Three times they entered the Straits, penetrating almost to the Second Narrows, only to be thrown out again by the appalling tidal currents; finally Sarmiento decided to land in the shelter of Cabo Virgenes itself. The little colony began with a total population of under 350, of whom 177 were soldiers and 81 ‘pobladores’, including 13 women and 10 children. For the formal founding of the City of the Name of Jesus, Sarmiento himself landed, according to Arciniega in full parade armour, and although on more workaday occasions he wore seamen's clothes, this would be in character. The colonists were in rags, ‘and he who had a waistcoat had no jacket.’^[23] To their leader, the ‘plain clothed with odoriferous and consoling herbs’ was indeed a promised land; what the wretched Andalusian peasants and artisans thought of these windswept and inexpressibly bleak steppelands cannot be imagined, the more so as the ships were at once blown off out of sight, and they were left with less than four days’ rations, apart from some manioc flour and two sacks of biscuit. Soldiers and settlers alike, they were used to buckling to under hardship, and Sarmiento saw that they did so. He made inspiring speeches, and ‘All answered that they were ready to obey and to follow to the end of the world as they had no other father’—and no other option; and for all but two of them this was to be in truth the very end of the world.

They scouted about for food, finding various edible roots and berries, fish and shellfish; vegetables, vines, and fruit trees were planted, including of all things quinces and ginger. Half a league from Cabo Virgenes a township was laid out, with town square (and gallows) and a sail-roofed church. Then, three days later, the ships came back and more stores were landed. It was agreed to beach one of the ships and use her timbers for building; unluckily, the beaching was- 272 -mismanaged and many stores, including half the flour, wine, and cannon were lost—even so, they were more than amply gunned, with twenty-two pieces in charge of Andrés de Viedma. But this incident led to a quarrel with Diego de Ribera, up till now a staunch supporter, and he left hastily, without waiting for despatches: more suo, Sarmiento put the worst possible construction on this defection. He was left with one small ship, the Santa Maria de Castro, in bad shape and lacking much of her gear.

Nombre de Jesus, although formed into a municipality, was only an advanced base, and the main work lay ahead. As regards terrain, the best site for a fort blocking the Straits would have been at the Second Narrows, but Sarmiento ruled this out as he feared that the currents would make it almost inaccessible to shipping, which would face a constant risk of being forced out into the Atlantic, as had happened so often already and was to happen again to the Maria on her first voyage west. He decided that the main position should be at Cabo Santa Ana, some forty kilometres on the hither side of the southernmost point of the mainland. On the first voyage to Spain he had noted this as a suitable site: it lay on the frontier between the two main Indian groups, with generally open steppe country towards the Atlantic, forested mountains to the west; a convenient port with ample wood and water, harbouring many deer and parroquets, which hinted at a mild climate; and a projected fort at the First Narrows could be reached in one tide.

Andrés de Viedma was to be left in command at Nombre de Jesus; it needed a resolute man, for the tiny settlement had already been attacked by the Indians. The Maria was sent ahead to Cabo Santa Ana to begin cutting timber, and after waiting three days lest she should again be driven back, Sarmiento set off by land on 4 March 1584, with a hundred soldiers. The many detours on this indented coast meant a total distance of seventy or eighty leagues; to make it on the eight days' rations they carried would have meant covering over fifty kilometres a day; Sarmiento, always reconnoitring ahead, must have covered a greater distance still. It was a ghastly traverse: clothing was inadequate to the autumn cold, shoes gave out and had to be improvised from hide and goatskin. Foraging produced occasional eggs of ‘vultures’ (rheas?), deer, berries, nuts and roots, but above all shellfish. They had to sacrifice their two remaining dogs and the few goats they had brought as stock; some very pleasant nuts, like chestnuts (probably Antarctic beech) gave them violent colics. There was a fight with some very tall and very valiant Indians, who killed one man and wounded ten. A little wine could be doled out to the wounded, but they, and some sound men, wished nothing more but to die among the reeds and bushes, and there were murmurings; somehow Sarmiento drove and cajoled them on, until on the nineteenth day they reached the limits of endurance: ‘they would wait where they were, either for the mercy of God, or for death.’ Sarmiento, whose writings show a compassion for the rank and file rare in his age, tried to rally them for a last effort: let it not be said that the King ‘had no longer such men as he was wont to have in olden days’,^[24] - 273 -and Cabo Santa Ana was in sight. Next daybreak he set out with a handful of followers, promising—with how much conviction?—to return when he met the Maria. Before he had gone two hundred paces he sighted her boat, and sent back the news: all came down to the beach, some crawling on hands and knees, and they learnt that the ship was harboured barely an arquebus shot away. An issue of bread and wine worked wonders.

