The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 8, July 1904 - April, 1905 Page: 221

De Le6n's Expedition of 1689. 221
25. On the twenty-fifth of April we set out from there and
went to the camp. There we found an answer to the letter that
had been written to the Frenchmen who had gone to the Texas.
The letter, read by the alferez, contained in substance that within
two days they would come to where we were, for by this time they
were tired of being among barbarians. There was only one signa-
ture-that of Juan Larchieverque of Bayonne.' It was written
with red ochre. The distance traversed, in going to reconnoitre
the bay and in returning, was fifty-two leagues. On that day,
Monday, the 25th, the main camp remained stationary.2
Discovery of the San Marcos River.3
26. Tuesday, the 26th, it was decided that the main body
should set out by the same route we had traversed, because the
water of the creek is brackish, as has been stated, and the horses
that drank it got sick. Accordingly, we moved three leagues up
the creek, and halted in the same place where we had stopped in
our advance; and then we went on with twenty men.
There was a very large river which the French prisoner said
was toward the north and flowed into the bay. We found it at
a distance of about three leagues, and followed its bank to where
some lagoons form an impediment. It is a very large river; larger,
it seemed to us, than the Rio Bravo; so large that a small vessel
'Jean L'Archevique. The Letter gives his name as "Juan Archebepe."
See TIIE QUARTERLY, II 291, note 9.
2"After exploring the bay we returned to the main body of our party,
whom we had left in the village; we arrived there at noon, and remained
there that afternoon, and the next day they bent the large iron bars, mak-
ing them up into bundles, in order to carry them with ease. We found the
Indians with the reply to the letter which we had written to the French-
men; they said that they would soon come, that another Frenchman was
further on, and that they were waiting for him in order that they might
all come together. .... The Indian received the horse, as we had ordered.
As to the fort, Capt. Alonso de Leon would not have it burned down, and
it remained as it was." (Letter.)
8Identified by Bancroft, North Mexican States and Texas, I 400, with
the Colorado. As is the case with other parts of Texas, as represented on
the Map, there is so much confusion in the drawing that it is hard to de-
termine with absolute certainty just what is meant by the streams repre-
sented as flowing into the bay.