_Some Account of the Expedition of Francisco de Garay for the Colonization
of Panuco_.


Having formerly mentioned the expedition fitted out by Francisco de Garay,
the governor of Jamaica, it seems proper to give a more particular account
of that affair in this place. Hearing of the great riches which Diego
Velasquez was likely to acquire from New Spain, and of the fertile
countries which had been discovered on the continent of the West Indies,
and encouraged by the means he now possessed of prosecuting discoveries
and conquests, he determined to try his own fortune in that career. For
this purpose he sent for and discoursed with Alaminos, who had been our
chief pilot, from whom he received so favourable an account of these
countries, that he sent Juan de Torralva, a person in whom he could
confide, to solicit the bishop of Burgos to grant him a commission for
settling the country on the river of Panuco; and having succeeded in this
preliminary step, he fitted out an armament of three ships, with 240
soldiers, under the command of Alonzo Alvarez Pineda, who was defeated by
the Panuchese, one ship only escaping, which joined us at Villa Rica, as
already related. Receiving no intelligence of the fate of his first
armament, Garay sent a second, which also arrived at our port. Having now
expended a great deal of money to no purpose, and having learnt the good
fortune of Cortes, he became more than ever desirous to secure the
advantages he expected to derive from his commission. With this view he
fitted out thirteen ships, in which he embarked 136 cavalry, and 840 foot
soldiers, mostly musqueteers and crossbow-men, of which he took the
command in person. He sailed with this great armament from Jamaica, on the
24th June 1523, and arrived safe at the port of Xagua in the island of
Cuba, where he received information that Cortes had reduced the province