ABSTRACT
While he was there, they gave him information about a very warlike people who wore decent clothes and who lived on the other side of the mountain range which runs from Santa Marta to the Straight of Magellan. He desired to subject them [to his rule], and, in order first to learn about them, he sent six captains with sufficient troops with orders to enter [that country]
sheep and ewes which he ordered sacrificed. He went by way of the villages of Calacali and Pululagua, and the traces of the roads which he then built, are to be seen to-day, and cause wonder. On account of various encounters with the barbarians along the road, he delayed some months, because of the resistance which they offered him and of fact that they fortified themselves in some pucames which there were along the road. While the Inga was in considerable straits on account of the many hardships caused him by the difficult roads and by the bad treatment he received from the natives, auxilliaries came to him from la Tacunga, and they brought many supplies with them. He got as far as a village called Vaua [Baba], and there he had news that a great number of troops were lying in wait to give him battle. He landed with his army,1 and arrived at a province which is now called Guayaquil el Viejo, and he saw that there was a great number of balsas in the river, and that he had no remedy against them.
