But before Cochrane arrived a new success had cheered the embryo navy.

Serious danger threatened with news of the coming of a formidable

Spanish naval force: a courier brought the story hotfoot from Buenos

Aires, where the squadron had put in. Nine ships convoyed by the _Maria

Isabella_ of 50 guns set sail from Spain with two thousand troops, but

one ship mutinied off the Argentine coast and joined the new Republic;

another transport disappeared in the Pacific; seven, with the fine

frigate, arrived in Talcahuano Bay in October, 1818, in a wretched

state, over 500 men having died on the way. Chile’s new little navy by

this time consisted of five vessels: the _San Martin_, carrying 1000

men, was formerly the British East Indiaman _Cumberland_, which entered

Valparaiso in August, laden with coal, commanded by a Briton named

Wilkinson, and went out as a vessel of war of Chile, under the same

command. The _Lautaro_ was now commanded by Captain Worcester, an

American merchant skipper; the _Chacabuco_, by Captain Francisco Diaz,

an “old Spaniard” who sided with the cause of Independence; the

_Pueyrredon_, Captain Vasquez; and the _Araucana_, commanded by another

Briton, Captain Morris. This force set sail southwards on October 9, and

ten days later found the enemy ensconced under the forts of Talcahuano,

a town which with Valdivia and Chiloé remained in the hands of the

Spanish. In the spirited action which followed the _Maria Isabella_ was

run aground, but was seized and got off safely by the Chileans, while

the seven Spanish transports were all taken, in the bay or later at sea.

Returning in triumph in November, the fleet was almost at once taken in

hand by Cochrane, just arrived from England, and plans made for

attacking Callao, where a Spanish squadron had its base. Neither the

Chilean nor the Argentine patriots had any quarrel with Peru, but here

was the stronghold of Spain on the West Coast; the Pacific could only be

rendered safe for enfranchised Chile by its reduction.

In January, 1819, Cochrane sailed north in command of the fleet,

consisting then of his flagship, the _O’Higgins_ (formerly the Spanish

_Maria Isabella_), the _Lautaro_, _San Martin_ and _Chacabuco_. He took

a provision ship and a gunboat of Spain, blockaded Callao successfully

from early February till the beginning of May, although Callao was

defended by fourteen ships of war and powerful batteries; he found time

also to take several small ports up and down the Peruvian coast, as well

as prizes carrying loads of cocoa, useful stores, and 200,000 pesos in

money. Most of the coast towns were quite ready to embrace independence,

but were alternately punished by royalists and patriots for compliance

with demands for supplies.

When Admiral Blanco and Cochrane returned to Chile another vessel had

just been added to the little navy, the _Independencia_, purchased in

the United States. Two vessels had in fact been bought, but when they

arrived in Buenos Aires the agents of Chile had not sufficient specie to

complete the payments for both, and had to see the second sail away to

Rio, where she was sold to the Brazilian government, although Chile had

paid half her price. The relations between the United States and Chile

were peculiar at this juncture; the bulk of the population were

certainly not unsympathetic, and a number of American individuals were

doing a brisk commerce with the young country, but a certain small

jealousy seems to have been shown towards Cochrane, and comparatively

little help was given to the patriotic cause. But the United States

Government quickly recognised the new Chilean government and had

appointed a consul during the days of Carrera’s régime.

Before Cochrane refitted his ships for new expeditions, the patriot

armies had gained ground in the south, and the outlook had considerably

improved. In September, 1819, the Chilean navy returned to Callao with

seven ships, chased the Spanish frigate _Prueba_ into the Guayas River,

sailed up 40 miles to Guayaquil and seized two armed prizes, the

_Aguila_ and the _Bigoña_. At Puna island, where Spain built most of the

vessels used in the Pacific between West Coast ports, Cochrane loaded

his prizes with the famous hardwoods of the Guayaquil region, sailed out

and took the _Potrillo_, a provision ship, and sent her to Valparaiso

with news while he turned towards Talcahuano with the object of aiding

in the obstinate southern struggle.

General Freire, in command of the Chilean army, lent him 250 men, and

Cochrane proceeded in a small schooner to reconnoitre the entrance to

Valdivia. Here he landed, at sunset on February 2, 1820, led his force

of about 350 to the fort “del Inglez,” attacked and took it, went on and

stormed Corral fortress, and before the night was over the Chileans had

taken possession of the four other main batteries of the south side.

With the dawn came the _O’Higgins_, and realizing the uselessness of

further fighting, the Spanish troops abandoned the northern forts and

fled up river to Valdivia. The defenders numbered 2000, and the forts

were provided with plenty of excellent guns: success was due to the

daring of this stroke of Cochrane, a resourceful sea-fighter who well

knew the value of a surprise.

“At first it was my intention to have destroyed the fortifications and

to have taken the artillery and stores on board,” wrote the Admiral to

Zenteno, the Chilean Minister of War and Marine a few days later, “but I

could not resolve to leave without defence the safest and most beautiful

harbour I have seen in the Pacific, and whose fortifications must

doubtless have cost more than a million dollars.” He left a small force,

and sailed farther south to try to take the last Spanish stronghold in

Chiloé, where the gallant Colonel Quintanilla maintained a plucky and

hopeless stand—and was destined to maintain it for nearly five more

years. Cochrane landed in the bay of San Carlos on February 17, took the

outer forts, but lost the way in woods and boggy roads during a black

night, and thus gave the Spaniards time to assemble a force too strong

for the Chilean attackers. They withdrew, and a body of 100 men was sent

to take Osorno; this town was taken without resistance on February 26,

and thenceforth Spanish military work on the mainland was limited to

guerilla disturbances in the forestal interior. Many Spaniards took

refuge among the Indians, and the tragi-comedy was enacted, for several

years, of both the new Chilean parties and the Spaniards flattering and

bullying the Araucanians into taking sides. To political divergences the

native must have been profoundly indifferent; despite the fact that his

frontier still stood at the Bio-Bio River and his southerly lands were

intact, his spirit had been warped by the steady pressure of three

centuries, and perhaps most seriously changed by the civilised habits he

had learnt from the white man. He had taken to cultivation, to the use

of European foods and a few implements; as a result, he had needs

hindering his ancient freedom and he could be cajoled by their

satisfaction. “I have distributed to each cacique on taking leave,”

wrote Beauchef to Cochrane after the taking of Osorno, “a little indigo,

tobacco, ribbon and other trifles.” And also with ribbon, tobacco and

“trifles” the Spanish survivors, or the recalcitrant Benavides (wavering

first on one side and then the other and finally to outlawry in the

woods), and the patriots of Chile, bought the Indian, giving him short

shrift when territory or villages changed hands. Eventually, in 1822, a

Chilean punitive force was sent to the south, the Indian country inland

from Valdivia was reduced, and the Spaniards troubling that region gave

up. The diary of Dr. Thomas Leighton, an English surgeon acting as

medical officer of the expedition, as quoted by Miers, is extremely

illuminating.

With Valdivia in their hands, the Chileans were able to contemplate a

bold stroke. It was decided to clear Spain once and for all from the

Pacific by bringing Peru into the camp of independence: the return of

Cochrane from the south was the signal for completion of plans for a

combined naval and military attack upon the last great stronghold of

Spain. The “Ejercito Libertador” (liberating army) was prepared with

immense enthusiasm, embarking from Valparaiso in August, 1820, preceded

by proclamations from O’Higgins, who declared the wish of Chile to

contribute to the freedom and happiness of the Peruvians, who would

“frame your own government and be your own legislators.” “No influence,”

he stated, “civil or military, direct or indirect, shall be exercised by

these your brothers over your social institutions. You shall send away

the armed force that comes to protect you whenever you wish; and no

pretext of your danger or your security shall serve to maintain it

against your consent. No military division shall occupy a free town

except at the invitation of the legal authorities; and the Peninsular

groups and ideas prevailing before the time of Independence shall not be

punished by us or with our consent.” O’Higgins was undoubtedly sincere;

Cochrane was free from any trace of selfish or ulterior motives; but San

Martín’s objects were less simple. His position was peculiar; sent

originally into Chile at the instance of Pueyrredon, he had practically

disavowed his party in the Argentine, where no political laurels seemed

likely to offer, and taken service with Chile. But here he had to share

popular affection with the beloved O’Higgins and the applauded Cochrane;

in Peru he might have the field to himself, and to this end he forthwith

worked.

The Chilean fleet spent 50 days in Pisco, while the Chilean Colonel

Arenales marched upon and took a number of other small Peruvian towns on

or tributary to the coast, with Ica, Nasca and Arica among them; from

the latter port he marched inland and seized Tacna. Meanwhile San Martín

was negotiating with the Peruvian Viceroy, Pezuela, but the “truce of

Miraflores” split upon two rocks—the Viceroy refused demands that he

should acknowledge the independence of the South American colonies: San

Martín could not sign acknowledgment of even nominal submission to the

Spanish Crown. The Liberating Army eventually set sail again on

September 28, and passed on to Callao, where on November 5 Cochrane,

with 240 volunteers, performed the exploit, never forgotten in the

annals of the Pacific, of cutting out the Spanish frigate _Esmeralda_.

This fine ship had 40 guns and 350 men, lay inside a strong boom and a

line of old vessels, was surrounded by 27 gunboats and protected by 300

guns of the forts on shore. But Cochrane boarded and took her, and with

a couple of other Spanish gunboats sent her outside to an anchorage

beyond the reach of the Peruvian cannon. Renamed the _Valdivia_, she

afterwards served as a unit of the Chilean fleet.

San Martín, now at Ancon with his forces, delayed the projected attack

upon Lima, sent out sheaves of grandiloquent proclamations, and watched

with anxiety affairs farther north, where the now triumphant Bolívar was

occupying Quito and might push forward to Guayaquil—a rich province also

coveted by San Martín and to which he now sent envoys with suggestions

that Bolívar should be kept out. For the next seven months San Martín’s

forces remained idle, although a part of the force under the British

Colonel Miller and the able General Arenales continued to range the

coast; Cochrane maintained a close blockade of Callao, and at last,

unable to get supplies and alarmed by the insecurity of their position

in Lima, the Spanish authorities evacuated the city and went to Cuzco.

This was on July 6, 1821, and for about a week order was kept in Lima by

Captain Basil Hall of H. M. S. _Conway_ with a handful of marines. San

Martín then sailed to Callao and took possession of Lima, where

Independence was proclaimed on July 28.

On August 4, San Martín declared himself Protector of Peru, proclaiming

his absolute authority and naming three associates as the cabinet

ministers. Requested by Cochrane to pay the wages and bounty promised to

the fleet on the fall of Lima, San Martín answered that he could not, as

Protector of Peru, pay Chile’s debts, said that he could only find the

money if the squadron were sold to Peru for his use, and presently had

the effrontery to invite Cochrane to leave the service of Chile and

become Admiral of Peru.

Cochrane’s indignant replies are historical; he sailed away after

repeated attempts to obtain the sailors’ wages, and, learning that San

Martín had shipped a considerable treasure to Ancon (upon the advance on

Callao of the still undefeated Spaniards), went there and took

possession of the gold and silver. One can imagine the grim smile of the

experienced old sailor as he made this haul.

San Martín assented with reluctance eventually to its use as part

payment of the sums due, but there was no possibility of further

friendly intercourse. Cochrane sailed north, on October 6, with the

Chilean fleet in a wretched state, ill equipped and almost unseaworthy.

