r more beyond their expectation, they were reduced to such infinite
distress, that rats, when they could be caught, sold for four dollars
a-piece; and a sailor who died in one of the ships, had his death
concealed by his brother for some days, who lay all that time in
the hammock with the corpse, that he might receive the dead man's
allowance of provisions. In this dreadful situation, if their horrors
were capable of augmentation, they were alarmed by discovering
a conspiracy among the marines on board the Asia, who proposed
massacring the officers and whole crew, their sole motive for this
bloody resolution appearing to be the desire of relieving their
hunger, by appropriating the whole provisions in the ship to
themselves. This design was prevented, when just on the point of
execution, by means of one of their confessors, and three of the
ringleaders were immediately put to death. By the complicated
distresses of fatigue, sickness, and famine, the three ships that
escaped lost the greatest part of their men. The admiral's ship, the
Asia, arrived at Monte Video in the Rio Plata with only half her crew.
The Estevan, when she anchored in the bay of Barragan had also lost
half her men. The Esperanza was still more unfortunate, for of 450
hands she brought with her from Spain, only 58 remained alive. The
whole regiment of foot perished except sixty men. To give a more
distinct idea of what they underwent upon this occasion, I shall
present a short account of the fate of the Guipuscoa, extracted from a
letter written by Don Joseph Mindinuetta, her captain, to a person of
distinction at Lima, a copy of which fell into our hands when in the
South-Sea.

Having separated on the 6th March in a fog from the Hermiona and
Esperanza, being then, as I suppose, to the S.E. of States Land, and
plying to the westward, it blew a furious storm at N.W. the succeeding
night, which, at half past ten, split his main-sail, and obliged him
to bear away with his foresail. The ship now went ten knots an hour
with a prodigious sea, and often ran her gangway under water. He
likewise sprung his main-mast, and the ship made so much water that
she could not be freed by four pumps assisted by bailing. On the 9th
the wind became calm, but the sea continued so high that the ship, in
rolling, opened all her upper works and seams, and started the butt
ends of her planks, and the greatest part of her top-timbers, the
bolts being drawn by the violence of th