54 SARMIENTO’S COLONY. 1587. 
by Cavendish, whose name was Tomé Hernandez, afterwards 
escaped from him at Quintero, near Valparaiso ; and, proceed- 
ing to Peru, gave an account of the fate of this cruelly neglected 
colony. 
This was the first, and perhaps will be the last, attempt 
made to occupy a country, offering no encouragement for 
a human being; a region, where the soil is swampy, cold, 
and unfit for cultivation, and whose climate is thoroughly 
cheerless. 
The name, San Felipe, ceased with the colony ; for Caven- 
dish called it Port Famine, in allusion to the fate of the colo- 
nists, all of whom, except the man he took away, and one saved 
two years afterwards (in 1589), by Andrew Mericke,* perished 
from hunger and its attendant diseases; and by this appellation 
the bay has since been universally known. 'To commemorate 
the ill-fated town, a very thickly-wooded mountain at the bot- 
tom of the bay, which forms a conspicuous and picturesque 
object, has been named by us Mount San Felipe. 
At this port, Sarmiento, on his first voyage through the 
Strait, communicated with a large party of Indians, in con- 
sequence of which he called it Bahia de la Gente; and the 
river, which now bears the name of Sedger, he named San 
Juan. Of this river Sarmiento took formal possession, as well 
as of the whole Strait, for the ‘ Mui Poderoso y mui Catolico 
Senor Phelipe Segundo,’ &c. &c. It was also here that, in con- 
sequence of the miraculous preservation of his vessel on many 
* “ Near to Port Famine they took on board a Spaniard, who was 
the only one then remaining alive of the garrison left in the Strait by 
Sarmiento. The account given by this man, as reported by Magoths, is, 
that he had lived in those parts six years, and was one of the four hun- 
dred men sent thither by the King of Spain in the year 1582, to fortify 
and inhabit there, to hinder the passage of all strangers that way into the 
South Sea. But that town (San Felipe) and the other Spanish colony 
being destroyed by famine, he said he had lived in a house, by himself, a 
long time, and relieved himself with his caliver()) until our coming thi- 
ther.” Burney, il. p. 96. This man died on the voyage to Europe 
Jd. p. 97. 
(6). A kind of gun —R. F. 