He went up the Guayas to Guayaquil, received with rejoicing by the now

emancipated town, refitted, and put to sea again in the first week of

December. Fonseca Bay was visited on December 28, Tehuantepec on January

6, Acapulco three weeks later, in the hunt for two Spanish ships, the

_Prueba_ and the _Venganza_; the latter was chased and followed into

Guayaquil, the former into Callao, where Cochrane himself reappeared in

April. Here San Martín sent his ministers to wait upon the sailor,

making new propositions, including the post of admiral of the joint

squadrons of Chile and Peru. Cochrane answered bluntly that he would

have no dealings with a government founded upon a breach of faith toward

the Peruvians, supported by tyranny and the violation of all laws; that

no flag but that of Chile would be hoisted upon his ships; and he

refused to set foot ashore. He brought the fleet back to Valparaiso on

June 2, 1822, after two and a half years of ceaseless effort in the

service of Chile. The Pacific no longer showed a Spanish flag upon ship

or fortress: his work was done. When Cochrane left Chile in January,

1823, the independence of the country was definitely assured.

Spanish rule in the Americas had endured for three hundred years, but at

the end of that period it cannot be said that the profit of her conquest

and colonisation was on the side of Spain. The amazing courage of the

conquistadores forms a record without parallel, not upon the part of

such great figures as Cortes and Pizarro only, but scores of less known

pioneers. “In a period of seventy years,” Cieza de Leon has written,

“they have overcome and opened up another world than that of which we

had knowledge, without bringing with them waggons of provision, nor

great store of baggage, nor tents in which to rest, nor anything but a

sword and a shield and a small bag in which they carried their food.”

Between 1519 and 1811 the Spaniards smashed three established and at

least one embryo civilization in the Americas; but on the other side of

the ledger they gave the contact with West European speech, thought,

crafts and aims that brought immense American regions into line with the

rest of the modern world. It is true that vast stores of precious metals

were taken away: but in return were given two things more valuable,

ideas and blood.

Spain herself materially suffered in the long run. Her best youth was

drained overseas, or lost in the wars in Europe to which her gold

tempted her. In 1800 the commerce, agriculture, wealth and industry of

Spain were “almost nothing, compared to what they were when she

conquered America,” says Torrijos. The population had been cut in half.

Spain has been correctly charged with narrowness of policy in regard to

her colonies; it is frequently forgotten that all rules of commerce and

colonization were narrow during the same period—examples are still to be

found of nations surrounding themselves with a sky-high tariff wall; and

if Spain forbade the American colonies to cultivate Spanish products, in

turn Spaniards were not permitted to grow the crops peculiarly American.

As a matter of fact this rule was much more rigidly insisted upon within

the small compass of Spain, since in the Americas it was to the interest

and convenience of officials to shut their eyes to breaches of the rule.

Spain’s decree forbidding cultivation of the vine in Chile, for example,

was practically a dead letter, a show being only occasionally made of

attempts to carry out the law.

Chile, free and young, faced many problems, but was able to look upon

the future with confidence, secure at least in the active sympathy of

the greater part of the world. Spain, her power broken and her armies

destroyed, stood alone. Her wounds were long in healing.

_Republican Chile_

Accounts of the naval or military affairs of one particular nation

often read as if those events had occurred in a heavily screened

vacuum. But the march of affairs in the Pacific during the struggle

for independence were not only watched breathlessly by other American

nations—particularly Mexico, Central America, Colombia and the United

States—but also by Europe, immensely affected by the success or

failure of Spain to reassert her possession of the colonies. Vessels

of war of the United States and Britain ranged up and down the coast,

their position as neutrals complicated by the fact that many of their

own nationals were interested, either openly and quite un-neutrally,

in promoting the success of the revolting South Americans, or in

commercial transactions which were frequently perfectly legitimate and

straightforward, but which were sometimes kaleidoscopic. Fluid and

irregular trade conditions had prevailed upon the coast for a century:

Spain had been forced during her long wars to give an increased number

of trading licences, and much commerce was performed under cover of

Spanish names by foreign merchants. During Cochrane’s efforts to stop

the smuggling and underhand traffic that went on, particularly in the

series of small ports (headed by Pisco and Arica) in South Peru, he

found himself more than once at loggerheads with the merchants, and

with the British and other foreign squadrons watching affairs. Duties

ran high, sometimes up to 60 per cent ad valorem, and in consequence

along this “Entremedios” region a tremendous amount of smuggling

flourished; many of these little villages formed on occasion markets

for the interior of such size that the coast was glutted with European

goods and merchandise among the sand-hills was as cheap as at a

bargain sale.

Banks did not exist, and there was no adequate exchange of South

American products; cash was paid and had to be shipped overseas. A

custom grew up among the British traders of sending such payments home

by naval vessels, and as a percentage was paid upon these sums for

safe-carriage to the captains of men-of-war, a direct interest was

created in commercial prosperity. When Cochrane, on behalf of the

Chilean government, suggested a new customs rate of 18 per cent, taking

on board and guarding a quantity of disputed goods, there were

international and loud objections to his “floating customhouse.” With

the establishment of the young countries was closely entangled a number

of commercial interests with wide ramifications.

While the movement of affairs in Lower and Upper Peru, Bolivia and

Ecuador, filled public attention, the new Chile struggled to secure

stability as a self-governed country. The steps towards this end were

not all easy. The country had never been wealthy—in fact, scarcely

self-supporting, for the shipments of agricultural and mineral products

to Peru and Spain did not pay the costs of government and defence

against the Indians—and she was now nearly bankrupt. A terrible burden

of expense had been incurred for the military and naval campaigns in her

own south and in Peru, and the confiscated property of “old Spaniards”

and the religious orders was not an inexhaustible treasure. A loan

raised in London in 1822 gave no more than temporary relief, and heavier

taxes were imposed than in the days of Spanish control. The exhilaration

of new hopes, the realization of the inner strength of the Chilean

nation, did not suffice to save the country from a period of

dissatisfaction and unrest.

Bernardo O’Higgins never lost his personal popularity, but murmurs

against his minister of finance, Rodriguez, imperilled his position. The

national congress called in July, 1822, sat until October to frame a new

tariff (commercial regulations) and a new constitution to supersede the

tentative proclamation of 1818. But illiberal restrictions created by

the new decrees closed all the minor ports to foreign vessels, and every

Andean pass but one; prohibitory duties were placed on many articles of

foreign manufacture.

[Illustration: San Juan Bautista, Village of Cumberland Bay, Más a

Tierra Island (Juan Fernández Group), 400 Miles West of Valparaiso.]

[Illustration: The Plain of Calavera, Chilean Andes.]

The composition of Senate and Chamber of Deputies was outlined, the

Senate’s and Director’s term of office fixed at six years, while the

deputies, from whom a property qualification was required, were to be

elected annually, one for every 15,000 people. The Director was made

head of the army and navy, with powers to create foreign treaties and to

make peace and war. The treasury and all ecclesiastical appointments

were in his hands, as well as the naming of ambassadors, judges,

ministers and secretaries of state. In the middle of October, 1822,

General San Martín suddenly reappeared in Valparaiso, in the character

of a private citizen whose health required a sojourn at the medicinal

baths of Cauquenes. He told a tale of voluntary renunciation of Peruvian

dignities that received little credence; as a matter of fact, the luck

that for a period had made him appear a master of men had failed him at

last.

From the time when he made himself Protector in Lima (August, 1821) the

Peruvians had taken exception to his arrogance, his oppressive treatment

of leading citizens, the extortions of his ministers, and complained of

the want of stability in the country. In the interior Spanish forces

still maintained themselves, while San Martín kept idle an army of 8000

men, a burden upon the populace. Early in April, 1822, the royalist

General Canterac marched quickly upon the coast and inflicted a severe

defeat upon the forces of the Protector, near Ica. San Martín, alarmed,

decided to ask aid from Bolívar, fresh from victories in the Ecuadorian

interior, and sailed to Guayaquil. He was received by Bolívar on July

26, but with such hostility that, fearing for his personal safety, he

left hurriedly on July 28, and sailed back to Callao. He found that Peru

had undergone a _coup d’état_. Upon his departure leading citizens held

a meeting, insisted upon the resignation of his unpopular minister,

Monteagudo, and deported him. San Martín accepted the warning and waited

only until the convocation of congress to offer his resignation and to

leave the country. If he had any dream of returning to take a part in

public affairs in Chile or Argentina, it was speedily dissipated, and

presently he retired to an estate at Mendoza, now a part of his native

Argentina. His arrival and the fears of Chile that he contemplated some

disturbing stroke probably hastened the irruption of feeling against the

heads of the Chilean Government, by whom San Martín was received with

extreme friendliness. No hostility was expressed against O’Higgins,

whose memory agreeably survives in Chile, but the detested Rodriguez was

increasingly blamed for the blighting commercial decrees and the general

depression of the country.

In November, 1822, Chile experienced one of the most disastrous

earthquakes of the century: a month later another upheaval occurred,

with armed insurrections both in the north and south. The division of

the “Penquistos” from Santiago was newly emphasized by violent

dissatisfaction with laws against grain exports, and the cause of the

south was championed by General Ramon Freire, military governor of

Concepción, and echoed by Coquimbo, also angered by the heavy export

dues placed upon copper, collected in the north but spent in Santiago.

While the troops of Freire crossed the Maule, his northern supporters

under Benevente marched south; by the end of January they had reached

Aconcagua and had secured the adhesion of Quillota. On the 28th a group

of leading citizens visited O’Higgins and induced him to resign his

authority into the hands of a junta of three, until the national

congress could be again summoned. But the arrival of Freire in

Valparaiso Bay with three warships and 1500 men put a different

complexion upon governmental plans. Freire camped his men outside

Santiago, declared his lack of personal ambition, but presently accepted

the offer of the Directorship from the Junta. A new constitution was

evolved at the end of 1823, which does not concern history since it was

abrogated a year later in the face of new danger from Spain, speedily

dispelled, when Freire needed larger powers.

From this period Chile slowly fought her way to social solidarity, her

true wealth in agriculture developing steadily as the population

increased. It is true that from a political standpoint there were few

outstanding figures during the last eighty years of the nineteenth

century, but whether from the outside or the inside the men appeared who

brought the country to economic strength and gave her all that she

lacked as regards markets, means of communication and development of her

almost unsuspected resources.

In 1830 internal disturbances took place, chiefly as the result of the

reaction of the _pelucones_ (the Conservative-Church-aristocratic group)

against the Government party of _pipiolas_ (Liberals). The victory of

the Army of the South at Lircay (April 17, ’31) resulted in the election

of the successful general, Prieto, as President, and during his term of

office (1831–41) the brilliant minister, Diego Portales, advanced the

country’s progress materially and framed the Constitution which is still

in force. Portales was assassinated upon the eve of Chile’s expedition

to free Peru from the domination of a foreign dictator, in 1837. The

occasion of this war was the rise of the aggressive Bolivian general,

Santa Cruz, and his invasion and reduction of Peru. Chile regarded this

forced Confederation as a challenge, sent armies to the north, took

Lima, and defeated Santa Cruz at the battle of Yungay (January, 1839),

when the Confederation fell apart.

