extremity of the town. The cazique soon after arrived
with a valuable present in gold, which he repeated almost every day, and
provided the troops with abundance of provisions. When Alvarado found
what a quantity of gold the inhabitants possessed, he ordered them to
make him a pair of stirrups of the finest gold, and gave them a couple
of his own for a pattern; and indeed those they made turned out very
good.

Notwithstanding all the gold which Alvarado received from this cazique,
he ordered him to be imprisoned a few days after his arrival, as the
people of Tecuantepec had assured him that the whole province was upon
the eve of rising up in arms against him, and that the chiefs of Tutepec
had only invited him to quarter his troops in the large houses in the
heart of their town, that they might set fire to them, and burn him,
with all his men, to death.

Many credible persons have asserted that Alvarado's only motive for ill
using this cazique was, to extort more gold from him; one thing,
however, is certain, that he gave Alvarado gold to the value of 30,000
pesos, and that he died in prison from excessive grief. Father Olmedo
indeed strove to give him every consolation in his last days, but all
his endeavours proved fruitless; melancholy had sunk too deeply into
his heart. The caziquedom then devolved upon his son, from whom Alvarado
extorted even more gold than from the father.

Alvarado then sent a small detachment of his troops to visit the other
townships of the province, and distributed these among the settlers of
the new town which he founded, to which he gave the name of Segura,
because most of the new inhabitants had formerly settled in the town of
Segura de la Frontera, or Tepeaca. After he had done all this, he
ordered the vast quantity of gold he had collected from the townships to
be securely packed, in order that he might take it with him to Mexico,
and hand it over to Cortes; for he pretended that the latter had desired
him to collect all the gold he possibly could, as it was to be forwarded
to his majesty, to make up for the loss of that which Jean Florin had
carried off to France; and that he had received particular instructions
from our general not to divide any of it among the men who accompanied
him on this expedition. When Alvarado was about to make preparations for
his departure, a certain portion of his troops, mostly musketeers and
crossbow-men, formed a conspiracy to put him and his brothers t