Catherine's, if possible, in order to save the hull of the ship, and the guns and stores on board her; but the crew instantly left off pumping, and being enraged at the hardships they had suffered, and the numbers they had lost (there being at that time no less than thirty dead bodies lying on the deck), they all with one voice cried out, "On shore, on shore!" and obliged the captain to run the ship in directly for the land, where, the 5th day after, she sunk with her stores and all her furniture on board her; but the remainder of the crew, whom hunger and fatigue had spared, to the number of four hundred, got safe on shore. From this account of the adventures and catastrophe of the _Guipuscoa_ we may form some conjecture of the manner in which the _Hermiona_ was lost, and of the distresses endured by the three remaining ships of the squadron, which got into the river of Plate. These last being in great want of masts, yards, rigging, and all kinds of naval stores, and having no supply at Buenos Ayres, nor in any of their neighbouring settlements, Pizarro dispatched an advice-boat with a letter of credit to Rio Janeiro, to purchase what was wanting from the Portuguese. He, at the same time, sent an express across the continent to St. Jago in Chili, to be thence forwarded to the Viceroy of Peru, informing him of the disasters that had befallen his squadron, and desiring a remittance of 200,000 dollars from the royal chests at Lima, to enable him to victual and refit his remaining ships, that he might be again in a condition to attempt the passage to the South Seas, as soon as the season of the year should be more favourable. It is mentioned by the Spaniards as a most extraordinary circumstance that the Indian charged with this express (though it was then the depth of winter, when the Cordilleras are esteemed impassable on account of the snow) was only thirteen days in his journey from Buenos Ayres to St. Jago in Chili, though these places are distant three hundred Spanish leagues, near forty of which are amongst the snows and precipices of the Cordilleras. The return to this dispatch of Pizarro's from the Viceroy of Peru was no ways favourable; instead of 200,000 dollars, the sum demanded, the viceroy remitted him only 100,000, telling him that it was with great difficulty he was able to {33} procure him even that: though the inhabitants of Lima, who considered the presence of Pizarro as absolutely necessary to their security, were much discontented at this procedure, and did not fail to assert that it was not the want of money, but the interested views of some of the viceroy's confidents, that prevented Pizarro from having the whole sum he had asked for.