The victor of Yungay, General Bulnes, ruled Chile for another ten years

(1841–51), a prosperous and quiet period marking a tremendous stride

forward in the country’s advance. Manuel Montt, the next President,

served for another ten-year period, but was troubled first with a

rebellion under General de la Cruz, crushed at the battle of Loncomilla

at the end of 1851; by a revolt of the Atacama miners, put down at Cerro

Grande in April, 1859; and a serious affray at Valparaiso late in the

same year. During the succeeding government of José Perez occurred

Spain’s last hostile act against her former colonies, when in 1865 a

naval squadron sailed into the Pacific, seized the Chincha islands off

Peru and demanded the payment of the old Peruvian colonial debt. Chile

made the cause hers, and mobilized her fleet, brought upon herself the

bombardment of Valparaiso on March 31, 1866, but seized the Peruvian

gunboat _Covadonga_ off Papudo port.

In 1879, during the administration of Anibal Pinto, war broke out

between Chile and Bolivia, afterwards joined by Peru, with the result,

after the cessation of hostilities in 1883, of the acquisition by Chile

of practically all the nitrate fields of South America.

A little later, Chile’s internal peace was curiously disturbed by the

recurrence of old trouble concerning church privileges. The Chilean

government claimed the right of nomination of church dignitaries, and

the question was brought to a head when the Pope refused to appoint a

candidate to the Archbishopric of Santiago chosen by the administration

of Santa Maria (1881–86). A governmental decree rendering civil

marriages legal in the eye of Chile, and another insisting upon the

right to bury non-Roman Catholics in city cemeteries, roused a great

deal of popular passion and clerical objection.

Unrest culminated during the administration of Balmaceda, when quarrels

broke out between the President and Congress, and his attempts to govern

the country without that body ended in a mutiny of the fleet. Sailing to

the north, the insurgents prepared their plans for eight months,

training an army, until it was brought south in August, 1891, and

Balmaceda was defeated at the battles of Concon and Placilla. When the

president shot himself in September of the same year, the mantle fell

upon one of the insurrecto leaders, Admiral Jorge Montt, son of Manuel.

Another of the Montt family, Pedro, occupied the presidential chair from

1906 to 1910, a period marked by great energy in the construction of

ports, highways and railroads.

Since the Balmaceda revolt Chile has enjoyed complete internal and

external peace, the administration of the country remaining in civilian

hands and following the normal course of electoral changes.

CHAPTER III

STRANGERS ON THE PACIFIC COAST

_Drake and the “Golden Hind.”—Thomas Cavendish.—The Narborough

Expedition.—Sharp and Dampier.—Captain Betagh.—The Loss of the

“Wager.”—Juan and Ulloa.—Resident Foreigners.—Strangers and

Independence._

From the time when she planted her first colonies on the West Coast of

South America Spain did her utmost to keep strangers from those shores

or from any knowledge of them. A veil of mystery hung over the Pacific,

torn aside roughly when Drake’s little vessel weathered the furies of

the Magellanic Strait and the resounding tale was published broadcast

throughout Europe.

There is no reason to doubt the historic truth of Drake’s words as

repeated by the gallant Captain John Oxenham—that, viewing the Pacific

from a hill on the Isthmus of Panama during his famous raid upon Nombre

de Dios in 1572, Drake “besought Almighty God of His goodness to give

him life and leave to sail once in an English ship in that sea.” The

Devonshire sailor undoubtedly urged repeatedly in England, after that

time, that reprisals for Spanish injuries inflicted upon England could

be best made by direct attack, and as he told Queen Elizabeth, small

good could be done by attempts on Spain herself, but that as all

Philip’s wealth was drawn from overseas “the only way to annoy him was

by his Indyes.” The Queen, however, did not consent to such strokes

until after Philip had tried to raise a rebellion in Ireland and

actually landed forces there; both she and her envoys had in mind, not

only a blow at Spanish prestige, and “some of their silver and gold

which they got out of the earth and sent to Spain to trouble all the

world,” but the extension of the Protestant faith and the glory of

England by the conquest and settlement of wild lands. The evidence of

Oxenham and Butler before the Inquisition in Lima in 1579 proves that

Drake intended to colonise if he could, “because in England there are

many inhabitants and but little land.” When, on leaving the coasts of

Mexico, he sailed farther north, landed after entering the Golden Gate

and claimed “Nova Albion” for the Queen, he felt completely justified

because “the Spaniards never had any dealing, or so much as set a foot,

in this country, only to many degrees southward of this place.” San

Francisco stands today on the spot where Drake’s chaplain held service;

the map, still extant, of Drake’s correction, show that he foresaw the

time when English-speaking colonies would dispute with Spain, France and

Portugal possession of the Americas.

Armed with Elizabeth’s formal commission, her own sword, and the title

of Captain-General, Drake sailed from Plymouth on November 15, 1577,

with five ships, of which the largest was the _Pelican_, of only 100

tons, but very strongly built. Officers and crew totalled about 164, and

among them was his cousin John Drake, then a clever lad of fourteen

years. A storm compelled them to put into Falmouth, and after repairs

they sailed again on December 13. Land was first touched at Cape

Mogador; thence the little fleet sailed to Cape Blanco, where they took

a Portuguese ship with a store of fish and biscuit; to Cape Verde, where

a Spanish merchantman’s load of cloth was seized; next to the river

Plate, for water and wood, on April 27, 1578, and on to Port San Julian,

where Magellan had executed mutineers, and where, for the same crime of

mutiny, Drake beheaded Thomas Doughty. The master-gunner Oliver was

killed here by Patagonians, and during the two-months’ stay the

Portuguese prize, the _Maria_, as well as the _Christopher_ and the

_Swan_ were broken up. The weather was cold and the expedition was

sorely in need of firewood.

Sailing south, they sighted the entrance of the Strait on August 17,

naming one of the three islands off the south shore “Elizabeth Island.”

The Strait was actually entered on the twenty-first of August, with

winter well advanced. They saw no Indians at first, but quantities of

the smoke from the innumerable fires that gave the great island on the

south its original name of “Land of Smoke.” At Penguin Island they

stopped to kill and salt a supply of birds, the Purchas account of the

voyage stating: “This Strait is extreme cold with Frost and Snow

continually: the Trees seeme to stoope with the burthen of the Weather

and yet are greene continually; and many good and sweet Herbes doe very

plentifully grow and increase under them.”

At the passage’s western end the weather was so furious that the

_Marigold_ sank with all hands. The captain of the _Elizabeth_ put his

ship about and deserted, fleeing back through the Strait for England,

where he was promptly sent to prison. With the loss of a pinnace, whose

one survivor, Peter Carder, a Cornishman, eventually made his way back

to England in 1586, after terrible sufferings in Patagonia and Brazil,

Drake had only his own flagship, the _Pelican_, whose name he now

changed to the _Golden Hind_. About 80 men remained, half of the number

who had set out from Plymouth.

Driven down to the sixty-sixth degree of south latitude, 14 degrees

south of the western opening of the Strait, Drake put about as soon as

the terrible gales permitted and ran north outside the channels and

archipelagos of South Chile. They saw Valdivia, or rather, Corral, but

did not enter, anchoring first at the island of Mocha, in about 38

degrees, almost opposite the present Traiguen. Here a party went ashore

to get water, but were fiercely assailed by well-armed Indians, who

wounded every man of the English company, some receiving over twenty

arrows. Returning hastily, the party left two men behind, and three

others died of their wounds on board.

Sailing farther north in search of Valparaiso, they overshot the

entrance, but discovered their mistake when they anchored in the bay of

Quintero, 18 miles to the north, and found an intelligent Indian, who

told them of a Spanish ship then lying off Valparaiso. Him they took as

a guide, and returning boldly sailed into and anchored in the bay at

high noon of December 5, 1578. At anchor also they saw _La Capitana_

(“the flagship”) in which Pedro Sarmiento had a few years previously

made his famous voyage of discovery to the Solomons. The Spaniards

aboard the _Capitana_, never dreaming that a vessel in the Pacific could

be other than Spanish, hailed and welcomed them. Drake sent a boarding

party, which rudely awakened their hosts when one Thomas Moon began to

lay about him, struck a Spaniard and said to him (says the Purchas

account) “Abaxo Perro, that is in English, Goe downe Dogge.” The

Spaniards were put under hatches, a prize crew sent aboard, and going

ashore and breaking open the warehouse Drake added 1700 jars of wine,

and stores of salt pork and flour, to the treasure he had found in the

_Capitana_, amounting to 24,000 pesos of the “very fine and pure gold of

Baldivia,” due for shipment to Peru. One Spanish sailor pluckily swam

ashore and warned the inhabitants of the settlement; there were but nine

households, and the people abandoned the place to the English, who found

little to loot but the silver ornaments from the chapel. Two days later

they weighed anchor and returned to Quintero, where the friendly Indian

was set ashore with gifts, and Drake set his course for more northerly

ports, using the sea-chart of the _Capitana’s_ pilot.

At Tongoy Bay, where they put in next, they found no water, and went on

to the beautiful Herradura just above it, a few miles south of Coquimbo

Bay with its little Spanish stronghold of La Serena. Twelve men went

ashore here to get water, but were attacked by a number of Spanish

horsemen. Thomas Minivy, leader of the shore party, got his men into the

boat, but was attacked, and, defending their embarkation with arquebus

and sword, was killed. Drake now went on to Salada Bay, where he stayed

for over a month to careen the _Golden Hind_, to bring up from the hold

and place in position his artillery, and to build, on board the

_Capitana_, a pinnace with planks brought from England. She was launched

on January 9, 1579. Several times during his stay Spaniards came from

Coquimbo to look at him, but did not attack, according to the statement

made later to Captain Sarmiento by Juan Griego, the boatswain of the

_Capitana_ taken along the coast by Drake, and corroborated by the

log-book and Nuño da Silva the pilot.

Setting sail, they missed the mouth of the Copiapó River, and had an

anxious search for water along the arid coasts of Tarapacá. Entering at

length the mouth of the Pisagua River they had a stroke of luck, for

there on the bank lay a Spaniard, fast asleep, in charge of a train of

llamas laden with silver bars from Potosí and a quantity of _charqui_

(dried meat). Taking him as a guide, and seizing his cargo, they sailed

for the port of Arica, a village of only 20 houses, but at that time the

chief point of embarkation of the silver from the interior mines.

Brought from the mountains by Indians and llamas, the precious bars were

sea-borne from Arica to Peru (Callao, for Lima) to await the yearly

despatch of treasure to Panama City, and overland by Cruces to Porto

Bello. Of these arrangements and their usual date Drake well knew, for

but six years previously he had lain in wait for and captured the train

load of mules carrying silver ingots along the cobble-paved pathway

through the Isthmian forest.

