therefore prayed earnestly to God to put a
stop to the sickness, and accordingly all who were sick began
immediately to recover.

Three days journey from thence, Orantes and Estevanillo went under the
guidance of a female slave to a village in which her father lived, and
where they saw the first houses that were built in any thing like
regular order, the inhabitants of which cultivated kidney-beans,
pompions, and maize. Cabeza de Vaca and his companions went to this
place, dismissing their former conductors. At this town a new custom
began among the natives. Instead of coming out to meet the Spaniards as
had been the case hitherto, the inhabitants were all seated in their
houses, hanging down their heads with their hair before their eyes, and
all their goods in a heap in the middle of the floor, presenting all
they possessed to the strangers. These natives were well shaped and
industrious, and their language easily comprehended. The women and such
men as were unfit for war were dressed in mantles made of deer skins.
After remaining two days among these Indians, who directed them to go in
the first place up a river to the northwards, where they would find
abundance of wild cattle, and then to turn westwards, in which direction
the natives cultivated maize. Following this direction, they proceeded
for thirty-four days across the country, till they came at length to the
South Sea. In this journey the Spaniards suffered prodigious hardships
and were reduced to extremity by famine, having to pass through the
territories of a tribe which feeds on pounded straw for a considerable
portion of the year, and they had the misfortune to come among them at
that period. At length they came to a better country, in which the
natives had tolerable houses, with plenty of corn, pompions, and
kidney-beans, the people being decently dressed in cotton mantles. From
this place their former conductors returned well pleased with the things
they procured according to the usual customs among the natives. Cabeza
and his companions travelled above an hundred leagues with much
satisfaction in this country, blessing God for having brought them at
length into a land of plenty, as besides vegetable food in abundance,
the natives killed venison and other game, and presented the Spaniards
with cotton mantles, coral beads procured from the South Sea, turquoise
stones, and several arrow heads made of emeralds, which they procured
from a neighbouring nation