This he performed upon the spot, plunging his dagger repeatedly into Osorio,
or, as Hulderico Schmidel has it, `sewing him up with cuts'
(`cosiendole a\ pun~aladas'). This murder or execution -- for who
shall tell when murder finishes and its legal counterpart begins? --
rendered Don Pedro very unpopular with all the fleet; for, as Schmidel has it
in his history,* `the soldiers loved Osorio.' To be loved by the soldiers
was the only chance a Spanish officer had in those times of holding his own.
Both Schmidel and Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who had both been common soldiers,
and who, curiously, both wrote histories, lose no occasion of vilifying
officers who used the soldiers hardly. It is true that Bernal Diaz
(who, unlike Schmidel, was a man of genius) does so with some discretion,
and always apparently with reason. Schmidel, on the other hand,
seems to have considered that any officer who interfered
between the soldiers and the Indians was a tyrant, and hence
his denunciation of Alvar Nunez, under whom he served.

--
* `Historia y Descubrimiento de el Rio de la Plata y Paraguay',
Hulderico Schmidel, contained in the collection made
by Andres Gonzalez Barcia, and published in 1769 at Madrid
under the title of `Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales'.
--

In 1535 the expedition entered the river Plate. Here Mendoza,
with his usual want of judgment, pitched upon what is now
the site of Buenos Ayres as the spot on which to found his colony.
It would be difficult to select a more inconvenient place
in which to found a town. The site of Buenos Ayres is almost level
with the waters of the river Plate, which there are shallow --
so shallow that large vessels could not approach nearer