“At this I became offended and went apart from them, and at night went away by myself to sleep. But they came at once where I was and remained all night without sleep. They talked to me in great fear, telling me how great was their fright, begging us to be no longer angry; and they said they would lead us whatsoever way we wished to go, though they knew they should die on the way.
“We still pretended to be angry, lest their fright should leave them, and while we were thus pretending a remarkable thing happened: the very next day many of them became ill, and eight men died. They believed we had caused their death by willing it, and it seemed as if they must all die of fear.
“In truth, it caused us so much pain to see them suffer that it could not be greater, and we prayed to God, our Lord, to relieve them, and they soon got better.
“News of our strange power spread through the land, and the people trembled at our coming. Sometimes they would come to meet us, and bring all they owned and offer it to us. Or, again, when they heard we were coming, they would go into their houses and pile all their goods in a heap in the middle of the floor for us, and then sit down, with their faces to the wall, their heads bowed, and their hair drawn over their eyes. Thus they waited until we came and spoke to them. Then they gave us whatever we would take from them.
“Wherever we went, they brought their sick to us and begged us to cure them. We always examined them carefully, and treated them as best we knew how, and prayed earnestly to God to help us, and they nearly always got well. Whenever a sick man got well, he not only gave us all that he had, but all his friends did likewise.
“As we pressed westward and northward we came all the time to finer Indians who had more wealth and better homes than those farther east.
“At last we came to a land of plenty. The people lived in houses and had beans, pumpkins, and calabashes for food and covered themselves with blankets made of hides. They were the finest-looking and strongest people we had seen and intelligent beyond any of the others. They had nothing they did not give to us. They begged us to pray for rain and told us that for two years not a drop had fallen. When we asked where they had got their food, they told us from the land of the maize. Then I bade them tell me of this land of the maize, and they told that beyond them was a land of many people and large houses, where maize grew all over the land; that the people of that land were wealthy and wore beautiful plumes and feathers of parrots, and used precious stones for arrowheads and to decorate their houses. And they brought to me five beautiful emeralds cut into arrowheads, and many fine turquoises and beads made of coral such as come from the South Seas. When I asked whence they got these stones, they pointed to some lofty mountains that stand toward the north and told us that from there came the precious stones, and that near those mountains were large cities. They said that in those cities the houses were so large that there were sometimes three or four lofts one above the other.”