Toward the end of October they came to the mouth of a large river which poured forth so strong a current that it drove the boats out to sea. Two, those which contained Narvaez and the friars, were lost. The men in the other three boats were driven ashore by a storm, somewhere on the coast of western Louisiana or eastern Texas.[2] This was [p348] in the winter of 1528–29. Toward the end of April, 1536, Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andres Dorantes, and a negro named Estevan, met some Spanish slave catchers near the Rio de Petatlan, in Sinaloa, west of the mountains which border the Gulf of California. These four men, with a single exception,[3] were the only survivors of the three hundred who had entered the continent with Narvaez eight years before. Cabeza de Vaca and his companions stayed in Mexico for several months, as the guests of the viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza. At first, it was probably the intention of the three Spaniards to return to Spain, in order to claim the due reward for their manifold sufferings. Mendoza says, in a letter dated December 10, 1537,[4] that he purchased the negro Estevan from Dorantes, so that there might be someone left in New Spain who could guide an expedition back into the countries about which the wanderers had heard. An earlier letter from the viceroy, dated February 11, 1537, commends Cabeza de Vaca and _Francisco_ Dorantes—he must have meant Andres, and perhaps wrote it so in his original manuscript—as deserving the favor of the Empress. Maldonado is not mentioned in this letter, and no trace of him has been found after the arrival of the four survivors in Mexico. All that we know about him is that his home was in Salamanca.[5] [Illustration: XXXIX. The Ulpius Globe of 1542 in Possession of the New York Historical Society] Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes started from Vera Cruz for Spain in October, 1536, but their vessel was stranded before it got out of the harbor. This accident obliged them to postpone their departure until the following spring, when Cabeza de Vaca returned home alone. He told the story of his wanderings to the court and the King, and was rewarded, by 1540, with an appointment as adelantado, giving him the command over the recently occupied regions about the Rio de la Plata. The position was one for which he was unfitted, and his subordinates [p349] sent him back to Spain. The complaints against him were investigated by the Council for the Indies, but the judgment, if any was given, has never been published. He certainly was not punished, and soon settled down in Seville, where he was still living, apparently, twenty years later.[6]