Ribera would go no further; but landed about three hundred men, under Sarmiento. A city was marked out, and named Jesus,[[28]] in a valley well provided with water. The
ships were blown away to sea, leaving the colonists very destitute; fortunately, however, they were enabled to return, but were four times, afterwards, obliged to put to sea, from stress of weather. On the last return, one of the ships, La Trinidad, was run on shore. The ardour of Ribera being damped by repeated misfortunes, he returned to Spain, without the knowledge or consent of Sarmiento, leaving, for the use of the colony, only one ship, the Maria.
While unloading the Trinidad, the Spaniards were attacked by Indians, whom they dispersed.
Sarmiento, after making the necessary arrangements at Jesus, set out by land with one hundred men, to go to Point St. Anna,[[29]] the ship Maria being ordered to follow. On the journey, the sufferings of the party were very great, as well from the fatiguing nature of the march, as from their being harassed by the natives, with whom they had an engagement, in which one was killed, and ten men were wounded. A mutiny among his people then broke out, which was quelled by assistance from the ship. At last they reached their destination, and founded, with the usual solemnities, the city of King Philip (or San Felipe).
At the latter end of March, while preparing habitations, the winter set in so suddenly, that for fifteen days it did not cease to snow. Sarmiento, then, after quelling a mutiny which had broken out afresh among the soldiers, embarked with thirty men to visit the first encampment at Jesus, and to superintend the erection of forts in the Narrow; but upon reaching the anchorage, a gale of wind forced him to sea, and, lasting twenty days, obliged him (with his people blinded and frost-bitten) to bear up for Rio de Janeiro.
Here his ship was stranded; upon which he chartered a vessel to convey flour to the Strait, and went himself to Pernambuco, to procure large boats for carrying supplies to his
colony, and assisting in the recovery of his stranded ship; she had, however, drifted off, and sunk near Bahia; and all his boats were destroyed. Still Sarmiento persevered in his zealous efforts to succour his friends in the Strait; and succeeded in procuring a vessel of fifty or sixty tons, which, loaded with arms and whatever he considered useful, sailed, and reached Rio de Janeiro a month after the departure of the first vessel (January 1585). He followed, but in the latitude of 39° met with a furious gale, which drove him back to Rio de Janeiro, where the vessel that had preceded him had returned in distress.
Disappointed in his attempts to carry succour to the colony, he determined to go to Spain; but on his voyage thither, to complete the catalogue of his misfortunes, his ship was captured by three English vessels, and taken to England, after which the ill-fated colony in the Strait was neglected, if not entirely forgotten.
Two months after Sarmiento's departure from the Strait of Magalhaens, in the month of August, the middle of the winter of that region, the party belonging to the first establishment at Jesus set off by land, and joined that at San Felipe, with the unwelcome tidings of their deserted state. But as the provisions at San Felipe were insufficient to support all the people, Andres de Viedma, who, after Sarmiento's departure, had assumed the command, detached two hundred soldiers, under the command of Juan Iniguez, back to Jesus, for the purpose of communicating with any ship that might make her appearance, and awaiting the expected return of Sarmiento; but the winter and following summer passed by without any relief.
In this unhappy state, the colonists were obliged to think only of providing for their safety, and built two boats; in which fifty people embarked, besides Viedma, Suarez, a Franciscan friar named Antonio, and five Spanish women. They had not proceeded farther than Point Santa Brigida,[[30]]