Meanwhile the famishing soldiers under Encinasola, despairing of life if they remained longer in that country, broke their ranks, many of them straggling off to Nombre de Dios. The governor determined to make one more attempt to relieve his people. He accordingly despatched Father Juan de Sosa and the alcalde Sanabria with six soldiers, four negroes, and two natives for Nombre de Dios, to obtain recruits and supplies. In three days this party reached the river Belen, and then, unable to cross, followed its course southward, cutting their way through thickets and struggling through morasses until after eleven days they succeeded in reaching the opposite bank. Continuing their journey they encountered along their pathway the dead bodies of their former companions who had perished while attempting to reach Nombre de Dios. A little stale food which had been washed ashore from some wreck or distressed ship saved them from starvation. At length they came upon the remnant of those who had deserted from Concepcion, now reduced to twenty-five men, and these gaunt, haggard, and naked as the natives. Their progress was barred by hostile bands, and themselves reduced to the last extremity. Unable to proceed farther, they fortified themselves from the attacks of the natives as best they were able, and awaited the development of events. Meanwhile the sufferings of the Spaniards at Veragua, if possible, increased. "I was informed by Marcos de Sanabria, one of the survivors," says Oviedo, "that the mortality at Veragua was at one time so great that dead bodies lay unburied within and around the huts, and that the stench arising from putrefaction was intolerable." He relates of one Diego de Campo, a native of Toledo, who seized with illness became convinced that death was near and that soon his own corpse would be added to those which lay strewn before him rotting in the sun, that he determined, if possible, to escape that horror. Wrapping himself in a cloak, he resorted to a spot where a grave had been prepared for another of those who were to die, and stretching himself within it soon breathed his last. Not long afterward the owner of the grave, being obliged himself to seek his last resting-place, found there another; but leaving the occupant undisturbed, he directed that his own body should be placed in the same grave, and thus the two found burial. [Sidenote: SOSA GOES TO PERU.]