The Narvae:; Expedition, I526-I536
73
tion] that we were greatly astonished." In spite of their poverty, the Indians took the travelers by the hand and led each to one of their lodges. For a while they stayed among these people where they suffered extreme want. Cabeza de Vaca relates how the happiest days spent here were those on which they gave him skins to clean, for he would then eat all the scraps. "The country is so rough," he says, "and overgrown that often, after we had gathered firewood in the timber and dragged it out, we would bleed freely from the thorns and spines, which cut and slashed us wherever they touched ... In all that trouble, my only relief and consolation was to remember the passion of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and the blood He shed for me, and to ponder how much greater His sufferings had been from the thorns than those I was then enduring." 79 Their hunger was such that they purchased from the Indians two dogs in exchange for some nets, a skin with which Cabeza de Vaca covered himself, and other things. "After we ate the dogs," he says, "feeling that we had some strength to proceed on our way, we commended our- selves to God our Lord to guide us. We took leave of these Indians and they led us to others who spoke their tongue and were near." 80 But they proved as poor as the first, for which reason the Spaniards stayed with them only a short time. The natives had become so fond of the Christians that they wept when they departed. Continuing their journey, they seem to have traveled rather north than west until they came to another group of Indians who received them kindly and gave them flour of mesquite beans. They had now reached the area of the thorny forests, where mesquite and underbrush abound. The Indians were no longer nomads. They now lived in houses and had villages, generally along springs or rivers. The travelers were unmis- takably approaching the area of the Balcones Escarpment along which springs and rivers are found from Austin to Devil's River in the neigh- borhood of Del Rio. 81 They were at this time in the vicinity of the head- waters of the San Marcos. Here came a group of women from another village which was farther ahead. They offered to guide the Spaniards to their raticlzerza next day, but they would not wait. Their haste in leaving, however, availed them little, because they lost their way and were overtaken the following day by the women who finally conducted them to their village. They found
l ;
79Bandelier, 113. aoBarcia, I, 26; Bandelier, 112-113., BlHiJl, Dallas News, October 15, and 22, 1933.
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