The Discoveries of America to the Year 1525

by Arthur James Weise

After anchoring thirteen days in the port of Rio Janeiro, the fleet coasted southward to the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, where, as Pigafetta relates: “Juan de Solis, while on a similar voyage of discovery, was with sixty of his crew devoured by cannibals, in whom they placed too much confidence.”

At the beginning of winter, in the month of May, 1520, the fleet reached the port of St. Julian, “in forty-nine degrees thirty minutes,” where they anchored for five months.[346] Here the explorers were visited by a number of giants. Pigafetta, describing one of the visitors, remarks: “This man was so prodigiously large that our heads scarcely reached to his waist. He had an attractive appearance. His face was broad and painted red, with the exception of a circle of yellow round his eyes and two spots, figured like hearts, on his cheeks. His hair, which was thin, was whitened with some kind of a powder. His coat, or rather his mantle, was made of furs, well sewed together, taken from an indigenous animal, which afterward we had an opportunity to see. This animal [the guanaco] has the head and ears of a mule, the body of a camel, the legs of a stag, and the tail of a horse, and, like the latter, neighs. This man also wore shoes made of the skin of the same animal. In his left hand he carried a short and heavy bow; the string, somewhat thicker than a lute’s, was made of an intestine of the animal already mentioned. In his other hand he held arrows made of short reeds, with feathers at one end, similar to our arrows, and at the other, instead of iron, a white and black flint....

“The women are not as tall as the men, but they are much stouter.... They paint and dress in the same manner as their husbands, and use the thin skin of an animal to cover their nakedness. They were, in our judgment, far from handsome, nevertheless their husbands seemed jealous....

“Savage as these Indians are, they are not without their medicaments. When they have a pain in the stomach, in place of an active medicine they thrust an arrow far down the throat to cause them to vomit.... If they have the headache, they make a gash in their forehead, and do the same with other parts of their body where they suffer pain, to draw from the affected part a considerable quantity of blood....

“Their hair is cut circularly, like that of monks, but it is longer, and they confine it round the head with a cotton-string, in which bandage they place their arrows when they go hunting.... It appears that their religion is limited to adoring the devil. They pretend that when one of them is on the point of death, ten or twelve demons appear dancing and singing around the dying person.... These people, as I have already said, clothe themselves with the skin of an animal, and also cover their huts with the same kind of skin. They transport their huts, for they have no fixed place of abode, and wander about from place to place like gypsies. They live on raw meat and a sweet root called capac.... Our captain gave these people the name of Patagonians....

“Scarcely had we anchored in this roadstead before the four captains of the other vessels plotted to murder the captain-general. These traitors were Juan of Carthagena, inspector of the fleet, Luis de Mendoza, the treasurer, Antonio Cocca, the paymaster, and Gaspar de Casada. The plot was discovered. The first named was flayed alive, and the second stabbed to the heart. Gaspar de Casada was forgiven, but in a few days he was again treacherous. Then the captain-general (who did not dare to take Casada’s life, as he was made a captain by the emperor,) drove him from the fleet and left him in the country of the Patagonians, with a priest, his accomplice....

“We planted a cross on the summit of a neighboring mountain, which we named Monte Cristo, and took possession of the country in the name of the king of Spain....

“Continuing our course toward the south, on the twenty-first of October, in fifty-two degrees, we discovered a strait, which we called the Strait of the Eleven Thousand Virgins (xi. mila Vergini), in honor of the day. This strait, as it will hereafter appear, is four hundred and forty miles, or one hundred and ten leagues long, and about a half league wide, more or less.[347] It extends to another sea, which we named the Pacific Ocean (Mar pacifico). The strait lies between lofty mountains covered with snow, and the channel was so deep that we were compelled to anchor close to the shore.[348] ...

“The whole of the crew were so fully persuaded that this strait had no western outlet, that we should have left it unexplored had it not been for the profound scientific knowledge of the captain-general. Skillful as he was intrepid, he knew that he had to sail through a very secluded strait which he had seen marked on a chart, in the archives of the king of Portugal, drawn by that most excellent man, Martin of Boemia.[349]

“As soon as we entered the strait, imagined to be only a bay, the captain sent the two ships, the San Antonio and La Concepcion, in advance to explore it to its termination or to where it extended, while we, in the ships La Trinidad and La Victoria, remained at its mouth.[350]