Almost the whole of the crew of the Wager perished, dropping off one by one in lamentable succession, principally by famine. It is perhaps worthy of remark, that the cook, who was eighty-two years of age, was one of the last who died.

But my principal object in this notice is to extract an account of a wonderful effort made by a few Indians to take possession of a large Spanish ship of war: the story is well worth repeating; and as the "Journal" is probably very little known, some of the readers of The Port Folio may find it new and interesting. The narrative of this daring attempt is not given by Bulkeley and Cummins, but introduced by them, as related by Isaac Morris, one of eight of the crew of the Wager, who, after they had departed from the island, on which she was wrecked, in the long-boat, were left by the boat, on an uninhabited part of Patagonia, having gone on shore for provisions. After various adventures, and almost incredible sufferings, four of these eight men arrived at Buenos Ayres; and were put on board the " Asia," the ship of the Spanish admiral, PIZARRO. In this vessel they were confined and badly treated for more than a year. At length they sailed for Spain, and there being a great deficiency of hands, every body was employed that could be had to make up the crew; among others, eleven Indians were sent on board, whom the Spaniards had taken prisoners a few months before, on a skirmish at a distance from Buenos Ayres.

Mr. Morris gives his narrative in these words:

"THREE days after we sailed, an affair happened on board which was like to have proved fatal to the whole crew; for about nine at night, we were alarmed with the cry of mutiny; and so indeed it proved: but such a one as would never have been suspected by any of the ship's crew, or perhaps credited by posterity, if such a number of persons were not still living to attest the fact. But, lest I should do injustice to the memory of such a surprising event, I shall beg leave to relate it in the language of Mr. Walters, assuring the reader that I was a witness to the whole affair.

"Pizarro had not yet completed the series of his adventures; for when he and Mendinuetta came back by land from Chili to Buenos Ayres, in the year 1745, they found at Monte Viedo 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 and putting on board many of the inhabitants of Buenos Ayres, 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 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 Viedo, 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 these, 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 oftentimes slyly to exert their superiority. Orellana and his followers, though in appearance sufficiently patient and submissive, meditated a severe revenge for all these inhumanities. As he conversed very well in Spanish (these Indians having in time of peace a good intercourse with Buenos Ayres) he affected to talk with such of the

English as understood that language, and seemed very desirous of being informed how many Englishmen there were on board, and which they were.

"As he knew that the English were as much enemies to the Spaniards as himself, he had doubtless an intention of disclosing his purpose to them, and making them partners in the scheme he had projected for revenging his wrongs and recovering his liberty. But having sounded them at a distance, and not finding them so precipitate and vindictive as he expected, he proceeded no further with them; but resolved to trust alone to the resolution of his ten faithful followers. These, it should seem, readily engaged to observe his directions, and to execute whatever commands he gave them. And 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 thongs from raw hides, of which there were great numbers on board, and in fitting 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. 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 disobedience, beat him with such violence that he left him bleeding on the deck, and stupified for sometime 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:

"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 forcastle was manned with its customary watch. Orellana and his companions under cover of the night, having prepared their weapons, and thrown off their trowsers, and the more cumberous part of their dress, came altogether on the quarter-deck, and drew towards the door of the great cabin. The boatswain immediately reprimanded them, and ordered them to be gone. On this Orellana spoke to his followers in his native language, when four of them drew off, two towards each gangway, and the chief and the six remaining Indians seemed to be slowly quitting the quarter-deck. When the detached Indians had taken possession of the gangway Orellana placed his hands hollow to his mouth and bellowed out the war-cry used by these savages, which is the harshest and most terrifying sound known in nature. This hideous yell was the signal for beginning the massacre: for on this they all draw their knives and brandished their prepared double-headed shot; and the six which remained on the quarter-deck immediately fell on the Spaniards who were intermingled with them, and laid near forty of them at their feet: of which about twenty of them were killed and the rest disabled. Many of the officers in the beginning of the tumult pushed into the great cabin, where they put out the lights and barricadoed the door; and of the others who had avoided the first fury of the Indians, some endeavoured to escape along the gangways into the forecastle; but the Indians placed there on purpose, stabbed the greatest part of them as they attempted to pass by, or forced them off the gangways into the waist: others threw themselves voluntarily over the barricadoes into the waist, and thought themselves happy to be concealed among the cattle: but the greatest part escaped up the main shrouds, and sheltered themselves either in the tops or rigging. And though the Indians attacked only the quarter-deck, yet the watch in the forecastle finding the communication cut off, VOL. III.

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and being terrified by the wounds of the few, who not being killed on the spot had strength sufficient to force their passage along the gangways, and not knowing either who their enemies were, or what were their numbers, they likewise gave all over for lost, and, in great confusion ran up into the rigging of the foremast and bowsprit. Thus, these eleven Indians, with a resolution perhaps without example, possessed themselves, almost in an instant, of the quarterdeck of a ship mounting sixty-six guns, with a crew of near five hundred men, and continued in peaceable possession of this post a considerable time; for the officers in the great cabin (among whom were Pizarro and Mendinuetta) the crew between decks, and those who had escaped into the tops and rigging, were only anxious for their own safety, and were for a long time incapable of forming any project for suppressing the insurrection and recovering possession of the ship. It is true the yells of the Indians, the groans of the wounded, and the confused clamours of the crew all heightened by the obscurity of the night, had at first greatly magnified their danger, and had filled them with the imaginary terrors which darkness, disorder, and an ignorance of the real strength of an enemy never fail to produce. For as the Spaniards were sensible of the disaffection of their pressed hands, and were also conscious of their barbarity to their prisoners, they imagined the conspiracy was general, and considered their own destruction as inevitible; so that it is said some of them had once taken the resolution of leaping into the sea, but were prevented by their companions. However, when the Indians had entirely cleared the quarter-deck, the tumult in a great measure subsided; for those who had escaped were kept silent by their fears, and the Indians were incapable of pursuing them, to renew the disorder. Orellana, when he saw himself master of the quarter-deck, broke open the arm-chest, which, on a slight suspicion of mutiny had been ordered there a few days before as to a place of the greatest security. Here he took it for granted he should find cutlasses sufficient for himself and his companions, in the use of which they were