Buenos Aires, at the time of Sotomayor’s landing, had the appearance of a temporary camp. A settlement had been made at that point in 1535, but lack of food and the hostility of the Indians caused it to be abandoned in 1538, for the site of the present city of Asunción. Forty-two years later, in 1580, the abandoned site was reoccupied under the leadership of Juan de Garay, and this new town had entered upon the third year of its existence when Sotomayor and his troops arrived. The horses that had been abandoned there nearly fifty years earlier had multiplied rapidly, and now furnished the animals needed for the trip across the continent. Wishing to assume the government of Chile as early as possible, Sotomayor, accompanied by eight persons, set out in advance of his troops, who were left to follow under the command of his brother Luis. He arrived at San Juan, in the province of Cuyo, on April 12, 1583, and on the 29th of the same month he reached the city of Mendoza. In this province, then within the jurisdiction of Chile, he was received as governor. The mountain pass was already closed with snow, and Sotomayor was obliged to remain in Cuyo until September. In the meantime, the troops, those who had not been induced to desert, about four hundred, were en route across the pampas, where they suffered great privation from lack of food and through ignorance of the way. They arrived in Mendoza on August 15. “They came without shoes and so nearly naked,” as Sotomayor wrote to the king, “that it broke my heart to see them.”[76] From Mendoza Sotomayor sent two messengers over the Andes in July, the mid-winter of the South, with confidential communications for the cabildo of Santiago. The mission was designed to set aside the internal confusion and conflicts that had arisen concerning the encomendero’s right to the labour of the Indians. It carried to Chile the governor’s appointment of five persons to take over the government of the province and conduct it until Sotomayor’s arrival at Santiago. Then, without waiting for the snow to disappear from the pass, he crossed the mountains in the last days of September, and immediately on arriving at Santiago he sent Pedro de Lisperguer to Lima with an order from the king, requiring the audiencia, in the absence of the viceroy, to send assistance to the impoverished and distressed colony. [Sidenote: Toledo in Chile]