Proceeding to Arica, the _Golden Hind_ surprised and took two ships, one

containing 33 bars of silver; but hearing that a ship laden with a

richer treasure was in the port of Chule (about five miles north of Ilo)

he hurried on. However, before his arrival warning had reached the

captain, who disembarked and buried the silver bars, and Drake’s only

satisfaction was to take the ship along and set her adrift, himself

sailing on to Callao. Strangely enough, no news had reached Lima of the

long sojourn and repeated raids of Drake upon the coast, and he was able

to enter the bay without rousing suspicion on the part of the vessels

anchored there. At this time (February 13, 1579), John Oxenham was still

alive, in the prison of the Inquisition in Lima, with two or three of

his crew; Drake knew it, and although he could not risk the ruin of his

expedition by any such attempt as an attack on Lima, he hoped to seize

Spaniards of sufficient importance to exchange for the English

prisoners. When John Drake was examined before the Inquisition in Lima

in 1587 he said that “Captain Francis ... in the boat, with six or seven

men, accompanied by the pinnace carrying twenty or thirty men, went to

the other vessels anchored there and cut their cables.... This was done

so that, having been cut loose, the wind would carry these ships out of

port, where he could seize them and hold them for ransom, so that in

exchange they would give him the Englishman who was said to be a

prisoner in Lima.” The plan did not succeed. A calm fell, and an attack

by the pinnace on a ship from Panama was repulsed with the loss of a

man; she was afterwards taken when her crew abandoned her. At night the

tide carried them outside the port, and when in the morning three or

four vessels came out against the _Golden Hind_ Drake ran before the

wind, sailing north until Paita was reached. A ship was taken here and

another farther north, but it was not until the first day of March that

young John Drake won the chain of gold that had been promised to the

first person sighting the coveted treasure ship of San Juan de Anton.

Two days later Drake transferred from the captured ship an immense

treasure, including much gold and fourteen chests of silver, letting her

go on March 6.

Thence his exploits do not greatly concern the Pacific coast; he took

vessels off Nicaragua, plundered the Port of Guatulco in Mexico, sailed

to the Californian coast, and when he met ice shaped his course

southwest, making for the Moluccas, the Cape of Good Hope, and so back

to Plymouth, arriving with the greatest treasure that was ever carried

in one little sailing vessel and the undying record of an

extraordinarily bold feat in the circumnavigation of the globe.

It is the effect of Drake’s exploit upon the West Coast which concerns

these pages chiefly, but it is only fair to the memory of a gallant man

and fine sailor to say that not only was he beloved at home, but that

the noble Spaniards with whom he came in contact did justice to his

qualities. Not unnaturally, the ports that he raided feared and hated

his name; but such a man as Don Francisco de Zarate taken prisoner by

Drake off Acajutla (El Salvador) in April, 1579, called him “one of the

greatest mariners that sails the seas, both as a navigator and as a

commander.” A remark of Zarate’s that follows sheds a bright light on

Drake: “Nine or ten cavaliers, cadets of noble English families, form

part of the council which he calls together for the most trifling

matter, although he takes advice from no one. But he enjoys hearing what

they say, and afterwards issues his orders.” Zarate was shown, and

apparently accepted the propriety of, Elizabeth’s commission to Drake,

and informs the Viceroy of Mexico that “I managed to find out whether

the General was liked, and they (the crew of the _Golden Hind_) all said

that they adored him.”

_Thomas Cavendish_

The effect of Drake’s feat upon the New World was electric. The Viceroys

of New Spain and Peru, the Audiencia of Panama, Governors of every

province, hastened to strengthen weak ports with troops and artillery;

ships changed their routes, scores of reports and letters went home to

Spain. Philip II, who through his clever Ambassador at the court of

Elizabeth knew of the expedition before it sailed, wrote discreetly on

the margin of one such letter, “Before the Corsair reaches England it is

not expedient to speak to the Queen. When he arrives, yes. Investigate

whether it would be well to erect a fort in the Port of Magellan.”

But noisy as was the repute of the exploit in the Pacific and in Spain,

it had no less effect upon the imagination of Europeans desiring a share

in exploration and its rewards. Spain’s tragic effort to found a

settlement in the Strait was almost blotted out when Thomas Cavendish

passed through in 1586.

Cavendish was a native of Trimley in Suffolk, a good mariner; he sailed

across the Atlantic with three ships, the largest of 120 tons, entered

the Strait in January, 1586, and passed out into the Pacific on February

24. Sailing north to the island of St. Mary, he found stores of good

wheat and barley, and potato roots “very good to eat.” Hogs and hens,

introduced by the Spaniards, were thriving, and although the Indian

small farmers were so much in subjection to the Spaniards that they

dared not eat a hog nor hen themselves, in compensation for these

restrictions all had been made Christians.

Running north, Cavendish anchored near Concepción; in the bay of

Quintero they had an encounter with Spaniards on horseback, and the

captain himself, who travelled eight miles inland, declared the valley

country to be “very fruitful, with fair fresh rivers.” Off Arica the

raiders took a ship, and went on north, raiding the coastal vessels;

eventually they burnt Paita, raided Puna Island at the mouth of the

Guayas River, and lost men there.

Cavendish took two years and two months to complete the round of the

globe, and the Pacific had hardly settled down again after the trouble

caused by this corsair when, in early 1594, Richard Hawkins, son and

grandson of fine mariners, came through the Strait. An acute observer,

he noted the handsome Winter’s Bark trees of the southern channels,

finding the seeds like good pepper and the bark “very stomachic and

medicinal.” On the West Coast Hawkins was unlucky, encountering a strong

Spanish fleet which captured him in June, 1594. He was taken to Lima,

sent prisoner to Spain, and after eight years of captivity was released

to return to his Devon home.

In 1598 the Dutch appeared, in the person of Captain Oliver Noort,

piloted by one Melis, an Englishman who had sailed with Cavendish. Noort

traversed the Strait, sailed north to Mocha Island, where he drank

chicha for the first time and found it “somewhat sourish,” and nearby

seized a Spanish ship. Off Arica his ships encountered terrible

“arenales” (sand-laden winds) and two strayed from touch with the

flagship. Bad weather persisted until June 13, when “the Spanish pilot

was for ill demeanures, by publike sentence, cast overboard. A

prosperous wind happily succeeded.”

The exploit of Noort brought many of his countrymen into the Pacific,

and from the beginning of the seventeenth century Holland sent out

scores of fine navigators. Spilbergen came through the Strait in 1615,

and it was a Dutchman, Willem Cornelius Schouten of Hoorn, sailing here

in the same year, with Jacob Le Maire of Amsterdam, who found and named

many islands south of Tierra del Fuego, as Staten, Maurice, Barnvelt, as

they also named Cape Hoorn and Le Maire’s Strait. The famous Jacques

l’Hermite came through and up the coast in 1623–4; and by these

southerly passages also came five ships of a Dutch expedition in 1642–3,

of which Hendrick Brouwer or “Brewer” left an account.

_The Narborough Expedition_

In 1669 it occurred to the English Crown that better information

concerning Patagonia and Chile was desirable, and the experienced Sir

John Narborough was sent out with two ships in 1669. The _Sweepstakes_,

of 300 tons, had 36 pieces of artillery; the _Batchellor_, pink of 70

tons, had four pieces; the crew totalled one hundred. They were well

provisioned and carried plenty of beads, hatchets, etc., to trade with

the natives of the southerly channels, the design of the voyage, which

was at the king’s private cost, being “to make a discovery both of the

seas and coasts of that part of the world, and to lay the foundation of

a trade there.” Narborough was enjoined not to go ashore before he got

south of the Plate River, and not to interfere with any Spanish

settlements; Port Desire he considered beyond Spain’s jurisdiction,

formally taking possession in the name of Charles II. He thought better

of Patagonia than Darwin, nearly two hundred years later, for he

recorded that the soil was marly and good, that in his opinion it might

be made excellent corn-ground, being ready to till, and that “tis very

like the land on Newmarket Heath.” He noted that the Indians seen in

this region had dogs with them, with grey coats and painted red in

spots.

Reaching the eastern entrance of the Strait on October 22, he anchored

just outside the first Narrow at night, and passed the white cliff of

Cape Gregory next morning; when he went ashore at Elizabeth Island

natives came to him, but did not recognise the gold and copper he

showed; and although “my Lieutenant Peckett danced with them hand in

hand” and obligingly exchanged his red coat for one of their

skin-coverings, while Narborough showed them “all the courteous respect

I could,” shortly afterwards he had reason to suspect them of planning

to sink his skiff. They too had dogs, but no other domestic animal, and

the sailor decided that they were but brutish, and gave up hope of

friendship or trade. He passed “Sandpoint,” named Freshwater Bay, and

six leagues to the south reached “Port Famen,” where driftwood lay as

thick as in a carpenter’s yard.

“A little within land from the waterside grow brave green woods, and up

in the valleys large timber-trees, two foot throughout and some upwards

of 40 feet long, much like our Beech-timber in England; the leaves of

the trees are like green birch-tree leaves, curiously sweet ... there

are several clear places in the woods, and grass growing like fenced

fields in England.” He caught plenty of fish, noticed the spicy Winter’s

Bark and used it to stew with his food, but could find no traces of

minerals in the soil. The Indians here took the knives and

looking-glasses Narborough gave them “to gain their loves,” but, he

records, refused brandy. Sounding and taking careful observations as he

went along, he named Desolation Island, passed out by Cape Pillar, and

noted the Four Evangelists (calling them the “Islands of Direction”) as

guides for the western end of the Strait.

On November 26 he lay off the island of Socorro, in 45° south latitude,

and on the 30th found and named Narborough’s Island, taking possession

“for his Majesty and his Heirs.” By this time all the ship’s store of

bread was exhausted, everyone eating pease; they proceeded to No Man’s

Land, a small island at the south of Chiloé, and by December 15 anchored

at the entrance to Valdivia Bay. Here they sent a Spaniard of the crew

ashore, with bells, tobacco, rings and jew’s-harps to trade with the

natives, and an undertaking to burn a fire at night as a signal. No fire

was seen and apparently Narborough was never able to discover what

became of him. The lieutenant gathered green apples from the thick woods

close to the water’s edge. Next morning the lieutenant in his boat,

rowing by the shore, came suddenly upon the Spaniards’ small fort of St.

James, was invited to land by the Spanish soldiery, and noted that the

fort was strongly palisaded against Indian raids, and that the Spaniards

used “very ordinary” match-lock musquetoons. The officers received the

English sailors courteously, sitting “on chairs and benches placed about

a table, under the shade, for the sun shone very warm, it being a very

fair day,” the captain calling for wine in a silver bowl and firing five

of his guns in salute. He asked for news of wars in Europe, said they

had much trouble with the valiant and barbarous Indians, who fought on

horseback and infested the camp so closely that the Spaniards never

entered the thick woods nor went more than a musket-shot’s distance from

the palisades. A fine dinner was served upon silver dishes, and it was

suggested that four Spaniards should go back to the English ship with

the lieutenant, and pilot her into the port. But Narborough remembered

the old tale of “treacherous dealings with Captain (John) Hawkins at St.

