winsbip] TRANSLATION OF CASTANEDA 501 



try. The soldiers left the ambuscade and went to the village and saw 

 the people fleeing. They pursued and killed large numbers of them. 

 At the same time those in the camp were ordered to go over the town, 

 and they plundered it, making prisoners of all the people who were 

 found in it, amounting to about a hundred women and children. This 

 siege ended the last of March, in the year '42.' Other things had 

 happened in the meantime, which would have been noticed, but that 

 it would have cut the thread. I have omitted them, but will relate 

 them now, so that it will be possible to understand what follows. 



Chapter 17, of how messengers reached the army from the valley o/Senora 

 and how Captain Melchior Diaz died, on the expedition to the Firebrand 

 river. 



We have already related how Captain Melchior Diaz crossed the 

 Firebrand river on rafts, in order to continue his discoveries farther in 

 that direction. About the time the siege ended, messengers reached 

 the army from the city of San Hieronimo with letters from Diego de 

 Alarcon, 2 who had remained there in the place of Melchior Diaz. These 

 contained the news that Melchior Diaz had died while he was conduct- 

 ing his search, and that the force had returned without finding any of 

 the things they were after. It all happened in this fashion: 



After they had crossed the river they continued their search for the 

 coast, which here turned back toward the south, or between south and 

 east, because that arm of the sea enters the land due north and this river, 

 which brings its waters down from the north, flowing toward the south, 

 enters the head of the gulf. Continuing in the direction they had been 

 going, they came to some sand banks of hot ashes which it was impos- 

 sible to cross without being drowned as in the sea. The ground they 

 were standing on trembled like a sheet of paper, so that it seemed as 

 if there were lakes underneath them. It seemed wonderful and like 

 something infernal, for the ashes to bubble up here in several places. 

 After they had gone away from this place, on account of the danger 

 they seemed to be in and of the lack of water, one day a greyhound 

 belonging to one of the soldiers chased some sheep which they were 

 taking along for food. When the captain noticed this, he threw his 

 lance at the dog while his horse was running, so that it stuck up in the 

 ground, and not being able to stop his horse he went over the lance 

 so that it nailed him through the thighs and the iron came out behind, 

 rupturing his bladder. After this the soldiers turned back with their 

 captain, having to fight every day with the Indians, who had remained 

 hostile. lie lived about twenty days, during which they proceeded 

 with great difficulty on account of the necessity of carrying him. 3 They 



■Ternaux translated this. " ;'i latin de 1542." Professor Haynes corrected the error in a note in 

 Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, vol. ii, p. 491, saying that "it is evident that the siege must 

 have been concluded early in 1541." 



2 Should be Alcaraz. 



; Mota Padilla's account of the death of Diaz is translated in the Introduction. 



