for when
he and Mindinuetta came back by land from Chile to Buenos Ayres in the
year 1745 they found at Monte Video the Asia, which near three years
before they had left there. This ship they resolved, if possible, to
carry to Europe, and with this view they refitted her in the best manner
they could; but their great difficulty was to procure a sufficient number
of hands to navigate her, for all the remaining sailors of the squadron
to be met with in the neighbourhood of Buenos Ayres did not amount to a
hundred men. They endeavoured to supply this defect by pressing many of
the inhabitants of Buenos Ayres, and putting on board besides all the
English prisoners then in their custody, together with a number of
Portuguese smugglers whom they had taken at different times, and some of
the Indians of the country. Among these last there was a chief and ten of
his followers who had been surprised by a party of Spanish soldiers about
three months before. The name of this chief was Orellana; he belonged to
a very powerful tribe which had committed great ravages in the
neighbourhood of Buenos Ayres. With this motley crew (all of them except
the European Spaniards extremely averse to the voyage) Pizarro set sail
from Monte Video, in the River of Plate about the beginning of November,
1745, and the native Spaniards, being no strangers to the dissatisfaction
of their forced men treated both the English prisoners and the Indians
with great insolence and barbarity, but more particularly the Indians;
for it was common for the meanest officers in the ship to beat them most
cruelly on the slightest pretences, and often times only to exert their
superiority. Orellana and his followers, though in appearance
sufficiently patient and submissive, meditated a severe revenge for all
these inhumanities. Having agreed on the measures necessary to be taken,
they first furnished themselves with Dutch knives sharp at the point,
which, being the common knives used in the ship, they found no difficulty
in procuring. Besides this they employed their leisure in secretly
cutting out thongs from raw hides, of which there were great numbers on
board, and in fixing to each end of these thongs the double-headed shot
of the small quarter-deck guns; this, when swung round their heads
according to the practice of their country was a most mischievous weapon*
in the use of which the Indians about Buenos Ayres are trained from their
infancy, and consequently are ext