Juan de Ulloa,” and although he listened attentively while they talked

of the gold they found here and troubles with the natives, and the great

trade the Pacific coast had with the Chinese by way of the Philippines,

he declined to take his ship in, and said he only wanted wood and fresh

water. On December 17 he sent eighteen men ashore to barter merchandise

with the Spaniards, many courtesies being exchanged. Four of the

Spaniards’ wives, “very proper white women born in the kingdom of Peru

of Spanish parents,” who had never been in Europe, insisted on sitting

down in the ship’s boat, “to say that they had been in a boat that came

from Europe.” Other Spaniards had Indian wives, all being finely dressed

in silks, with gold chains and jewelled earrings. The English were then

asked to go to Fort St. Peter, two miles inside the bay, where the

Governor of Valdivia received Lieutenant Armiger and his companions

politely, accepting their presents and offering them wine; but when they

asked for a cask of water he sent soldiers and seized the boat, also

taking the Englishmen prisoners, saying he had orders from the Captain

General of Chile. A letter from Armiger to Narborough, sent next day,

stated that “myself and Mr. Fortescue are kept here as prisoners, but

for what cause I cannot tell; but they still pretend friendship and say

that if you will bring the ship into the harbour you shall have all the

accommodation that may be. Sir, I need not advise you further.” This was

the last we hear of him, for Narborough could not obtain his release and

sailed away a few days later. Three men were with Armiger—John

Fortescue, Hugh Cooe the trumpeter, and Thomas Highway, a Moor of

Barbary, who spoke good Spanish. Returning through the Strait, the

expedition reached home in the middle of 1671, sighting the Lizard on

June 10.

Narborough’s careful and seamanlike observations, his sailing

directions, record of soundings, etc., as well as his acute notes upon

South Chile, were the first explicit details published in England of the

condition of this region in the seventeenth century; the book was the

manual used seventy years later by the crew of the _Wager’s_ longboat.

Narborough thought that advantageous trade might be made in South Chile

if “leave were granted by the King of Spain for the English to trade

freely in all their ports and coasts; for the people which inhabit there

are very desirous of a trade: but the Governors durst not permit it

without orders, unless ships were to go thither and trade per force and

not take notice of the Governors.” And as Spain continued to follow the

policy of exclusion, and open hostilities recurred, this was what

happened, until before another fifty years had passed the authorities

were either taking part in the smuggling that went on or trying to shut

their eyes to it.

_Sharp and Dampier_

The next English stranger upon Chilean coasts was the pirate Captain

Bartholomew Sharp, raiding up and down all the West Coast in 1680 in

boats that he built in Panama, and sailing southwards “as far in a

fortnight as the Spaniards usually do in three months,” says Basil

Ringrose. They made for the “vastly rich town of Arica,” took a couple

of vessels on the way, but finding Arica roused and the country in arms

against them, took Ilo, and proceeded south to plunder Coquimbo. Hence

they sailed for Juan Fernandez Island. The crew deposed Sharp and

elected Watling as the commander, and presently sailed back to Iquique

with minds still fixed upon the riches of Arica. On a second attempt at

this port Watling was killed; Sharp was reappointed, and the buccaneers

went to Huasco for provisions (“for fruits this place is not inferior to

Coquimbo”), and after raiding off the Central American and Mexican

coast, returned to England. They intended to traverse Magellan Strait,

but must have rounded the Horn, for to their surprise no land was

encountered until they found themselves in the West Indies. Their story

encouraged Davis to the plundering of Coquimbo in 1686.

Between this time and the arrival of Anson, one of the most interesting

of the raiders in the South Seas was Dampier, who was an adventurer of

great experience and resource. The sailing-master in one of the vessels

of Dampier’s expedition of 1703 was Alexander Selkirk. This Scot had a

quarrel with Captain Stradling, and was put ashore at Juan Fernandez,

where the corsairs usually assembled to get fresh water and to repair

their vessels. It is said that before the ship left he asked to be

readmitted, but was refused. He lived alone on the island for a period

of four years and four months, and was eventually rescued by Woodes

Rogers, captain of the _Duke_ privateer, on February 12, 1709. Dampier,

curiously enough, was then acting as Rogers’ pilot, and must have been

interested in the adventures of the original of Robinson Crusoe.

_Captain Betagh_

A narrative of uncommon interest is that of Captain Betagh, an Irishman

with an observant eye and a lively pen, who, raiding in the company of

Captains Clipperton and Shelvocke upon the West Coast in the year 1720,

recorded his adventures in a racy tale.

The _Success_ and the _Speedwell_ carried King George’s commission, a

state of war existing between Spain and England, and the legality of

their privateering was so far recognised that when a number of the

British, including Betagh, were caught and sent prisoner to Lima, no

charge against them regarding attacks upon coastal towns was made, and

the only serious accusation was that, early in their cruise, a

Portuguese and therefore friendly vessel had been seized and a quantity

of money taken. The two vessels, of which the larger did not exceed 170

tons burden, sailed south down the Eastern Coast of South America late

in 1719, encountering such bad weather off Tierra del Fuego that they

were greatly delayed. Many of the crew died and the rest were reduced to

eating mussels and wild celery found on the forbidding shore. The

vessels missed a rendezvous at Juan Fernandez, and Captains Clipperton

and Shelvocke raided separately up and down the West Coast in an

extraordinary series of adventures. Three Spanish men-of-war came out

after them, as well as after the French “interlopers,” but the seas were

wide and the little privateers besides being fast were manned by hardy

British sailors, while most of the Spanish vessels were obliged to carry

Indian or Negro crews. A number of small vessels were taken, but one

prize brought misfortune; the prize crew put aboard was overpowered by

the original crew, the ship run aground, and the handful of British sent

prisoners to Lima. Not long after, Betagh was sent to cruise in the

_Mercury_, a little fruit bark seized off Paita. In this unlikely vessel

he actually succeeded in taking two prizes, exchanging into the second,

an old English-built pink full of peddler’s goods running between Panama

and Peru. But the pink was chased by the Spanish warship _Brilliant_ and

overtaken, luck, however, remaining with Betagh when the Admiral proved

to be Don Pedro Miranda, who had been a former prisoner of Sir Charles

Wager and so well treated by him that not only did the Spaniard treat

his English prisoners kindly, but brought Betagh to his own table and

toasted the gallant Wager at every meal.

Reversals of fortune of this kind were not unusual, and no doubt bred

tolerance; another example was occurring in the Pacific at almost the

same time. Clipperton, taking the _Prince Eugene_, found aboard the

Marquis de Villa Roca with his wife and child. On a previous voyage

Clipperton had been taken before this official in Panama, and the terms

now arranged were not made harsher by resentment. The antagonists

recognised the fortune of war.

Betagh, with a surgeon and sergeant of marines, was set ashore at Paita,

whence they were sent by the usual route of the coast peddlers to Piura,

and later to Lima. Here the venerable Archbishop Diego Morsillo, the

Viceroy, refused to proceed harshly against the prisoners in the matter

of the Portuguese _moidores_, and “would sign no order for the shedding

of innocent blood.” Betagh was permitted to live with one Captain

Fitzgerald, a native of St. Malo, who offered agreeable hospitality.

Another group of Clipperton’s men, taken and also brought to Lima not

long after, yielded to suggestion and became converts to Roman

Catholicism, with merchants of Lima standing as godfathers. Apparently

the Limeños were not disposed to severity towards these brands wrested

from the burning, for when an assortment met at a public house kept by

one John Bell to confirm their baptism with a bowl of punch, and became

so dimmed of vision that they knocked down and smashed the image of a

saint in mistake for an aggressor, the Inquisition released them after a

five days’ cooling of their heads. Nor was the action of the authorities

anything but strangely lenient when the same precious converts were

caught out in a more serious business. Headed by one Sprake, they formed

an audacious plot to seize a ship at Callao, and, to get money for

firearms, had the effrontery to beg for alms in the Lima streets as

“poor English newly baptised.” Discovered, they were all jailed for a

time, but presently released with the exception of the ringleader, with

whom the Government was “greatly provoked.”

Betagh himself was permitted to work his way home in the Spanish ship

_Flying Fish_, and returned to London in October, 1721. His book,

written soon after he returned, is a valuable companion picture to that

of Byron: both were straightforward narrators of the experiences upon

the West Coast of young naval officers engaged in their duty of

“cruising upon and annoying the enemy” in the closed waters of the South

Seas, at a time of extreme interest in world affairs. Betagh’s

descriptions show that he had an eye for scenery, as when he said of

Coquimbo that it “stands on a green rising ground about ten yards high,

which nature has formed like a terrace, north and south in a direct line

of more than a mile. The first street makes a delightful walk, having

the prospect of the country round it and the bay before it. All this is

sweetly placed in a valley ever green and watered with a river which

having taken its rise from among the mountains, flows through the vales

and meadows in a winding stream to the sea.”

_The Loss of the “Wager”_

Spain being again at war with England in 1740, Commodore Anson was sent

to the Pacific, as Vernon to the Atlantic, colonies of Spain on exactly

the same principle as had prevailed in Elizabeth’s day—to touch the

enemy in one of his tenderest spots.

The authority under which they sailed was not questioned; the rule of

conduct on both sides was that of the “gallant enemy.” Britain’s

Caribbean possessions date from that series of raids.

Lord Anson sailed from England in September, 1740, with the flagship

_Centurion_, and the warships _Gloucester_, _Pearl_, _Severn_, _Tryal_

and _Wager_, with two store-ships. The mission of the fleet was to harry

the Spaniards in the Pacific, and the route was round the Horn. But when

Anson reached Juan Fernandez Island in June, 1741, but three vessels

remained, and his available crew was reduced from 1000 to 335.

Nevertheless he harassed the coast, and captured Paita; but was forced

to sink two unseaworthy vessels, collecting the remainder of the crew on

the _Centurion_, and remained cruising about the Pacific until in June,

1744, he took one of the treasure-ships on her way from Mexico with

enormous wealth on board, and sailed home with the spoils. He is said to

have brought back more than a million pounds’ worth of gold, and to have

entered port with a big golden Spanish candlestick tied to every yardarm

of his ship.

Of the _Wager’s_ fate Anson did not know for several years; this vessel

was cast away on an island off South Chile, a number of the crew

escaping in various ways. The loss of the _Wager_ and the subsequent

fate of her crew not only forms a moving and almost incredible story

with which Chilean colonial life is interwoven, but had a lasting effect

upon international maritime law. For, following the desertion of the

captain by the insubordinate leaders in the _Speedwell_ longboat, an act

of Parliament was passed which made such conduct mutiny in the eyes of

justice. Until that time the pay of a crew ceased when their ship was

wrecked, and they then had no employers nor commanders and the officers,

in consequence, were without technical authority, although in practice

this control was almost invariably conceded.

The _Wager_ was an old East Indiaman. She set sail deeply laden with

repairing gear and stores for the squadron, and was in no condition to

withstand the fierce buffeting of the South Seas. She lost a mast after

passing Le Maire Strait, failed to regain touch with the squadron, and

while hastening in the teeth of terrible weather to reach the rendezvous

at Socorro Island, south of Valdivia, she was wrecked off a desolate

island lying between 47 and 48 degrees of south latitude. The names of

Wager and Byron Islands, in the south of the Gulf of Peñas, commemorate

the shipwreck and struggle for life of the survivors, and the name of

that single-hearted and clear-headed midshipman, young John Byron, who

wrote an account of the affair forty years afterwards, when he had

become a Commodore of George IV’s fleet.

