But As The Natives Did Not Come Near The Boats, Our Captain And The Rest Determined To Land, Notwithstanding What Had Been Agreed Upon In The Ship.

At length twenty-three men landed, armed with muskets, and marched up towards four or five houses; but had

Hardly got a musketshot shot from the boats, when above a thousand Indians fell upon them from an ambush, with such weapons as they had, and slew them all within our sight. Our boats waited long, to see if any of our men would return; but seeing no hope to recover any of them, they returned to the ship with, the sorrowful news that all who had landed were slain. This was a most lamentable affair, as we had scarcely as many men remaining as could weigh our anchor.

We went next day over to the island of St Mary, where we found our admiral, who had arrived there four days before us, and had departed from the island of Mocha the day after we came from thence, the general, master, and all the officers having been wounded on shore.[51] We were much grieved for our reciprocal misfortunes, so that the one bemoaned the other, yet were glad that we had come together again. My good friend Timothy Shotten of London was pilot of this ship. At this island of St Mary, which is in lat. 37 deg. S, [36 deg. 50'] near the coast of Chili, it was concluded to take every thing into one of the ships, and burn the other; but the new captains could not agree which of the ships to burn, so that this agreement was not executed. Having much cloth in our ships, it was agreed to steer for Japan, which we understood was a good market for cloth; and we were the more inclined to this measure, because the King of Spain's ships upon the coast of Peru having now intelligence of us, would come in search of us, and knew that we were weak by the loss of our men, which was all too true, for one of our ships, as we learnt afterwards, was forced to surrender to the enemy at St Jago.

[Footnote 51: In the second letter, the general and twenty-seven men are said to have been slain at Mocha. - E.]

Having procured refreshments at Santa Maria, more by policy than force, we departed from the road of that island on the 27th November with our two ships, having heard nothing of the rest of our fleet. We took our course direct for Japan, and passed the line together, keeping company till we came into the latitude of 28 deg. N. in which latitude, on the 22d and 23d of February, we had as heavy a storm of wind as I ever saw, accompanied with much rain; during which storm we lost sight of our other and larger ship, being very sorry to be left alone, yet comforted ourselves with the hope of meeting again at Japan.

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