ABSTRACT
The chief thing which troubled me in my resolved purpose to come home was the choice of the safest way; which made me utterly forsake the gulf (though the easiest way of all, and that sea nearest to the place where I lived) for that I knew I should meet there with many of my acquaintance, and the setting out of the ships was so uncertain that before they departed, order might come from Guatemala to stop me; if I should go by land through Comayagua to Trujillo, and there wait for the ships, likewise I feared lest the Governor of that place by some item from the President of Guatemala might examine me, and send me back, and that the masters of the ships might have charge given them not to receive me into their ships. If I should go back to Mexico and Vera Cruz, then I called to mind how I was troubled in that long journey when I came first to Chiapa in company of friends, and that now alone I should certainly be much put to it, for I would not carry Miguel Dalva so far by land with me. Wherefore rejecting these three ways, I chose the fourth, which was by Nicaragua and the Lake of Granada; and therefore I deferred my journey till the week after Christmas, knowing that the time of the frigates’ setting out from that lake to Havana was commonly after the middle of January, or at Candlemas at the furthest, whither I hoped to reach in very good time. Now, that I might by no means be suspected to have taken this way, before I went I left by the hand of Miguel Dalva a letter to a friend of his to be delivered to the Provincial in Guatemala four days after my departure, wherein I kindly took my leave of him, desiring him not to blame me nor to seek after me; and whereas I had a sufficient licence from Rome, and could not get his, that I thought I might with a safe conscience go where I was born, leaving linguists enough to supply my place amongst the Indians. And because he should not make enquiry after me by Nicaragua, I dated and subscribed my letter to him from the town of St Antonio Suchitepequez, which was the way to Mexico and quite contrary to Nicaragua.
