but very little, at the expense of much wood and with the necessity of keeping up fire day and night, which dried them more than the water that they got moistened them. All this taught us the great need in which we live, with our life on a thread, and the Lord many times threatening to cut it short. When we had mended the rudder as well as we could at the time, we went on up the coast, being disillusioned, so that we would not have thought of going out to sea even if the ocean had been as smooth as milk. Three days later, the twenty-seventh of February, which was Shrove Tuesday, we took our hands from the oars and placed ourselves in those of God, despairing of life. The remedy came to us as from God's own hand without our expecting it, when we were overcome by labor, and dying of hunger and thirst, and had given up ourselves to death. Thus it is most certain that the Lord comes to the aid of him who calls upon Him when all things created fail him--blessed be God's holy name. We had reached such an extremity that of that sorry ration of water which we had now had about a month, and which was less than half a cuartillo daily for each person, there was only enough for two days. We were not now thinking of making any effort to find any, but had our minds wholly turned to preparing ourselves for death, when the Lord of life ordained that the waves of the sea should drive us into a little inlet which the land formed there, where we went on shore with the intention of never leaving the place, but of ending in it our voyage and our lives. It happened that one of the Indians in the ship went to bathe in the water, to relieve the great heat from which he suffered, and somewhat to moderate the thirst which was destroying us. He swam to land, and there right on the shore (which was muddy, like all of that along which we had coasted), his feet sank in at the foot of a wild palm-tree. Feeling that they had gone into water, he drew them out, applied his lips to the hole which he had made, and found that the water was fresh. The thirst from which he suffered not permitting him to wait until it settled, he drank mud and water until he was satisfied. He shouted to us to tell us what he had discovered, but no one believed him. At last, the Indian persisting in his affirmation, all hurried to the water to look upon this marvel, which might be compared to that which God performed in drawing water from a rock that His people might drink in the desert; for no less miraculous appeared to us this fresh water in a marsh so near the ocean. We gave God a thousand thanks, and rejoicing in the feast, we forgot the labor and the fasting which we had undergone in the long vigil. We easily dug a well, for the whole soil was muddy, and on the next morning we filled all our casks with the water, which had now settled. We set sail to look for food, and even aspired to greater things. [In a few days we reached the