“Emperor Charles the Fifth, having received the news of the death of James Mendoza, and the ill success of affairs at the river of Plate, and being of a spirit that ever struggled against adversity, he resolved to send thither another governor, with a supply of planters. Several aspiring to the command, Alvar Núñez Cabeça de Vaca carried it, on account of the great merits of his ancestors. For his grandfather, Peter de Vera, had subdued the Canary islands for King Ferdinand, and governed them; in which employment he behaved himself with such integrity, that having spent his own estate, he was reduced to such distress, that he gave his two sons in pawn to a Moor, for a sum of money to support his dignity and maintain his government, and the king afterwards redeemed them. One of these was father to Alvar we now speak of; who being in his youth educated in his father’s and grandfather’s virtues, going over into Florida under Pamphilo de Narvaez, to be the king’s treasurer there, was shipwrecked on the coast of America, and fell into the hands of the Indians; and authors of the first rank tell us, he was so virtuous, that during his ten years captivity among the people, he wrought several miracles, invoking the blessed trinity. This man being appointed governor, embarked seven hundred men besides women and children upon five ships, and sailing from Cadiz with a fair wind, when he came to twenty-eight degrees of south latitude, landed in that part of America with five hundred men, and sending the women and children with the rest by sea, travelled himself by land, almost the same way Alexius García had gone before, for three hundred leagues, discovering the country and, in the year 1541, happily arrived at the city of Asunción, and what is most remarkable, he lost not one soul in all that voyage and journey by sea and land.”[163] [Sidenote: Views of the common man] It is noteworthy that some of the most striking accounts of exploration in Spanish America were written by common soldiers. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Cieza de León, and Ulrich Schmidel are instances. They interpreted the thoughts and sentiments of the subordinate class, and help one to see how the private soldier or the common man viewed the enterprises in which he was engaged. The position of men of this class made a sharp contrast between their writings and the writings of leaders. Schmidel’s narrative of his twenty years in America was written in German, but in its Spanish translation it has been naturalized in the region of which he wrote, and in which he spent the effective years of his life.[164] [Sidenote: Ulrich Schmidel] [Sidenote: Mendoza’s Expedition]