I have already said that when we reached the town which Gil Gonzáles de Ávila founded, there was nothing to eat, and there were nearly forty men and four Castilian women and two Mulatto women, and all were ill and very yellow in colour. And as neither we nor they had anything to eat, we could barely await the hour to go and look for it.

Cortés ordered Captain Luis Marin to set out and search for maize, and more than eighty of us foot soldiers went with him to find out if there were roads fit for horses, and we took with us a Cuban Indian who guided us to some farms and pueblos eight leagues distant, where we found much maize and very numerous cacao plantations, and frijoles and other vegetables, where we had plenty to eat and we even sent to say that he [Cortés] should send all the Mexican Indians to carry maize, and we relieved him immediately with ten fanegas of it by means of other Indians, and we sent for our horses.

As soon as Cortés knew that we were in a good country, and learned from Indian merchants, whom they had just then captured in the River of the Golfo Dulce, that the place where we were was on the direct way to Naco, where they beheaded Cristóbal de Olid, he sent Sandoval with the greater part of his army to follow us, and ordered us all to stay in that camp until we received his orders.