The wreck occurred on May 14, 1741. About 140 men of the crew and

marines, the captain and officers, got ashore, were able to save a

certain amount of salt pork, flour, wine, etc., from the _Wager_, but

found nothing on the island that could serve as food but wild celery,

the shell-fish of the wave-battered rocks, and a few sea-birds. Indians

who visited them occasionally, almost as badly off as themselves,

bartered a few mangy dogs and, once, three sheep, for ship’s

merchandise, but both shelter and food were insufficient; rains and

violent weather were continual, and to make matters worse quarrels broke

out, a party withdrawing themselves from the authority of the captain,

who alienated many others when he shot a turbulent midshipman. Forty men

were dead, from drowning or their sufferings on the island, before a

means of escape was ready with the repair and lengthening of the

_Wager’s_ longboat. In this little vessel Captain Cheap proposed to make

his way north until he could fall in with and seize a coasting ship of

the Spaniards, a capture which would permit him to search for and rejoin

Anson’s squadron. But the disaffected crew, led by the carpenter and

gunner, who had borrowed and taken to heart the book of Voyages of

Narborough, now declared their intention of going south and making for

Magellan’s Strait. The captain objected, was made prisoner, and at the

last moment was left behind, with a lieutenant of marines and the

surgeon, when the ringleaders realised the scant accommodation of the

_Speedwell_. Byron, who had gone on board believing that all the

survivors were being taken off, returned to his captain, with a few

other men, in the barge. They had nothing to eat but sea-weed, fried in

the tallow of candles, and wild herbs; there were no more shell-fish,

and all the party were extremely weak; but the captain decided to

attempt a northward journey and the starving men began to mend as well

as they could the barge and little yawl left to them. A number of the

first deserters from the nearby lagoon now rejoined them, and a total of

twenty finally embarked on December 15. Encountering rain, cold and

adverse winds, they crawled along the rocky, wooded and broken coast,

frequently being forced to lie upon their oars all night, since the

heavy breakers prevented a landing for rest and shelter. The yawl was

sunk when they tried to round the headland of Tres Montes Peninsula, and

hereabouts they were forced, since the barge could carry no more, to

leave on shore four marines, giving them arms and what other provisions

they could; these plucky men stood to watch the barge out of sight,

giving three cheers and calling out “God Save the King.” With that

gesture they disappeared from history, for when the barge had to put

back again, and search was made for the marines, no trace was found but

a musket thrown upon the beach.

Now and then they found a seal, and feasted; or berries, and lived for

days upon them; and after two months of incessant struggle were driven

back to the scene of the wreck. Here they were in the utmost

extremities, and all must have died of starvation had not an Indian

chief from the Chonos Islands, in contact with the Spanish and bearing

the wand of office, visited the place a fortnight later. To him they

offered the barge if he would conduct them to a Spanish settlement, and

a few days later the thirteen English and the Indian “Martin” with his

servant embarked, steering north. Some days later six men took the barge

and deserted, and thenceforth the party made their way in an Indian

canoe, with frequent portages, through the broken and inhospitable

Chonos country. Byron speaks warmly of the kindness shown by Indian

women to him, and his notes upon the country and the customs of the wild

folk are of great interest; but the journey was terrible, and the

surgeon soon succumbed of starvation. The only person to whom the Indian

men showed respect was Captain Cheap, whose nature had become “soured,”

as the loyal but plain-spoken Byron permitted himself to remark, and who

was careless of the misery of his companions. Starving and in rags,

covered with vermin, and exhausted with the constant work of rowing,

they arrived at length at an island ninety miles south of Chiloé, and

traversed the final stretch of water in the crazy canoe. Once upon

Chiloé their worst wretchedness was over: the Chilote Indians “vied with

each other who should take the most care of us,” fed them well, laid

sheepskin beds by a blazing fire and went out at midnight to kill a

sheep for their food. Next day women came from far and near to see the

shipwrecked strangers, each bringing “a pipkin in her hand, containing

either fowls or mutton made into broth, potatos, eggs or other

eatables,” and Byron says that they did nothing but eat for the best

part of the day, and in fact, all the time they stayed upon the island.

The Spanish corregidor at Castro sent for them, and a formidable escort

of soldiers with drawn swords, led by four officers, solemnly conducted

them to the town, where their appearance made a great sensation. They

were imprisoned in a Jesuit college for a week, and then taken to the

Governor, being treated with consistent goodwill; when, some time later,

this official, a Chilean-born, made his usual tour of the island he took

his English prisoners with him. During the second sojourn in Castro

young Byron was offered the hand of the pretty and accomplished niece of

a rich priest; but excused himself, although sorely tempted by an offer

of a piece of new linen to be made up into clothes to replace his rags.

On January 2, 1743, the party were embarked upon a Spanish vessel bound

for Valparaiso; the ship was country-built, of 250 tons, and was 40

years old, carrying a Spanish captain and Indian seamen. At Valparaiso

they were put into prison, and would have fared badly but for the native

kindness of the Chileans, who brought them food and money, their jailer

spending half his own daily allowance to buy wine and fruit for them.

[Illustration: Last Hope Inlet (Ultima Esperanza).]

[Illustration: Channel in the Territory of Magellanes.]

When the President of the Audience in Santiago, Don José Manso, sent for

them to the capital, they went with a mule-train over the beautiful

hills and plains, and, arriving in the city, the four officers (Captain

Cheap, Hamilton, Campbell and Byron) were permitted to live in the house

of a Scots physician, Patrick Gedd. Of the next twenty-four months Byron

speaks with the appreciation of all travellers to whom Chileans have

opened their hearts. Nor, indeed, were the Spanish officials unfriendly,

for as it happened several Spaniards who had been taken prisoner by

Anson in the _Centurion_, and set free, came to Santiago, and spoke

warmly of the excellent treatment they had received.

Santiago, after the miseries of the Golfo de Peñas, appeared delightful

to the young midshipman; he speaks of _tertullias_ and bull-fights,

country excursions, the fine fruit and agreeable women, and altogether

he seems to have given and received such pleasant impressions that one

must regard him as one of the first British diplomatic agents to Chile.

The fact that the _Wager_ had come on a hostile expedition, although the

hostility was directed against Spain, perhaps added a shade of romance.

When the party had been two years in Chile, the President gave them

permission to embark in a French ship bound for Spain, and on December

20, 1744, Byron, Hamilton and Captain Cheap (Campbell electing to remain

in Chile) set sail in the _Lys_ frigate, the same vessel in which the

distinguished Don Jorje Juan also travelled. Calling in at Concepción,

or rather the port Talcahuano, they joined three other French vessels,

the _Louis Erasme_, _Marquis d’Antin_ and the _Delivrance_. The _Lys_

now sprung a leak, returned for repairs to Valparaiso, while the three

other vessels, proceeding, fell into the hands of English men-of-war.

The _Lys_ put to sea again on March 1, 1745, after experiencing an

earthquake in Valparaiso Bay, and rounded Cape Horn; was chased by

English ships near Porto Rico, but got away to Santo Domingo. Thence

they sailed again in August, sheltered by a French naval squadron of

five ships, and finally reached Brest at the end of October. Here of

course, with France and England now at war, the three Englishmen were

prisoners, but were shortly allowed to cross to Dover. Byron’s money

only allowed him to hire a horse for the London road; he had to ride

hard through the turnpikes to escape payment and could afford no food.

When he reached London the house of his family, of whom he had not heard

a word for over five years, was shut, and it was only through

remembering a nearby linen-draper that he got the address of his sister

and hurried to her house in Soho Square, where the porter tried to shut

the door upon his “half-French, half-Spanish figure.”

The narrative published in London in 1743 by John Bulkeley and John

Cummins, respectively the gunner and carpenter of the _Wager_, tells the

story of the longboat and cutter and of the eighty men who went south in

those two craft. Bulkeley and Cummins seem to have been as bold and

wordy a pair of sea-lawyers as ever trod a deck, and one cannot but

sympathise with the lieutenant who represented them “in a very vile

light” on their return home; but the relation has its place in history,

carefully doctored as the journal of events appears to be.

Setting out on the morning of October 14, 1741, the longboat _Speedwell_

carried fifty-nine men, the cutter twelve and the barge ten; the latter

returned northward on the 22nd, and the cutter was destroyed among rocks

early in November, with the loss of a seaman. The _Speedwell_ was now

alone, with seventy-two men in her, facing the cruel gales and the cold

south as she crept with sail and oar towards Cape Pillar. On November 8,

eleven men, exhausted with the struggle and seeing the boat overloaded,

were set ashore at their own request, after Bulkeley had made them sign

one of the documents which no dangers nor trials made him omit. On the

10th they believed that they identified the four Islands of Direction

spoken of in Narborough’s book, by which they sailed, but lost their way

when within the channels and suffered terribly from cold, rain and

hunger, three men dying of starvation on November 30. In order to

ascertain their true position they decided at length to return west to

Cape Pillar, found it on December 5, and turned east once more. Now and

again they found Indians who traded dogs to the starving crew, who

thought the flesh “equal to the best mutton”; two more men died of want

on the 8th and 9th and although droves of guanacos were sighted off the

Narrows, they could not shoot any. A month later there were but fifteen

men in reasonably good condition, but they had managed to row and sail

the boat out of the Strait, were off the Patagonian coast, and were able

to kill seals and get fresh water. On January 14 a party went ashore for

food, and heavy seas drove the _Speedwell_ from the coast, eight men

being left behind; this was about 200 miles below Buenos Aires. On the

20th they were seen and given food by cattlemen on the Uruguayan coast,

and reached Rio Grande (do Sul, in South Brazil) on the 28th. Several

other men had died on the northward journey, and the survivors were

starving when the hospitable people of Rio Grande opened their houses to

them.

Here they remained until March 28, when Bulkeley, Cummins, and eleven

others got a passage to Rio, while Lieutenant Beans tarried with the

rest of the men for the next north-bound ship. From Rio the first party

got on board a ship bound for Bahia and Lisbon, transhipping thence for

England and arriving at Spithead on January 1, 1743. Before then,

however, the Lieutenant and his men had reached home, on board an

English vessel, and the Lords of the Admiralty awaited the sea-lawyers

with a score of grim questions as to mutiny, desertion, etc., and with

little regard for the romantic tale of the longboat. But as the record

of a journey made in an open boat amongst the cruel rocks and currents

of the Magellanic region, the story is probably unparalleled.

_Juan and Ulloa_

Amongst “Strangers on the Pacific Coast” during the eighteenth century

should also be included the two Spanish naval officers, Don Antonio

Ulloa and Don Jorje Juan, who left such valuable records in their

“Voyage to South America” and in the highly illuminating “Secret

Notices” presented to the King of Spain which were not published until

many years later. Their place here is due to the fact, as they

emphasised in the “Noticias Secretas,” that by this time Spain and her

colonies had grown far apart in feeling. A native-born white population

of “creoles,” as well as a large undercurrent of mestizos and some

mulattos, had grown up, and the stream of Spanish-born who came to the

country were frequently out of sympathetic touch. Spain felt this, and

the commission of inspection and report which the King added to the two

officers’ original duties shows how far the West Coast was still an

unknown country.

Ulloa and Juan’s visit (1735–1745) was the result of the determination

of the French Academy to settle the question of the shape of the earth

by measuring two arcs, one upon the equator line and the other as far

north as it was possible to travel. Asia and Africa offering no safe or

conveniently approached region near the equator, the Academy applied to

Spain for leave to enter the province of Ecuador for this object, while

a second party went to Lapland. Consent was given, but with the proviso

that Spanish officials should accompany the expedition, and eventually

choice fell upon Captains Antonio Ulloa and Jorje Juan, naval officers

already distinguished for their mathematical ability.

