34 



SARMIENT0''s COLONY. 



1587. 



by Cavendish, whose name was Tome 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 

 J uan. 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(Z') until our coming thi- 

 ther." Burney, ii. p. 96. This man died on the voyage to Europe 

 Id. p. 97. * 



(h) A kind of gun — R, F. 



