ABSTRACT
We must now go a little way back in our story so that what I am about to relate may be clearly understood. Diego Velásquez, the Governor of Cuba, knew that we had sent our Proctors to His Majesty, with all the gold that we had obtained, and that we were not asking his assistance about anything. He also knew that Don Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, Bishop of Burgos and President of the Indies, had everything absolutely under his authority, because His Majesty was in Flanders, and that the Bishop had treated our Proctors very badly. They say that the Bishop advised Diego Velásquez to have us captured, and that he, from Spain, would afford him full support for so doing. So Diego Velásquez got together a fleet of nineteen ships and fourteen hundred soldiers, and they brought with them over twenty cannon and much powder and all sorts of stores of stones and balls, and two gunners, eighty horsemen and ninety cross-bowmen and seventy musketeers. Diego Velásquez, although he was very fat and heavy, himself went about from village to village, and from town to town, provisioning the fleet and inviting the settlers who had Indians, as well as his relations and friends, to go with Pánfilo Narvaez to capture Cortés and us his Captains and soldiers, or at least not to leave any of us alive, and he went about so incensed and angry and with such energy, that he got as far as Guaniguanico which is seventy leagues beyond Havana. It seems that when the Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo got to hear of it, they decided to send a Licentiate named Lucas Vásquez de Ayllon, who was Oidor of this same Royal Audiencia, to stop this fleet of Diego Velásquez and not to let it sail, under pain of heavy penalties, but all the injunctions and penalties that the Oidor proclaimed were of no avail, and when the Oidor saw this he himself accompanied Narvaez so as to keep the peace and to promote agreement between Cortés and Narvaez.
