The Conquest of the River Plate (1535-1555). active 16th century Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
The dividing line between Spanish and Portuguese territories in the accompanying map differs only in one-and-a-half or two degrees of longitude from that drawn by M. Adolpho de Varnhagen in his Historia Geral do Brazil. The question about the present boundary of those territories has been settled by modern treaties.
It must also be remarked that the boundaries of the ancient Province of Rio de la Plata, in 1534, were very soon modified by the Spanish Government, who did the same thing by the four other Provinces into which the Continent of South America south of the equator was divided in that year.
L. L. D.
SOUTH AMERICA IN THE XVI CENTURY.
(Click on image to enlarge.)
A true and agreeable description of some principal Indian lands and islands, which have not been recorded in former chronicles, but have now been first explored amid great danger during the voyage of Ulrich Schmidt of Straubing, and most carefully described by him.
A true and agreeable description
of some principal Indian lands and islands,
which have not been recorded in former
chronicles, but have now been first
explored amid great danger during
the voyage of ULRICH SCHMIDT of
Straubing, and most carefully
described by him.
A true and agreeable description of
some principal Indian lands and islands, which have not
been recorded in former chronicles, but have now been
first explored amid great danger during the voyage
of ULRICH SCHMIDT OF STRAUBING, and most carefully described by him.
IN the first place, when setting forth from Antorff,[12] I came in fourteen days to Hispania, to a town called Calles,[13] to which one reckons four hundred miles by sea. I saw before that town a balena, or whale, thirty-five paces long, out of which thirty tuns—of the capacity of herring tuns—of fat had been extracted.
[12] Antwerp.
[13] Cadiz.
Near the said town of Calles there were fourteen great ships, well provided with all ammunitions and necessaries, which intended to voyage to Riodellaplata[14] in India. Also there were two thousand five hundred Spaniards and one hundred and fifty Germans, Netherlanders, and Saxons.[15] And our chief captain was called Petrus Manchossa.[16]
[14] Rio de la Plata.
[15] Antonio de Herrera (Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano, Madrid, 1601–1616, viii, 5), who is the official authority, says that Don Pedro de Mendoza’s expedition was composed of 800 men, very good and distinguished people, and eleven ships. Others state that there were 1,500 and 1,700 men. Schmidt alone states the number as 2,650. By his contract with the Government, Mendoza was bound to take with him one thousand men in two voyages.
[16] Don Pedro de Mendoza.
Among these fourteen ships, one belonged to Messrs. Sebastian Neidhart and Jacob Welser, from Nürnberg, who had sent their factor, Heinrich Paeime, with merchandise to Riodellaplata. With these and others, as Germans and Netherlanders, about eighty men, armed with arquebuses and muskets, I went to Riodellaplata.
As we were now come there,[17] we set out from Sibylla[18] with the said gentlemen and the chief captain, in the aforesaid year, on the day of S. Bartholomew, and came to a town in Spain called S. Lucas[19] which is twenty miles’ distance from Sibylla. There we were compelled, on account of much blustering winds, to stay till the first of September of the year before-named (1534).
[17] i.e., to Spain.
[18] Seville.
[19] San Lucar.
And when we departed from there we fell in with three islands, which lie near to one another, the first of which is called Demerieff, the other Kumero, the third Palman,[20] and from the town of S. Lucas to these islands there is a space of about twenty miles.[21] At these islands the ships parted company. These islands belong to their Imperial Majesties, and are inhabited only by Spaniards, with their wives and children. And there sugar is made. We came with three ships to Palman, and remained there for four weeks, replenishing our store of victual.
[20] Teneriffe, Gomera, and Palma, three of the Canary Islands.
[21] From San Lucar to the Canary Islands there are about 500 English miles.
But afterwards our chief captain, Petrus Manchossa, being at a distance of eight to nine miles from us, and having commanded us to make sail, we having on board our ship our captain’s cousin, Jörg Manchossa,[22] who had fallen in love with the daughter of a burgher of Palma, and inasmuch as we were going to leave on the following day, the said Jörg Manchossa went ashore that very night, at twelve o’clock, with twelve of his good companions, and brought secretly with them, out of the island Palma, the said burgher’s daughter and her maid-servant, with all their clothes and jewels, and money also, and came aboard again, but secretly, to the intent that neither our captain, nor the aforesaid agent, nor anybody else on the ship might know aught about it; only the watch saw them, for it was about midnight. And as we were intending to depart from there in the morning, and were only about two or three miles away, a mighty wind sprang up, so that we needs must