De Garay, pent up in a little creek, into which he had run his vessel, and believing his situation desperate, was exhorting his people at any rate to defend themselves to the last, when suddenly the man called out that he saw a cavalier, presently another, and another, and then several more, charging the Indians in their rear; nor was it long before they saw the whole host dispersed, routed, and flying before a party of horsemen. The Spaniards were as much astonished at this unlooked-for encounter as the Indians, nor could they imagine to whom they were thus indebted for their preservation at the moment they expected to have been overwhelmed without a chance of succour, though that they were some of their countrymen they could not doubt after seeing the horses.
The strangers were not long in making themselves known; they were soldiers from Tucuman, who, under their leader Cabrera, having founded the city of Cordova on the same day that De Garay had commenced his settlement at Santa Fé, were then scouring the country to take possession of it as belonging to his jurisdiction; De Garay in vain resisted this pretension, and claimed it as belonging to Paraguay, in right of prior possession and settlement: the others insisting with a superior force, he had no alternative but to temporise, and submit himself to Cabrera's orders, trusting to the higher powers to order the matter differently.
Fortunately for the settlement of this question ere it led to more serious consequences, the Adelantado Zarate opportunely arrived from Spain with a grant from the King, explicitly including in his government all settlements, which might be founded on either shore of the river for the distance of 200 leagues: he not only confirmed De Garay in his command at Santa Fé but took him into such especial favour, that, dying soon afterwards, he left him guardian of his only daughter; she, by his advice, married Don Juan de Vera and Arragon, who in consequence succeeded to the Adelantasgo, which greatly increased the influence of De Garay, who was immediately appointed lieutenant over all the Rio de la Plata, and furnished with full authority to carry into effect his own plans for reducing the Indians to subjection upon its shores. Armed with these powers he conquered some of the most warlike of the native tribes, and established the fame and power of the Spaniards far and wide throughout all those regions:--the last of his deeds was the foundation, in 1580, of the present city of Buenos Ayres, as has been before stated. Alter passing three years in superintending the laying out of the future capital of all those provinces, upon his return to Assumption, going incautiously on shore one night to sleep, he was surprised and killed by the savages. Paraguay lost in him one of her wisest and most valiant captains, whose death was greatly lamented, by the poor especially, to whom his beneficence was unbounded.