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Updated: June 13, 2025
The bewildered chief, scarcely able to realise the fact that he had actually been brought safely back to terra firma, lost no time in availing himself of the permission given him to depart, and, scrambling down the ship's side and the rope-ladder, he reached the ground and bounded off like a startled deer toward the gate, which was hastily thrown open to admit him, and as hastily closed and barred again the moment he had passed through.
The moment that the shikaree felt his feet touching terra firma, he sprang nimbly to one side, at the same instant letting go the rope, as if it had been a rod of red-hot iron!
While on this march in pursuit of the viceroy, Gonzalo Pizarro was joined by Captain Bachicao, who now returned from Tierra Firma with a reinforcement of three hundred and fifty men and a large quantity of artillery, having disembarked, from twenty vessels which he had procured, on a part of the coast as near as possible to Quito, and had made his way in such a manner across the mountains that he got to Quito rather before Gonzalo.
It is merely a shortened way of writing Spanish Mainland, and refers not to the sea, but to the land; the terra firma, as opposed to the Antilles; the continent, in distinction to the islands. By a natural process the term came to be applied to the sea washing the Spanish Mainland, but "main" does not mean sea, and never did.
When this description of land is not formed wholly of river deposit, as sometimes happens, or is raised above the level of the highest floods, it is called Ygapo alto, and is distinguished by the natives from the true islands of mid-river, as well as from the terra firma. We landed at one of the cacao plantations.
That fleet lost nearly a third of its men; for the sailors were almost all unseasoned Europeans, and held unrestrained intercourse with the shore. M. Juliac had heretofore treated the sick as was commonly practised in Terra Firma, and in the island, by bleeding, aperient medicines, and acid drinks.
During these operations we had drifted night and day, apparently without anybody taking the slightest account of the direction we were taking; when, therefore, on the day after clearing up the last traces of our fishing, the cry of "Land ho!" came ringing down from the crow's-nest, no one was surprised, although the part of the Pacific in which we were cruising has but few patches of TERRA FIRMA scattered about over its immense area when compared with the crowded archipelagoes lying farther south and east.
"Food enough to last seven men for two days," replied McNabbs. "And I hope the inundation will have gone down in twenty-four hours," said Glenarvan. "Or that we shall have found some way of regaining terra firma," added Paganel. "Our first business, then, now is to breakfast," said Glenarvan. "I suppose you mean after we have made ourselves dry," observed the Major.
Alonzo Sanchez de Carvajal says that all the voyages of discovery which were made to the Terra Firma, were made by persons who had sailed with the admiral, or been benefited by his instructions and directions, following the course he had laid down; and the same is testified by many other pilots and mariners of reputation and experience.
When, after a series of involuntary feats on the mangrove rope, I again stood on 'terra firma', all the pigeons had left; and I was compelled to make my way back to camp, empty-handed, muddy, cut about the shins, and with my boots almost in tatters. "So much," thought I, "for trying to catch a black fellow single-handed."
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