The deposition of Francisco Davila—­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 Acuna, 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 Acuna, 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 prisoner for over eighteen months.  In his letter to the King of Portugal, Acuna upbraids him for treatment worse than the Moors might user “but,” he adds, “what can we expect when even the sons of Portuguese are abandoned here to the fare of the savages?  There are more than three hundred Christians, the sons of Christians, abandoned in this land, who would be more certain of being saved in Turkey than here....  There is no justice here.  Let your majesty take me from this land, and keep me where I may have the justice I merit.”  Late in the year 1528, Acuna is ordered to Portugal, as is learned from another document, dated November 2 of that year.  Before leaving Pernambuco he desires that a testimony of everything that has happened since his departure from Spain until his arrival at Pernambuco be taken down by the notary-public, this testimony being taken from the men who had come with him, “and the Frenchmen who were present at my undoing, and others who heard it from persons who were in the ships of the French who destroyed me.”  Acuna desires this in case any accident befall him while on the way to Portugal, and “that the emperor may be informed of the truth, and that I may give account of myself.”  This testimony is much the same as that contained in the other documents. (Nos. xxiii, pp. 225-241; and no, xv, pp. 313-323.)

June 11, 1528.  Hernando de la Torre, captain-general and governor in the Moluccas, sends the king a log of the fleet up to June 1, 1526, followed by the adventures of the flagship, “Sancta Maria de la Victoria,” after its separation from the rest of the fleet, with a description of the lands and seas in its course.  The log was made by the pilot of the “Victoria,” Martin de Uriarte.  De la Torre prefaces these accounts with a letter in which he asks for aid, “of which we are in sore need.”  He says “all the captains of the ships, caravels, and the tender, seven in number; the treasurer, accountants, and officials, both general and private, ... are dead or lost, until now only the treasurer of one of the ships is left”