Upon November 2, 1537, he embarked at Cadiz with his fleet, consisting of a caravel and two full-rigged ships. All went well up to the Cape de Verdes. On nearing the equator, it occurred to the ‘Maestro del Agua’ to examine his stock of water, and, out of one hundred pipes which had been put aboard, he found but three remaining, and from these the thirty horses and four hundred men who were on board all had to drink. Seeing the greatness of the necessity, the Governor—for Alvar Nuñez almost always speaks of himself in the third person—gave orders that the fleet should make for land. ‘Three days,’ he says in his Commentaries, ‘we sailed in search of it’; and on the fourth, just before sunrise, occurred a very notable affair, and, as it is not altogether _fuera de proposito_, I set it down, and it is this—‘that, going towards the land, the ships had almost touched on some sharp rocks we had not seen.’ Then, as now, I take it, vigilance was not a noticeable quality in Spanish sailors. Just as the vessels were almost on the rocks, ‘a cricket commenced to sing, which cricket a sick soldier had put into the ship at Cadiz, being anxious to hear its music, and for the two months which our navigation had endured no one had heard it, whereat the soldier was much enraged; and as on that morning it felt the land [_sintio la tierra_], it commenced to sing, and its music wakened all the people of the ship, who saw the cliffs, which were distant almost a crossbow-shot from where we were, so we cast out anchors and saved the ship, and it is certain that if the cricket had not sung all of us, four hundred soldiers and thirty horses, had been lost.’ Some of the crew accepted the occurrence as a miracle from God; but Nuñez himself is silent on that head, being a better observer of natural history than a theologian. But ‘from there, and sailing more than a hundred leagues along the coast, the cricket every evening gave us his music, and thus with it we arrived at a little port beyond Cape Frio, where the Adelantado landed and unfurled his flag, and took possession for His Majesty.’ The expedition disembarked at Santa Catalina in Brazil. ‘There the Governor landed his men and twenty-six of the horses which had escaped the sea, all that remained of forty-six embarked in Spain.’ The _odium theologicum_ gave the Governor some work at once. Two friars—Fray Bernardo de Armenta and Fray Alonso Lebron, Franciscans—had burnt the houses of some Indians, who had retaliated in the heathen fashion by slaughtering two Christians. The ‘people being scandalized’, the Governor sent for the friars, admonished them, and told them to restrain their zeal. This was the first false step he made, and set all friars and priests throughout America against him. Hearing at Santa Catalina that Buenos Ayres was almost abandoned, and that the inhabitants had founded the town of Asuncion del Paraguay, Alvar determined to march thither by land, and