With this store of victuals, we loaded our pinnaces; by the shutting in
of the day, we were ready to depart; for that we hastened the rather,
by reason of an intelligence given us by certain Indian women which we
found in those houses: that the frigates (these are ordinarily thirty,
or upwards, which usually transport the merchandise, sent out of Spain
to Cartagena from thence to these houses, and so in great canoes up
hence into Nuevo Reyno, for which the river running many hundred of
leagues within the land serveth very fitly: and return in exchange, the
gold and treasure, silver, victuals, and commodities, which that kingdom
yields abundantly) were not yet returned from Cartagena, since the first
alarm they took of our being there.
As we were going aboard our pinnaces from these Storehouses (10th
September), the Indians of a great town called Villa del Rey, some two
miles distant from the water's side where we landed, were brought down
by the Spaniards into the bushes, and shot arrows; but we rowed down
the stream with the current (for that the wind was against us) only one
league; and because it was night, anchored till the morning, when
we rowed down to the mouth of the river, where we unloaded all our
provisions, and cleansed our pinnaces, according to our Captain's
custom, and took it in again, and the same day went to the Westward.
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