On 25 March 1584 Sarmiento founded his second city, Rey Don Felipe; large wooden buildings were erected for the church and the royal magazine, sites allotted for town hall, clergy house, and a Franciscan monastery, magistrates were appointed, the township was palisaded and six guns mounted on a seaward bastion. There were the usual pathetically hopeful plantings. But rations were severely limited—twelve ounces of flour or biscuit and a half a gill of wine a day; basically they would have to live on the country. Shellfish, stewed with a bark like cinnamon, were a staple food, and there was a bizarre and macabre note: they contained so many pearls that it was tiresome to pick them out, ‘and at first, when they had no thought of perishing, and had hopes of escaping, they kept them … but, afterwards, when they found themselves in such hopeless case, they took no care of them’.^[25]

Not surprisingly, there was an incipient conspiracy to seize the Maria and escape; as soon as this was crushed, and fortunately after the people were under some sort of cover, it snowed for fifteen days. Sarmiento then decided to return to Nombre de Jesus, taking with him some guns for the First Narrows; he sailed on 25 May and reached the town that same night, to find that here also there had been a mutiny and an execution, short rations, and a fight with the Indians. Before he was able to land, a furious gale broke his sole remaining cable and drove the Maria out to sea. It raged for twenty days and return was impossible; after a nightmare voyage, in which they were reduced to gnawing leather, Sarmiento reached São Vicente on 27 June: the beginning of a new act in his tragedy.

At São Vicente, Sarmiento received little help; he went on to Rio de Janeiro, where the Governor Salvador Correa de Sá was more sympathetic, and indeed by and large the Portuguese seem to have been more helpful than his own countrymen. Diego de Ribera had not been unmindful of the colony, and with the stores he had left at Rio Sarmiento was able to despatch a small ship with flour and other supplies for the Straits; but Rio was then only a minor port, and it was necessary to go to Pernambuco for more adequate provisioning. Thence he headed south again, only to be wrecked at Bahia: ship and stores were a total loss, but for two or three barrels of wine and a gun, and Sarmiento, who had once declared that he would reach the Straits if he had to sail there on a plank, now got ashore, bruised and bleeding, on two boards roughly nailed together.… Here and at Espíritu Santo he was given every help, and collected more stores, with which on 13 January 1585, he left for Rio de Janeiro, whence- 274 -his supply ship had sailed in December. He set off at once with his succours; once more a terrible seven weeks' storm drove him back to Rio, having jettisoned most of the stores and only holding the ship together with improvised cables. And there he found that the supply ship sent off in December had itself been driven back to that port.

He did not yet despair. His ship was patched up by pulling to pieces and burning an old wreck for its nails and iron gear; tar had to be got from Bahia, grease by catching two whales in the harbour. Now he had to face open mutiny: he quelled it by physical assault on the ringleaders and fair words to the rest. But the months dragged by, it seemed hopeless to continue these desperate improvisations in Brazil, and he decided to seek more effective aids in Spain. At the end of April 1586, Sarmiento sailed from Rio de Janeiro, ill but keeping on deck lest there be further insubordination. On 11 August he was in the Azores and there, in what were now de facto Spanish waters, he fell in with two well-armed English pinnaces. He had only twenty men; surrender was inevitable.^[26]