La Condamine had not completed his laborious task in the highlands of

the equator when news of Anson’s naval plans reached Peru, and the

Viceroy sent hastily to Quito for the two Spanish captains to aid in the

defence of the coast. From late 1740 to December, 1743, these duties

occupied Ulloa and Juan, when they returned to finish certain

measurements above Quito. During the interval they travelled in Peru and

Chile, and the observations they made shed much valuable light upon

colonial conditions.

With scientific work at an end in 1744, the two officers prepared for

return, embarking at Callao in separate ships—Juan in the _Lys_ and

Ulloa in the _Delivrance_—so that the chances were increased of one of

them reaching Spain safely, war having broken out between France and

England as well as continuing between England and Spain. The

_Delivrance_, however, was caught by English men-of-war when she sailed

into Louisburgh Bay, Canada, unaware that the port had fallen. Sent

prisoner to England, Captain Ulloa arrived at the end of 1745, and in

London received the greatest marks of respect from scientific men of the

day, including the President of the Royal Society, of which body he was

made a member.[3] He was assisted to recover his impounded notes and

scientific papers and was then permitted to return to Spain, in July,

1746. His brother officer had arrived, in the _Lys_, at the end of 1745.

Footnote 3:

Fellowship of the Royal Society was also extended to Captain Juan and

both were elected members of the French Academy.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the time had passed when Spain

could continue to exclude foreigners from South America. She had given

way to demands for strictly limited trading, and the door could not

again be shut.

Since the colonies of Spain wanted the blood and technical skill of

young Europe, and young Europe constantly roamed the earth for wealth

and adventure, no edicts or penalties could prevent a constant

infiltration of adventuring persons upon the West Coast. Likely young

white men have, indeed, seldom been denied a welcome in new countries

and whatever the Spanish authorities might say the growing native-born

populations of Chile continued to beckon.

_Resident Foreigners_

From time to time orders were issued that foreigners should be turned

out of Chile; for instance, in April, 1769, the Town Council of La

Serena (Coquimbo) promulgated a royal edict that foreigners were to

leave the country within thirty days under penalty of the confiscation

of their property. However, this applied only to persons engaged in

trade, mining, or the legal profession, and to travellers, while such

useful individuals as locksmiths and blacksmiths, tailors, bakers,

cooks, mechanics, physicians and surgeons, were permitted to remain. Two

Englishmen, Murphy and Denton, were among the persons told to leave the

town, while a couple of Italians, a Frenchman and Portuguese also fell

under the ban. It is doubtful whether the edicts were more than

temporarily pressed or obeyed, for as a matter of fact many foreigners

lived upon excellent terms with the local authorities, and, liking their

surroundings, were equally well regarded. Thirty years before this

particular edict was issued, and which applied to all important Chilean

towns, there was living in Santiago a prosperous Scots physician, who

was on sufficiently good terms with the Governor of Chile to obtain the

keeping of the three English prisoners from the _Wager_.

Anglo-Saxon names in Chile, as a glance at any Chilean town directory

shows, are too many for a satisfactory survey of their origin to be made

in a few pages. But the result of this amicable invasion is strongly

witnessed by the characteristics and qualities of the modern Chileno.

Some of the families have immense ramifications, and there are so many

interlockings that a member of a good Anglo-Chilean family is likely to

possess cousins throughout the republic, as well as in the United

Kingdom and possibly also in North America. There are, for instance, the

branches and connections of the Edwards family, descendants of that

George Edwards who came to Coquimbo on a British ship in 1804, left it,

and married the Señorita Isabel Osandon, whose father was of Irish

descent. Agustin, one of the three sons of this marriage, founded the

Banco de A. Edwards, whose original headoffices were in Copiapó, the

once-splendid copper mining centre. The same Agustin Edwards promoted

the Copiapó railway, married into the great Ross family, and was the

father of the distinguished Chilean Minister at the Court of St. James,

Don Agustin Edwards.

By a royal edict of 1808 all foreigners in Chile were listed, the count

resulting in a total of 79, among whom were 16 Britons and 9 North

Americans. This number is probably far below the correct figures, the

presence of such persons being still illegal according to Spain. It was

not until 1811 that permission was given for the brig _Fly_ to bring a

cargo of merchandise to Chilean ports—similar permits having previously

been given only to the French, when politically associated with Spain.

John and Joseph Crosbie were the chief adventurers of this shipload, and

the bales of cotton and woollen cloth, the hardware and tools of British

make, were sold at such good prices that the supercargo, John James

Barnard, presently returned with the _Dart_, equally laden. On board was

Andrew Blest of Sligo, and both he and Barnard remained and married in

the country.

_Strangers and Independence_

With the first dawn of the struggle for independence in the Spanish

colonies of the New World, help came promptly from across the Atlantic.

The political aspect, promising a definite cessation of the anxieties

and restrictions that harassed Europe and offering the counterbalance to

which Canning trusted, was a matter for statesmen; but it was the appeal

to the spirit, the call for help towards freedom, that touched popular

imagination and sent thousands of British volunteers across seas. Many

of these men died; some returned home; and a large number remained in

Latin America to form links that have proved invaluable on both sides of

the world.

The money sent to Spain’s lost colonies in early days set the new-born

countries upon their feet economically; the soldiers who flocked to

Bolívar’s standard in northern South America turned the scale of battle

on more than one occasion—the gallant Irish Legion is still commemorated

in Venezuela and Colombia; but it was to the Pacific that the largest

number of volunteers went, for not only were the armies of San Martín

strengthened by fighters, many of whom had seen useful service in

Peninsular campaigns, but the effect among seamen of the entry of

Admiral Cochrane into the conflict was that of a magnificent example to

be followed with enthusiasm. Cochrane created Chile’s navy; many of the

British officers who followed him remained in Chilean naval service, the

link between the British and Chilean navies being sustained by the

descendants of these sailors as well as, officially, by the instructors

traditionally lent by the British Admiralty.

The first British naval officers to fight for Chile preceded Cochrane by

some months. Actually the first Chilean fighting ship was the _Aguila_,

captained by Raymond Morris in 1817; Captain O’Brien, commanding the

_Lautaro_, a converted East Indiaman, lost his life in April, 1818, when

the Spanish blockading ship, the _Esmeralda_, was driven from

Valparaiso; Captain Wilkinson, who entered Valparaiso as master of

another East Indiaman, the _Cumberland_, loaded with coal, sold her and

entered the Chilean navy commanding the vessel, renamed the _San

Martín_.

Captain Morris commanded the _Araucana_ when in October, 1818, Chile’s

new little squadron went out to attack the big Spanish man-of-war, the

_Maria Isabella_, lying with her transports in Talcahuano Bay, a

brilliantly successful exploit. A little later came the former British

brig _Hecate_, renamed the _Galvarino_ and brought by two British naval

officers, Captains Spry and Guise, who also entered Chilean service.

About this time also came a number of North Americans, chiefly those

brought by José Miguel Carrera from the United States.

Miners, investors, buyers and sellers and shipping men came in the wake

of the fighters, and before 1850 there was a strong foreign, and chiefly

British, colony at Valparaiso, with other groups at Santiago, Coquimbo,

Copiapó and down south at Concepción. The kindly Chilean character, the

pleasant climate and lovely scenery, held the hearts of the strangers, a

great proportion remaining to identify themselves with Chilean fortunes.

A stream of scientific men and travellers was directed to Chile in the

early nineteenth century, performing valuable work and leaving records;

the list includes the names of Poeppig, Darwin, de Bougainville,

D’Orbigny, Mayen, the two Philippi’s, explorers of the Atacama desert,

and Humboldt. There was a lady, too, who has a place amongst travellers,

artists and writers of the first days of Independence, the gentle and

acute Maria Graham, widow of one of Cochrane’s officers, who eventually

returned to England, became Lady Callcott and published a perennially

delightful book of Chilean reminiscence.

Many explorers of the Chilean southerly regions did good service, for

here came the _Challenger_, with a group of scientific men, and later

the _Adventure_ and the _Beagle_, carrying King and Fitzroy and Darwin;

these vessels and the succeeding _Alert_, with Coppinger, performed

invaluable surveying work. Inland, a number of such explorers as

Musters, Viedma and Conway, preceded the official work of the Holdich

Commission. Of recent years, no foreigner has owed more to Chile than

Shackleton; after the casting away of his ship and men upon Elephant

Island in the Polar Seas, and the failure of three attempts at rescue,

it was the loan of the Chilean Government’s _Yelcho_ that saved a score

of gallant lives. But before the end of the nineteenth century the

visitor to the Pacific Coast had ceased to be a stranger, and in Chile

the newcomer no longer feels himself to be in a foreign land.

CHAPTER IV

THE INQUISITION IN CHILE

_Escobar.—Aguirre.—Sarmiento.—European Corsairs.—Decay of Power_

The history of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in

Chile follows the familiar lines of the work in other countries, and is

chiefly interesting in the side-lights shed upon colonial life. The veil

drawn over its acts during its period of activity was only lifted by the

discovery, in the Archives of Simancas, of the Inquisitors’

meticulously-kept records. The counts against the Tribunal do not

include those of suppressing or distorting its own history.

The first great Inquisitor, Torquemada, died six years after the

discovery of the West Indies by Cristobal Colón, and, under Pope Adrian

VI, a branch was soon established in the island of Española (Santo

Domingo), with authority extended to Mexico as early as 1524. It was

not, however, until 1569 that the royal cedula of King Philip II opened

all the Americas formally to the Tribunal, although for many years

previously the local dignitaries of various churches in Spanish America

were delegates of the powerful functions of the Inquisitors. As, for

instance, when Bishop Loaysa burnt the Flemish heretic Juan Millar at

the stake in Lima in 1548; and as in the curious case of Alonso de

Escobar.

Escobar was a Spaniard of good family who came to Peru with the first

conquistadores; he was a resident of Cuzco when the two captains of

Pedro de Valdivia, Monroy and Miranda, arrived, almost starving, from

the camp of their leader to beg help, and he promptly lent 14,000 pesos

to buy supplies and aided in raising a new force. He had been

twenty-three years in the service of the crown in the New World when

somebody happened to hear him say, in the plaza of Santiago de Chile in

August, 1562, that he always listened when Father Gil read the gospel,

but shut his ears to the moral. Witnesses, old brothers-in-arms,

admitted that he said this, but a suggestion that it was a joke, and

that the listeners laughed heartily, was received coldly. Escobar added

that the Father always abused the residents too much, and that he did

not like the dictum that Spaniards who killed Indians would go to hell.

But the representatives of the Inquisition found that he was guilty of

Lutheranism, that his goods should be confiscated, that he should suffer

imprisonment, etc. Escobar protested, asked for a “lettered person” to

help in his defence, and the end seemed to be reached when the Fiscal

reduced the sentence to the payment of costs. But the militant Father

Gil objected to aspersions upon his loyalty made in the course of the

trial, and a series of quarrels followed, resulting in the

excommunication of the judge, another priest, and the lawyer Molina.

When the scandal took, presently, the form of a contest between

different ecclesiastical Orders, we find a new list of twenty-five

excommunicated persons, including the Lieutenant-Governor, a

bishop-elect, a number of friars, and a couple of Negros. When the monks

set upon and beat a notary, the brother of Molina assaulted a monastery,

and later Molina, imprisoned, escaped and fled to Concepción, while most

of the other disputants carried their loud complaints to Lima.

