Chapter THE NINTH

_How the governor and his people found themselves starving, and
appeased their hunger with worms from reeds._

THE twenty-eighth day of December the governor and his people departed from the village of Tuguy, where they left the Indians well pleased, and, pursuing their route by land the whole day without finding any inhabitants, they came to a wide and deep river with a strong current, and along it were forests of cypress and cedar, and other trees; in crossing this river they had plenty of trouble that and the three following days. Marching through the land, they passed by five villages of the Guaraní Indians, all of whom came forward and greeted us, with their wives and children, bringing plenty of provisions, so that our people were always well supplied, and the Indians very pacific, owing to the good treatment and the payment they received. All this is a very pleasant land, abounding in water and woods. The inhabitants sow maize, cassava and other seeds, and three kinds of potatoes, white, yellow, and reddish, very large and well flavoured. They rear geese and fowls, and gather much honey from the hollows of the trees.

The first of January of the year A.D. 1542, the governor and his people left the Indian settlements, and advanced across a mountainous region, through dense thickets of reeds, where our people underwent much trouble, because, up to the fifth of the month, they met with no settlement, and had to suffer much from hunger; and they kept themselves alive with great difficulty, besides having to open roads through the reed jungle. In the hollows of these reeds there were some white worms,[311] about the length and thickness of a finger; the people fried these for food, obtaining sufficient fat from them to fry them in very well; all ate of them, and thought it excellent food. And from the hollows of other reeds they collected good drinking water, and were much comforted by it. They used to search for these worms during their march, in order that they might have enough to eat, and so provide for their necessities and hunger in their journey through that inhospitable region. They crossed, with great difficulty, two wide and very deep rivers, flowing towards the north; and the following day, being the sixth of January, after marching through uninhabited country, they encamped for the night on the bank of another deep river, with a very strong current and with plenty of reed thickets, where the people gathered the worms and subsisted upon them. So they pursued their journey, and the next day they passed through a very good region, well watered and abounding in game, such as boar and deer, and they killed some and divided it among the people. That day they crossed two small rivers, and it pleased God that none of the Christians fell sick, and everybody kept on marching in good condition, cheered by the hope that they would soon reach the town of the Ascension, and the Spaniards whom they were going to relieve. From the sixth to the tenth of January they passed many Indian Guaraní settlements, all of whom received them peacefully, and greeted them joyfully; the inhabitants of each village, with their chief, accompanied by their wives and children, came laden with provisions, from which the Spaniards derived great help. But the monks Bernardo de Armenia and Alonzo his companion went in advance to collect provisions; and when the governor and his people arrived, it happened that the Indians had nothing more to give; and the people complained to the governor of this, as they had oftentimes done before, and he warned the monks not to do so, and not to take along with them certain Indians, of all ages, who were of no use, and to whom they gave food; but the monks declined to obey. Then all the people were ill-disposed towards them; but the governor favoured them, as they were engaged in the service of God and His Majesty. At length the monks separated themselves from the people, and, against the will of the governor, took another road. He directed that they should be brought back from the Indian settlements, where they had taken refuge; and had he not so ordered their withdrawal, they would have come to grief. The tenth of January, continuing their march, they passed many rivers and rivulets, and other bad passages, great sierras and mountains, and thickets of reeds abounding with water; every sierra[312] having a fertile valley and a river, besides other streams and forests. In all this land there is plenty of water, because it is under the tropic, and the direction of their route on these days was west.

[311] The "reeds" of the text must certainly be bamboos, and the larva
or grub found in them answers to that of the _Calandra palmarum_, a
species of weevil which is still cooked and eaten in the way here
described.

[312] Sierra is a chain of mountains.