As he says himself, his prison was not ‘fitting for his health,’ for day and night he had to keep a candle burning to see to read, and the grass grew underneath his bed, whilst for the sake of ‘health’ he had a pair of first-rate fetters on his feet. For his chief gaoler they procured one Hernando de Sosa, whom Nuñez had put in gaol for striking an Indian chief. A guard watched constantly at the prison gate, but, still, in spite of this he managed to communicate almost uninterruptedly with his friends outside. His method was certainly ingenious. His food was brought to him by an Indian girl, whom, so great was the fear of the patriots that he should write to the King, they made walk naked into the prison, carrying the dishes, and with her head shaved. Notwithstanding this, she managed to bring a piece of paper hidden between her toes. The party of Liberty, suspecting that Nuñez was communicating with his friends, procured an Indian youth to make love to the girl and learn the secret. This he failed to do, owing, perhaps, to his love-making being wanting in conviction on account of her shaved head. At last Irala and his friends determined to send the Governor a prisoner to Spain, taking care, of course, to despatch a messenger beforehand to distort the facts and prejudice the King. The friends of Nuñez, however, managed to secrete a box of papers, stating the true facts, on board the ship. At dead of night a band of harquebusiers dragged him from his bed (after a captivity of eleven months), as he says, ‘almost with the candle in his hand’—_i.e._, in a dying state. As he left the prison, he fell upon his knees and thanked God for having let him once more feel the air of heaven, and then in a loud voice exclaimed: ‘I name as my successor Captain Juan de Salazar de Espinosa.’ At this one Garci Vargas rushed at him with a knife, and told him to recall his words or he would kill him instantly. This he was stopped from doing, and Nuñez was hurried to the ship and chained securely to a beam. On board the vessel, he says, they tried to poison him; but this seems doubtful, as there was nothing on earth to prevent their doing so had they been so inclined. Still, as a prudent man he took the precaution to provide some oil and a piece of unicorn (_pedazo de unicornio_), with which he tried the food. Unicorns he could not have seen in Paraguay, nor yet in Florida, and he does not explain how he became so luckily equipped. None the less, of all the discoverers of America he is the man of least imaginative power—that is, in matters appertaining to natural history—so one must conclude he had his piece of unicorn from Spain, where he most probably had bought it from some dealer in necessaries for travellers to the New World.