rpenters were
refitting her masts on shore.

A sail being discovered in the offing on the 27th December, and not
knowing but she might be Spanish, the eighteen-oared boat was manned
and armed, and sent under the command of our second lieutenant, to
examine her before she got within the protection of the forts. She
proved to be a Portuguese brigantine from Rio Grande; and, though
our officer behaved with the utmost civility to the master, and even
refused to accept a calf which the master pressed him to accept, the
governor took great offence at the sending our boat, talking of it
in a high strain, as a violation of the peace subsisting between
the crowns of Great Britain and Portugal. We thus attributed this
blustering to no deeper cause than the natural insolence of Don Jose;
but when he charged our officer with behaving rudely, and attempting
to take by violence the calf which he had refused as a present, we had
reason to suspect that he purposely sought this quarrel, and had more
important objects in view than the mere captiousness of his temper.
What these motives might be we had then no means of determining, or
even guessing at; but we afterwards found, by letters which fell into
our hands when in the South-Seas, that he had dispatched an express to
Pizarro, who then lay in the Rio Plata, with an account of our arrival
at St Catharines, together with a most ample and circumstantial
account of our force and condition. We then conceived, that Don Jose
had raised this groundless clamour on purpose to prevent us from
visiting the brigantine when she should go away again, lest we might
have found proofs of his perfidy, and perhaps have discovered
the secret of his smuggling correspondence with his neighbouring
governors, and with the Spaniards at Buenos Ayres.

It was near a month before the Tryal was refitted; for not only were
her lower-masts defective, but her main-topmast and fore-yard were
likewise found rotten. While this work was going on, the other
ships of the squadron set up new standing-rigging, together with a
sufficient number of preventer shrowds to each mast, to secure them in
the most effectual manner. Also, in order to render the ships stiffer,
to enable them to carry more sail abroad, and to prevent them from
straining their upper works in hard gales of wind, the several
captains were ordered to put some of their great guns into their
holds. These precautions being complied with, and all the ships ha