Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced by Richard Walter
page 21 of 198 (10%)
page 21 of 198 (10%)
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resume that authority which he had once parted with. However the
President of Chile interposing, and declaring for Pizarro, Mindinuetta after a long and obstinate struggle, was obliged to submit. But Pizarro had not yet completed the series of his adventures, 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 |
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