undred men to fish with these nets, and the
others returned to the camp.

Mendoza was a wretched leader for such an expedition. He seems,
improvidently, to have trusted to the natives for provision and to have
quarrelled with them unnecessarily. Very soon after his arrival six
ounces of bread had been the daily allowance; it was now reduced to
three ounces of flour, and, every third day, a fish. They marked out the
city and began a mud wall for its defence, the height of a lance and
three feet thick. It was badly constructed: what was built up one day,
fell down the next; the soldiers had not as yet learned this part of
their duties.

A strong house was built within the circuit for the Adelantado; meantime
their strength began to fail for want of food. Rats, snakes, and vermin
of every eatable size were soon exterminated from the environs. Three
men stole a horse and ate it; they were tortured to make them confess
the fact and then hanged for it; their bodies were left upon the
gallows, and in the night all the flesh below the waist was cut away.
One man ate the corpse of his brother; some murdered their messmates for
the sake of receiving their rations as long as they could conceal their
death by saying they were ill. The mortality was very great. Mendoza,
seeing that all must perish if they remained here, sent George Luchsan,
one of his German or Flemish adventurers, up the river, with four
brigantines, to seek for food. Wherever they came the natives fled
before them and burned what they could not carry away. Half the men were
famished to death, and all must have perished if they had not fallen in
with a tribe who gave them barely enough maize to support them during
their return.

The Quirandies had not been dismayed by one defeat: they prevailed upon
the Bartenes, the Zechuruas, and the Timbues to join them, and with a
force which the besieged in their fear estimated at three-and-twenty
thousand--though it did not probably amount to a third of that
number--suddenly attacked the new city. The weapons which they used were
not less ingeniously adapted to their present purpose than those which
had proved so effectual against the horse. They are said to have had
arrows which took fire at the point as soon as they were discharged,
which were not extinguished until they had burned out, and which kindled
whatever they touched. With these devilish instruments they set fire to
the thatched huts of the settlers and consumed