Some houses are of earth, the rest all of cane mats. From this point
we marched through more than a hundred leagues of country, and
continually found settled domicils, with plenty of maize and beans.
The people gave us many deer and cotton shawls better than those of
New Spain, many beads and certain corals found on the South Sea, and
fine turquoises that come from the North. Indeed, they gave us
everything they had. To me they gave five emeralds made into arrow
heads, which they use at their singing and dancing. They appeared to
be very precious. I asked whence they got these; and they said the
stones were brought from some lofty mountains that stand toward the
north, where were populous towns and very large houses, and that they
were purchased with plumes and the feathers of parrots.

Among this people the women are treated with more decorum than in any
part of the Indias we had visited. They wear a shirt of cotton that
falls as low as the knee, and over it half sleeves with skirts
reaching to the ground, made of drest deerskin. It opens in front, and
is brought close with straps of leather. They soap this with a certain
root that cleanses well, by which they are enabled to keep it
becomingly. Shoes are worn. The people all came to us that we should
touch and bless them, they being very urgent, which we could
accomplish only with great labor, for sick and well all wished to go
with a benediction.

These Indians ever accompanied us until they delivered us to others;
and all held full faith in our coming from heaven. While traveling, we
went without food all day until night, and we ate so little as to
astonish them. We never felt exhaustion, neither were we in fact at
all weary, so inured were we to hardship. We possest great influence
and authority: to preserve both, we seldom talked with them. The negro