Thirty days after the arrival of the governor at the town of Ascension, as we have related, the Christians, both sick and sound, whom he had sent on rafts from the river Paraná, arrived at the harbour, one only being missing; and he had been killed by a tiger. They reported to the governor how the Indians of the river assembled in great numbers with their canoes, and while our men were descending on the rafts, came out and attacked them with loud cries and beating of drums, shooting a storm of arrows at them. Two hundred canoes surrounded them at one time, trying to board and take possession of the rafts in order to kill the Spaniards. For fourteen days and nights they never ceased fighting, being exposed all that time to a constant fire of arrows, both from those on shore as well as those in the canoes. The natives tried with long hooks to seize hold of the rafts, and drag them towards the shore, while the incessant shouting and cries of these men made so much din that one would have said the powers of light and darkness were at war with one another. They gave them no rest, for those in the canoes changed places with those on shore, these continuing the fight while the others rested.