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Show THE FIRST SPANISH EXPLORERS 73 The tools were of the rudest description. A bellows was made of deer-skins; nails, saws, and axes were made of their stirrups, spurs, bridle bits, and other articles of iron in their equipment. The fibre of the palmetto furnished the rigging for their boats, using also the manes and tails of the horses. The shirts of the officers and men were made into sails and the boats were calked with the palmetto. Every third day a horse was killed and divided among the men and those who were sick; some returned to Auté bringing with them a small supply of corn. The woods swarmed with Indians, who harassed the workmen. A party of ten, while gathering shell-fish in the coves and creeks of the sea, were attacked within sight of the camp and all were killed. Bottles, for the purpose of carrying fresh water aboard the canoes, were made of the tanned skins of the horses’ legs. The whole distance the army had marched from the Bay of the Cross, Baia de la Cruz, to the point where the boats were built, according to the declaration of the pilots under oath, was two hundred and eighty leagues.*® The number of men lost, through disease and hunger, had been forty, and this did not include those who had been killed by the Indians. On the twenty-second day of September the horses, all but one, had been consumed, and on that day Narvéez and his companions embarked in the following order: in the boat of the governor went forty-nine men; in another, which he gave to the comptroller and the commissary, as many more; the third, he gave to Captain Alonzo del Castillo and Andrés Dorantes, with forty-eight men; and another he gave two captains, Tellez and Pefialosa, with forty-seven men. The last was given to the asessor and Alvar Nuhez Cabeza de Vaca, with forty-nine men. After the provisions and clothes had been taken in, not over a span of the gunwales remained above water and the boats were so crowded that their occupants could not move, *‘so much can necessity do which drove us to hazard our lives in this 69 Hodge, F. W., Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, note p. ‘In reality they could not have travelled much more than as many miles 36: in a straight line from Tampa Bay.’’ Bandelier, A. F., The Journey of Alvar Nufiez Cabeza de Vaca, note, p. 38: ‘‘The estimate of the distances is of little importance. It is a computation of the length of the line of march, not the distance between two points. |