While Cortés was talking to us all and to the Caciques of Tlaxcala about our departure and about warfare, they came to tell him that four Ambassadors, all four chieftains who were bringing presents, had arrived in the town.

Cortés ordered them to be called, and when they came before him they paid the greatest reverence to him and to all of us soldiers who were there with him, and presented their gift of rich jewels of gold of many sorts of workmanship, well worth two thousand dollars, and ten loads of cloth beautifully embroidered with feathers.

Cortés received them most graciously, and the Ambassadors said, on behalf of their Lord Montezuma, that he greatly wondered that we should stay so many days among a people who were so poor and so ill bred, who were so wicked, and such traitors and thieves that they were not fit even to be slaves, and that when either by day or by night we were most off our guard they would kill us in order to rob us. That he begged us to come at once to his city, and he would give us of all that he possessed, although it would not be as much as we deserved or he would like to give, and that although all the supplies had to be carried into the city, he would provide for us as well as he was able.