undertook also to provide them in provisions by the way.

About the middle of March, Captain Cheap and his four remaining
companions set out for Chiloe; their Indian conductor having provided
several canoes, and gathered many of his countrymen together for that
purpose. Mr Elliot, the surgeon, soon afterwards died, so that there
now only remained four of the whole company. At last, after a very
complicated passage, partly by sea and partly by land, Captain Cheap,
Mr Byron, and Mr Campbell, arrived at the island of Chiloe, where they
were received by the Spaniards with great humanity; but, on account of
some quarrel among the Indians, Mr Hamilton did not get there till two
months later. It was thus above a twelvemonth, from the loss of the
Wager, before this fatiguing peregrination terminated. The four who
now remained were brought so extremely low, by their fatigues and
privations, that in all probability none of them would have survived,
had their distresses continued only a few days longer. The captain was
with difficulty recovered; and the rest were so reduced by labour, the
severity of the weather, scantiness of food, and want of all kinds of
necessaries, that it was wonderful how they had supported themselves
so long.

After some stay at Chiloe, the captain and the other three who were
with him, were sent to Valparaiso, and thence to St Jago, the capital
of Chili, where they continued above a year, and where they were
joined by Mr Hamilton. News arriving that a cartel had been settled
between Great Britain and Spain, Captain Cheap, Mr Byron, and Mr
Hamilton, were permitted to return to Europe in a French ship. Mr
Campbell, the other midshipman, having changed his religion while at
St Jago, chose to go from thence to Buenos Ayres along with Pizarro
and his officers, overland, and went with them afterwards to Spain in
the Asia: But failing in his endeavours to procure a commission from
the court of Spain, he returned to England, and attempted in vain to
get reinstated in the British navy. He has since published a narration
of his adventures in which he complains of the injustice that has
been done him and strongly disavows having ever been in the Spanish
service: but, as the change of his religion and his offering himself
to the court of Spain, though he was not accepted, are matters which
he must be conscious can be incontestably proved, he has been entirely
silent on these two heads.[5]

[Footnote 5: The circums