olemnly offered by the ecclesiastics who always accompanied
these expeditions. Then every soldier attended the confessional and
received absolution. Thus he felt assured that, should he fall in the
battle, he would be immediately translated to the realms of the blest.

Thus inspired by military zeal and religious fanaticism, the Spaniards
rushed upon the natives in a very impetuous assault. We are happy to
record that the natives stood nobly on the defence. They met their
assailants with such a shower of arrows and javelins that the
Spaniards were first arrested in their march, then driven back, then
utterly routed and put to flight. In that broken ground where the
cavalry could not be brought into action, where every native warrior
stood behind a tree or a rock, and where the natives did not commence
the action till the Spaniards were within half bow shot of them,
arrows and javelins were even more potent weapons of war than the
clumsy muskets then in use.

Upon the open field the arrows of the natives were quite impotent. A
bullet could strike the heart at twice or three times the distance at
which an arrow could be thrown. The Spaniards, hotly pursued,
retreated from this broken ground several miles back into the open
plain. Many were slain. Here the rout was arrested by the cavalry and
the discharges from the field-pieces, which broke the Indian ranks.

The natives, however, boldly held their ground, and the Spaniards,
disheartened and mortified by their discomfiture, encamped upon the
plain. It was very evident that God had not listened to their prayers.

For several days they remained in a state of uncertainty. For five
hundred Spaniards to retreat before eight hundred natives, would
inflict a stigma upon their army which could never be effaced. They
dared not again attack the natives who were flushed with victory in
their stronghold. They were well aware that the band of warriors
before them was but the advanced guard of the great army of Uracca.
These eight hundred natives were led by one of Uracca's brothers. Even
should these Indians be attacked and repulsed, they had only to
retreat a few miles, cross the river Arva in their canoes, and on the
northern banks join the formidable army of twenty thousand men under
their redoubtable chief, who had already displayed military abilities
which compelled the Spaniards to regard him with dread.

Affairs were in this position when Uracca adopted a stratagem which
c