I have already said that some of us soldiers who had not yet recovered from our wounds remained in Havana, and when we had got better three of us soldiers wished to go to the town of Trinidad, and we arranged to go with a certain Pedro de Ávila, a resident in Havana who was going to make the voyage in a canoe along the southern coast. The canoe was laden with cotton shirts which Pedro de Ávila intended to sell at the town of Trinidad.

I have already said that the canoes are made like hollow troughs, and in these countries they are used for paddling along the coasts.

The arrangement we made with Avila was that we should give him ten gold dollars to take us in his canoe. So we set out along the coast, sometimes rowing and sometimes sailing, and after eleven days travelling, when near a village of friendly Indians, called Canarreo, which was the boundary of the township of Trinidad, there arose such a heavy gale in the night that the canoe could not make headway against the sea although we were all of us rowing, as well as Pedro de Ávila and some Indians from Havana, very good rowers whom we had hired to come with us; we were cast upon some rocks (Seborucos), which thereabouts are very large, and in so doing the canoe went to pieces and Ávila lost his property.