On how Emperor Seltân Çagued {[f. 485]} decided to write to the Supreme Pontiff and to His Majesty

In early August 1607, when it is the depths of winter here, the emperor said to the captain of the Portuguese,¹ ‘It was very remiss of me not to give Father Pedro Paez houses here so that I could talk to him every day. Write to him on my behalf to come at once, because I should like that very much.’ The captain replied that it did not appear possible to go, because the mires were very extensive and the rivers were so swollen that they could not be crossed. ‘Then let him come by sea’, said the emperor, ‘since it is nearby.’ <(>They call Lake Dambiâ a sea, as it is so large.<)> The captain sent me a message at once, and all three of us fathers decided to go in order to show him how grateful we were for the favour he had done us in giving us such good and secure lands. Taking two boats of the kind that they use here, which, as we said in book 1, are very small and flimsy,² we stayed close to land all the time, both so that the wind would not blow us off course and because of the great danger of the sea horses,³ of which there are many at that time and so ferocious that if they find one of these boats some distance from shore they break it to pieces, as it is so flimsy, or they capsize it and kill everyone they can find, and sometimes they even come out of the water and run after people on land, as certain people who have sometimes seen it happen have assured me, including a Portuguese who was attacked by one a long way from the water, and it tore his left arm to shreds and would have killed him if Our Lord had not miraculously delivered him by means of a companion of his. Even so, when we reached a large bay, the ones steering the boats went straight across so as not to make a long detour and, shortly before reaching the other headland, a sea horse came up from under the water and attacked the boat that was further from land, in which one father was travelling, and by God’s will it missed and went past. But then it rose up a long way out of the water to see where the boat was and attacked ferociously three times, and we all thought <[f. 441/430]> the father was doomed, but Our Lord in His mercy delivered him by blinding the sea horse so that it never succeeded in directly hitting the boat, which was quite extraordinary. While {[f. 485v]} it was lunging around like this, the father reached land, and we stayed close to it after that for the day and a half that we took to arrive.