A relation by Juan de Areizaga[1] gives the leading events of Loaisa's voyage until the Strait of Magellan is passed. The fleet leaves Corunna July 24, 1525, and finishes the passage of the strait May 26, 1526. On the voyage three ships are lost, the "San Gabriel," "Nunciado," and "Santi Spiritus." The "Santiago" puts in "at the coast discovered and colonized by … Cortés at the shoulders of New Spain," to reprovision. Loaisa is thus left with only three vessels. (No. ix, pp. 223-225.)
The deposition of Francisco Dévila—given (June 4, 1527) under oath before the officials at Corunna, in order to be sent to the king—and several letters by Rodrigo de Acuña, dated June 15, 1527, and April 30, 1528, give the interesting adventures of the ship "San Gabriel" and its captain after its separation from Loaisa's fleet. The vessel after various wanderings in the almost unknown seas near South American coasts, and exciting adventures with French vessels on the coast of Brazil, finally reaches Bayona May 28, 1527, in a wretched condition and very short of provisions. She carried "twenty-seven persons and twenty-two Indians," and is without her proper captain Acuña, who had been left in the hands of the French. Abandoned by the latter on the Brazilian coast, he was rescued by a Portuguese vessel and carried to Pernambuco "a trading agency of the King of Portugal," where he was detained as pris-
- ↑ This was a priest who accompanied the expedition. After passing the Strait of Magellan, the ship "Santiago," in which Areizaga sailed, was compelled by lack of supplies to direct its course toward the Spanish settlements on the west coast. This priest returned thence to Spain, where the historian Oviedo saw him; the latter compiles from Areizaga's narrative a long account of his adventures, and of Loaisa's voyage as far as the strait (see Oviedo's Hist, de Indias, lib. xx, cap. v-xiii).
