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 the roll.  In this condition, with additional disasters to the hull and rigging, they continued beating westward to the 12th, when they were in lat. 60 deg.  S. and in great want of provisions, numbers perishing daily by the fatigue of pumping, and the survivors quite dispirited by labour, hunger, and the severity of the weather, their decks being covered with snow above a foot in depth.  Finding the wind fixed in the west and blowing strong, and their passage that way impossible, they resolved to bear away for the Rio Plata.  On the 22d they had to throw overboard all their upper-deck guns and an anchor, and were obliged to take six turns of the cable round the ship to prevent her from opening and falling to pieces.