This was the Buena Guia of Alarcon.

The natives were prodigiously strong, one man being able to lift and carry with ease on his head a heavy log which six of the soldiers could not transport to the camp.

Here Diaz heard that boats had come up the river to a point three days' journey below, and he went there to find out about it, doubtless expecting to get on the track of Alarcon.

But the latter had departed from the mouth of the river at least two or three weeks before; one writer says two months.* The same writer states that Diaz reached the river thirty leagues above the mouth, and that Alarcon went as far again above.

This coincides very well with Alarcon's estimate of eighty-five leagues, for Diaz did not follow the windings of the stream as Alarcon was forced to do with his boats.