Ansons Voyage Round the World | Page 7

at Monte Video,
was ordered to be refitted, the command of her being given to

Mindinuetta, who was captain of the Guipuscoa when she was lost. He,
in the November of the succeeding year that is, in November, 1742,
sailed from the River of Plate for the South Seas and arrived safe on the
coast of Chile where his Commodore, Pizarro, passing overland from
Buenos Ayres met him. There were great animosities and contests
between these two gentlemen at their meeting occasioned principally
by the claim of Pizarro to command the Esperanza, which Mindinuetta
had brought round, for Mindinuetta refused to deliver her up to him,
insisting that as he came into the South Seas alone, and under no
superior, it was not now in the power of Pizarro to 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 these inhumanities. Having agreed
on the measures necessary to be taken, they first furnished themselves
with Dutch knives sharp at the point, which, being the common knives
used in the ship, they found no difficulty in procuring. Besides this they
employed their leisure in secretly cutting out thongs from raw hides, of
which there were great numbers on board, and in fixing to each end of
these thongs the double-headed shot of the small quarter-deck guns;
this, when swung round their heads according to the practice of their
country was a most mischievous weapon* in the use of which the
Indians about Buenos Ayres are trained from their infancy, and
consequently are extremely expert.
SPANISH CRUELTY.
These particulars being in good forwardness, the execution of their
scheme was perhaps precipitated by a particular outrage committed on
Orellana himself; for one of the officers, who was a very brutal fellow,
ordered Orellana aloft, which being what he was incapable of
performing, the officer, under pretence of his disobedience, beat him
with such violence that he left him bleeding on the deck and stupefied
for some time with his bruises and wounds. This usage undoubtedly
heightened his thirst for revenge, and made him eager and impatient till
the means of executing it were in his power, so that within a day or two
after this incident he and his followers opened their desperate resolves
in the ensuing manner.
(*Note. It is called a bola.)
A DARING ADVENTURE.
It was about nine in the evening, when many of the principal officers
were on the quarter-deck indulging in the freshness of the night air; the
waist of the ship was filled with live cattle, and the forecastle was
manned with its customary watch. Orellana and his companions under
cover of the night, having prepared their weapons and thrown off their

trousers and the more cumbrous part of their dress, came altogether on
the quarter-deck and drew towards the