98 : Idle Days in Patagonia. 
When they had drunk their fill, they were driven 
like cattle to the Carmen and shut up within the 
fort. In the evening the ship arrived before the 
town, and, going a little too near the shore on the 
opposite side, ran aground. The men in her were 
quickly apprised of the disaster which had over- 
taken the land force; meanwhile the resolute Pata- 
gonians, concealed amongst the trees on the shore, 
began to pepper the deck with musket-balls; the 
Brazilians, in terror for their lives, leaped into the 
water and swam to land ; and when darkness fell, 
the colonists had crowned their brave day’s work 
by the capture of the Imperial war-vessel Itaparica. 
No doubt it was soon pulled to pieces, good build- 
ing material being rather expensive on the Rio 
Negro; a portion of the wreck, however, still lies 
in the river, and often, when the tide was low, and 
those old brown timbers came up above the surface, 
like the gaunt fossil ribs of some gigantic Pliocene 
monster, I have got out of my boat and stood upon 
them experiencing a feeling of great satisfaction. 
Thus the awful war-cloud burst, and the little 
colony, by pluck and cunning and readiness to 
strike at the proper moment, saved itself from the 
disgrace of being conquered by the infamous 
Empire of the tropics. 
During my residence at the house alongside the 
Parrot’s Cliff, one of our neighbours I was very 
much interested in was a man named Sosa. He 
was famed for an almost preternatural keenness of 
sight, had great experience of the wild life of the 
