On his homeward voyage Vieyra encountered a tempest near the _Azores_, from which he owed his deliverance to the crew of a Dutch privateer, who took him from his ship after its masts had been cut away. He and his companions, after having been plundered of all they possessed, were landed on the island of _Graciosa_. Vieyra’s credit, however, was sufficient to procure for himself and his forty companions the means of subsistence during two months, and likewise a passage to Lisbon, which he thus vividly describes:-- “The ship belonged to heretic owners, and the pilot and the sailors were heretics; we passengers were some religioners of different orders, and a great quantity of those musical islanders who come here to compose a choir of four voices with their nightingales and goldfinches, canary-birds and blackbirds. The weather was worse than ordinary, and the effects which I observed in it were truly admirable. We religioners were all employed in prayers and litanies, making vows to Heaven and exorcisms to the waves, throwing relics into the sea, and above all in acts of contrition, confessing many times, as if at the point of death. The sailors, like the heretics, when the hatches were lying at the feet of the masts, ate and drank more merrily than ever, and mocked at what they called our ceremonies. The little birds at the same time, at the sound which the wind made in the rigging, as if those cords had been the string of some musical instrument, exerted their strength in singing. God, help me! if labour and fear had not taken off all attention, who would not in this situation have admired effects so various and so opposite, the cause being the same? What, ... all in the same ship, all in the same storm, all in the same danger, and some singing, some mocking, some praying and lamenting?” It is interesting to see this great man, who in following his duty shrank neither from labour nor from any kind of danger, ingenuously confessing the effect which a storm at sea had upon him in common with other bad sailors. It is needless to add that the Portuguese Government were now faithfully and fully informed of the condition of things in the northern provinces of _Brazil_; but although the King was most desirous to do what was right and just, his power in the matter was limited. Deputies from _Maranham_ and _Pará_ were in Lisbon, and neither gold nor falsehood was spared on behalf of the slaveholders.