The case of Francisco de Aguirre is more tragic. A trusted captain of

Valdivia’s, he was the founder of La Serena (elder sister of Coquimbo)

and was afterwards in charge of the expedition sent across the Andes and

into the present Argentina, by way of Tucuman and Santiago del Estero,

the most cruel desert that even these hardened explorers had

encountered. As the wretched party made its way towards the Spanish

settlement already existing on the Atlantic border, at La Plata,

mutineers seized Aguirre one day, and, apparently not daring to kill

him, pretended that they acted for the Inquisition. To the Bishop of La

Plata they presently handed him over, and as this worthy thought that

the newly discovered provinces might as well be governed by a protégé of

his own, he kept the conquistador in jail while formal charges were

arranged. At the end of three years ninety counts against Aguirre’s

Christianity had been made: amongst them, the accusation that he had

said that if he ruled over a republic where there lived a cleric and a

blacksmith, and he was obliged to exile one of them, he would send away

the cleric. He had also said that little men might fear excommunication,

but he didn’t; and that he was not convinced of the efficacy of prayer,

because he once knew a man who prayed much and yet went to the nether

world. He was sentenced, in addition to the imprisonment, now declared

just, to do penance in Tucuman church, and to pay a fine of 1500 _pesos

ensayadas_. Probably to save trouble, the old soldier agreed to confess

his guilt and to do penance, and was able to secure the privilege of

performing it in La Plata, instead of Tucuman, by the payment of another

500 pesos. The authorities then wrote to the King an account of the

case, and suggested that Aguirre was no fit person to rule Tucuman. But

before this letter reached Spain a royal order had arrived in La Plata,

appointing Aguirre as Governor of the provinces he had discovered, and

as soon as he could equip a small expedition of 35 men who came to his

banner the pioneer set out. He had not gone far when the Bishop sent a

priest after him, ordering him to return to face new charges. Aguirre

answered that now he was in “tierra larga”—open country—and going up to

the cleric and looking him straight in the face, he asked him, “If I

killed a priest, what punishment should I get?” With blanched face and

hurried feet the cleric went back. But the troubles of Aguirre were not

over. The hand of the Inquisition was still over him. He was eventually

processed again, imprisoned for five years, deprived of the remainder of

his fortune and of his Governorship, and when released made his way back

to the beautiful bay where stood La Serena of his own foundation. He had

lost three sons, a brother and three nephews, in the King’s service, was

a valiant and loyal pioneer, and died poor and lonely through the

Tribunal’s enmity.

The continuous petty persecution of another great pioneer, Pedro

Sarmiento de Gamboa, forms a curious chapter in the story of the

Inquisition, but in this case the protection of the Viceroy Toledo, and

the strong character and invaluable services of the man attacked,

outweighed the views of the Inquisitors. Sarmiento’s historical studies,

surveying and sea-discoveries in South Chile give him high rank among

the Spaniards in the New World, but his scientific bent was heretical in

the eyes of the Church. The event bringing Sarmiento under the

suspicious eye of the Inquisitors was the death of the Viceroy, the

Conde de Nieva, murdered in a street in Lima in February, 1564. His

successor Lope de Castro was active in the investigation of the

mysterious affair, and Sarmiento, who had been an intimate of the house,

was presently accused, not of complicity, but of knowledge of

witchcraft. He had talked to a woman servant of the dead Count about a

magic ink which made the writer of a letter beloved by the recipient: he

had two rings engraved with astrological characters. Sarmiento’s

confessor had seen and guaranteed the harmlessness of the rings, but

this did not save him from a sentence of naked penance in Lima

cathedral, banishment from the Indies, and, until his departure,

imprisonment in a monastery. Sarmiento complied with the penitential

part of the decree, but appealed to the Pope and obtained a commutation

of the banishment order. A few years later his discovery of the Solomon

Islands added so much to his renown that upon the arrival of the new

Viceroy, Francisco de Toledo, in 1569, Sarmiento was received with great

distinction, accompanying the ruler’s official visit throughout Peru and

subsequently writing a History of the Incas. In 1572 the Inquisition

again accused him of black magic in connection with the two rings,

pronounced him a dangerous person and re-ordained his banishment. At the

moment he was fighting against Indian tribes of the Andean forests, and

the Viceroy told the Inquisitors that he required his services; but they

came forward presently with an accusation that he had foretold deaths by

the lines on his hand. He was declared guilty, imprisoned in 1575, and

only released upon the insistence of the Viceroy. Sarmiento was no doubt

chiefly suspect because he was a scientific man of penetrating mind,

and, though his own writings show that he was a devout son of the

Church, the fact that he was an author rendered him dangerous. Forty

years previously a royal decree (August, 1534) had prohibited shipment

to the Indies of any books other than those dealing with the Christian

religion and virtue, so afraid was Spain of any ideas reaching the

Colonies. A letter from the King to the Casa da Contratación in Seville

protested: “I have been informed that many books of romances are sent to

the Indies, profane and foolish histories like that of Amadis and

kindred productions; this is a bad practice for the Indians, and the

kind of thing which they should not read nor be occupied with.” It was

with the same perfectly genuine and logical desire to maintain a dead

level of thought and conduct that, shortly after the above decree was

promulgated, a rule was enforced that no sons or nephews of people who

had been burnt alive by sentence of the Inquisition, and no converted

Jews, Moors, or other proscribed persons or “New Christians” should go

to the Indies.

_European Corsairs_

The economical as well as intellectual fences put round the New World

colonies of Spain were threatened most terrifyingly by the bold raids of

corsairs. Preservation of these barriers demanded severe treatment of

such persons as were caught in piratical attempts, the Inquisition

acting in full accord with the civil authorities when, for instance, in

the _auto da fé_ held in Lima in 1592, four English sailors captured

after the wreck of their ship off the island of Puna (at the entrance to

Guayaquil) were paraded. Walter and Edward Tillert were imprisoned for

five years before their execution; their companion Oxley was burnt alive

after four years in the jails of the Holy Office; but the life of the

eighteen-year Morley was saved when he was permitted to be a convert to

Roman Catholicism—a grace denied his older associates, as the

Inquisitors suspected the genuineness of the change of heart experienced

by men in the shadow of the torture chamber.

John Oxenham, friend of Drake, captured by a curious accident in Panama,

was hanged in Lima with several of his sailors, their English heresy

adding a useful weapon to the hand of the enemy.

A group of Dutch corsairs was brought before the Inquisition in 1615.

These men were taken at the port of Papudo, having arrived with the

fleet of Admiral Spilbergen, naval supporter of the Count Maurice of

Nassau, whose wise rule was chiefly responsible for the Dutch hold upon

North Brazil enduring for thirty years. The Spilbergen voyage is part of

the story of Holland’s plans for overseas dominions in the Americas, and

one of the strokes of fate by which outposts of a nearly-won empire were

successively lost.

Possession of the great territory of Brazil by the Portuguese across the

Andes, and cheek by jowl with some of the most cherished of the Jesuit

Missions, was another thorn in the flesh of the Spanish and a constant

cause of complaint by the Holy Office. Records of the Inquisition

complain that the Portuguese were responsible for the decay of religious

feeling in the Indies: they were tolerant to Jews, allowed many to enter

American regions, and themselves took possession of the commerce of the

Pacific coast. All the shops and businesses were in the hands of

Portuguese or Portuguese Jews, says one complaint, declaring that these

shopkeepers refused to sell goods on Saturdays. With all this trouble on

account of outsiders, the Inquisition had its hands full with

native-born offenders, and did not spare them. There is the case of

Father Ulloa and his private sect; and that of two sisters of Santiago

who accused their brother of Judaism, and ultimately, after a tremendous

process, sent him to the stake. Vicuña Mackenna relates another story of

the debt owing to one Manuel Perez, also of Santiago. This Perez was

burnt alive at Lima in 1639, but before his death told the Inquisitors

that Martinez Gago of Santiago, a merchant, owed him a few thousand

pesos. The Inquisitors sent to demand the money, but, finding that the

debtor was already dead, placed an embargo upon the goods of his

father-in-law and proceeded against that unlucky man. Then arose a score

of other creditors of Gago, among them many influential clergy, and the

story proceeds in a tangle of processes, demands by the haughty

Comisario of the Inquisition in Santiago and deportations to Lima.

But by the end of the seventeenth century the power and prestige of the

Holy Office had begun to wane, a decay due partly to the increase in its

ranks of the number of native-born or “creole” officials. Posts had for

long been a matter of personal privilege or commerce; but when local men

of ambition bought offices almost openly and proceeded to use them as

instruments for amassing a fortune, the Inquisition was laid open not

only to hatred and contempt but to attack. José Toribio Medina remarks

in his _Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion en

Chile_ (Santiago, 1890) that as a result of the lowered prestige of the

Holy Office, its members began to show “moderation,” even “humility,” as

when the Commissioner in Chile, 1797, humbly asked Governor O’Higgins to

help him to secure the person of an accused man, who, living in Chiloé,

might find friends to resist the Inquisition. The cases brought before

the Tribunal abated to mere charges of witchcraft, and although the

Inquisitors formally objected, in 1786, to the scandal of the teaching

of jurisprudence, history and chronology by Dr. José Lasterria, they had

not been able to prevent the opening of a school of mathematics in

Santiago, in 1759.

The last Commissioner of the Inquisition in Chile was Dr. José Antonio

de Errázuriz y Madariaga, a native of Santiago; his Treasurer, Judás

Tadeo de Reyes y Borda, was also a Santiaguino who held the additional

post of Secretary to the Governor of Chile. The ground was cut from

under their official feet when the Congress of 1811 voted that the funds

and income of the Inquisition should be used for “other pious purposes,”

this order being cemented, despite the energetic objection of the

Treasurer, when the Spanish Cortes of 1813 abolished the Tribunal in

Spain and her colonies. The estates belonging to the Inquisition in

Chile were some of the finest of the Central Valley, and were calculated

at a value of over one and a half millions of pesos.

Upon the restoration of that extraordinarily shortsighted monarch,

Ferdinand VII, the Inquisition was re-erected in 1814, and under this

authority Tadeo de Reyes collected about 1500 pesos in imposts, in 1815.

This was the last purse of Chilean money handed to the Tribunal, whose

final abolition by the Spanish Cortes of March, 1820, was the tombstone

of a body that had long lacked any spark of real life.

The existence and acts of the Tribunal appear, in the light of today,

grotesque as well as sinister; but it is well to remember that not only

was the age in which it flourished a period when life was held cheap and

religious passion ran high, but that even in the comparatively

emancipated atmosphere of South America the Inquisition was not

universally unpopular. On the contrary, the citizens of the Colonies in

more than one region appealed to Spain to set up a branch, with a view

to correction of the loose life of the ordinary clergy as well as to

punish heresy in an untutored pioneer community. This work was

undoubtedly performed with zeal: scores of the Chilean and Peruvian

cases taken before the Tribunal had to do with the chastity of the

priesthood, and irregular and coarse living on the part of residents. It

cannot be said that the work of the Inquisition banished licentiousness

from the Colonies, but the way of the sinner was made harder.

CHAPTER V

THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN

_The First Navigators: Magellan, Sebastian del Cano, Loaysa,

Alcazaba.—Sarmiento.—The City of Philip.—Cavendish.—Port Famine and

Punta Arenas._