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.