[131] Brazil.
[132] From Buenos Ayres to the Island of Santa Catalina there are 600 miles. Santa Catalina did not then belong to Brazil, but to the Gobernacion del Rio de la Plata (Government of the River Plate), belonging to the Spanish Crown. Schmidt could not have been ignorant of this, since he had been there with the expedition of Don Pedro de Mendoza.
[133] Gonzalo Mendoza.
This commander, Conssaillo Manchossa, asked Martin Domingo Eijolla for six trusty soldiers, whom he could rely upon; and they were promised him. So he took me and six Spaniards, and also twenty more soldiers and seamen.
Departing from Bonas Aeieres, we came in a month’s time to St. Catharina, and finding the above-mentioned ship which had arrived from Spain, and the commander, Albernunzo Gabrero, with all his men, we were greatly rejoiced, and stayed there for two months, loading our ship with rice, manioc, and Turkish corn, so full that we could not take any more.
Then having sailed with both ships and the commander, Albernunzo Gabrero, and all his people from S. Catharina towards Bonas Aeieres in India, we arrived at twenty miles from the river Paranaw Wassu.[134] This river is forty miles wide at its mouth, and has the same width for eighty miles, until one reaches a harbour called S. Gabriel, where the river (Parana) has a width of eight miles.
[134] In early times this river was called Rio de Solis, and afterwards also Paraná Guazú. Its mouth, as we have before stated (supra, p. [6]), is 188 miles wide between Capes Santa Maria and San Antonio. The width of the Paraná proper, where it empties into the Plate, at the end of the Delta, is twenty-five miles, between the island of Martin Garcia and Point San Fernando.
Having arrived as before said, to within twenty miles of this river, on All Saints’ eve, the two ships approached at night close to one another, and the one spoke the other, asking if we were in the river Paranaw; our seaman said we were in that river, but the other one said we were at a distance of twenty miles from it.
For when two, three, or more ships sail in company, they always come together at sunset, and ask one another how long they have sailed day and night, and what wind they intend taking at night, in order that they may not separate from one another.
After this our skipper again addressed the master of the other ship, asking if he would follow him, but the other said that it was already night, and he would therefore stand out to sea till next morning, and would not make the land by night; this skipper was indeed somewhat wiser than ours as the event afterwards proved.