Aculan had we seen such signs of policy and power.... We passed that night on watch, and on the following morning sent out several parties of men to explore the village, which was well designed, the houses well built and close to each other. We found in them plenty of cotton, woven or raw, much linen of Indian manufacture and of the best kind, great quantities of dried maize, cacao, beans, peppers and salt, many fowls, and pheasants in cages, partridges, and dogs of the species they keep for eating, and which are very tasteful to the palate, and in short every variety of food in such abundance, that had our ship and boats been near at hand, we might easily have loaded enough of it to last us for many a day; but unfortunately we were twenty leagues off, had no means of carrying provisions except on the backs of men, and we were all of us in such a condition that, had we not refreshed ourselves a little at that place, and rested for some days, I doubt much whether we should have been able to return to our boats."
The Indians, however, did not return to their town, and Cortés was left in peace to build rafts on which to convey the grain he had captured, and after an adventurous passage down the Rio Polochic he rejoined the brigantine in the Golfo Dulce and carried the much-needed supplies to his half-starved companions.
In 1882, when camped at Quirigua, I sent one of my men up the Rio
