Some ten years later a more fortunate expedition was made by the Englishman Cabot. In the service of the King of Spain he left Seville with four ships, intending to make a search for the islands of Tarsis, Ophir, and Eastern Cathay by the newly discovered Straits of Magellan. The little fleet touched at Pernambuco and remained there for three months. The Spaniards still appear to have had a design to check the Portuguese in Brazil, but Cabot evidently found them too strong in that quarter, so, says Purchas,[20] "he thought good to busy himself in something that might be profitable; and entered the year 29 discovering the River of Plate, where he was almost three years; and not being seconded, with relation of that which he had found, returned to Castile, having gone many leagues up the River. He found plate or silver among the Indians of those countries, for in the wars which these Indians had with those of the kingdoms of Peru they took it, and from it is called the River of Plate, of which the country hath taken the name." Here Purchas makes two mistakes. The discovery was not made in 1529, but several years earlier, and the river derived its name not from any metallic booty but from its silvery colour. Cabot went some distance up the Paraguay River, where he met with many adventures and lost many of his followers, and he made a serious endeavour to lay the foundations of Spanish power in Argentina, but the natives were unfriendly and he found the enterprise too formidable for his limited means. It is not surprising that he failed to secure the goodwill of the Indians. Cabot was a skilful and daring navigator and less ruthless than most of the Spanish adventurers, but he was rough in his methods and tainted by the prevailing inhumanity of the time. At San Vincente, for example, he bought fifty or sixty slaves of both sexes for the benefit of his partners in Seville. He had, in fact, disobeyed his instructions, which were to make for the Pacific, and when he returned to Seville in 1530 he was at once prosecuted and punished on various charges, though his disgrace was but temporary. His expedition has merely a geographical importance.