very low bows, and then they talked together, not in Spanish, but in a
kind of mountain jargon, some Spanish, and some Chilian, of which I
scarce understood one word. After a few words, I understood he said
something of a stranger come to see, and then, I supposed, added, the
passages of the mountains; then the Chilian came towards me, made me
three bows, and bade me welcome in Spanish. As soon as he had said
that, he turns to his barbarian, I mean his servant, for he was as ugly
a looked fellow as ever I saw, and taking his gun from him presented it
to me. My patron bade me take it, for he saw me at a loss what to do,
telling me that it was the greatest compliment that a Chilian could pay
to me; he would be very ill pleased and out of humour if it was not
accepted, and would think we did not want to be friendly with him.
As we had not given this Chilian any notice of our coming, more than a
quarter of an hour, we could not expect great matters of entertainment,
and, as we carried our provision with us, we did not stand in much need
of it; but we had no reason to complain.
This man's habitation was the same as the rest, low, and covered with a
sedge, or a kind of reed which we found grew very plentifully in the
valley where he lived; he had several pieces of ground round his
dwelling, enclosed with walls made very artificially with small stones
and no mortar; these enclosed grounds were planted with several kinds of
garden-stuff for his household, such as plantains, Spanish cabbages,
green cocoa, and other things of the growth of their own country, and
two of them with European wheat.
He had five or six apartments in his house, every one of them had a door
into the open air, and into one another, and two of them were very large
and decent, had long tables on one side, made after their own way, and
benches to sit to them, like our country people's long tables in
England, and mattresses like couches all along the other side, with
skins of several sorts of wild creatures laid on them to repose on in
the heat of the day, as is the usage among the Spaniards.
Our people set up their tents and beds abroad as before; but my patron
told me the Chilian would take it very ill if he and I did not take up
our lodging in his house, and we had two rooms provided, very
magnificent in their way.
The mattress we lay on had a large canopy over it, spread like the crown
of a tent, and covered with a large piece of cotton, white as milk, and
which came round every way like a curtain, so that if it had been in the
open field it would have been a complete covering. The bed, such as it
was, might be nearly as hard as a quilt, and the covering was of the
same cotton as the curtain-work, which, it seems, is the manufacture of
the Chilian women, and is made very dexterously; it looked wild, but
agreeably enough, and proper to the place, so I slept very comfortably
in it.
But, I must confess, I was surprised at the aspect of things in the
night here. It was, as I told you above, near night when we came to this
man's cottage (palace I should have called it), and, while we were
taking our repast, which was very good, it grew quite night.
We had wax candles brought in to accommodate us with light, which, it
seems, my patron's man had provided; and the place had so little
communication with the air by windows, that we saw nothing of what was
without doors.
After supper my patron turned to me and said, Come, seignior, prepare
yourself to take a walk. What! in the dark, said I, in such a country as
this? No, no, says he, it is never dark here, you are now come to the
country of everlasting day; what think you? is not this Elysium? I do
not understand you, answered I. But you will presently, says he, when I
shall show you that it is now lighter abroad than when we came in. Soon
after this some of the servants opened the door that went into the next
room, and the door of that room, which opened in the air, stood open,
from whence a light of fire shone into the outer room, and so farther
into ours. What are they burning there? said I to my patron. You will
see presently, says he, adding, I hope you will not be surprised, and
then he led me to the outer door.
But who can express the thoughts of a man's heart, coming on a sudden
into a place where the whole world seemed to be on fire! The valley was,
on one side, so exceeding bright the eye could scarce bear to look at
it; the sides of the mountains were shining like the fire itself; the
flame from the top of the mountain on the other side casting its light
directly upon them. From thence the reflection into other parts looked
red, and more terrible; for the first was white and clear, like the
light of the sun; but the other, being, as it were, a reflection of
light mixed with some darker cavities, represented the fire of a
furnace; and, in short, it might well be said here was no darkness; but
certainly, at the first view, it gives a traveller no other idea than
that of being at the very entrance into eternal horror.
All this while there was no fire, that is to say, no real flame to be
seen, only, that where the flame was it shone clearly into the valley;
but the vulcano, or vulcanoes, from whence the fire issued out (for it
seems there was no less than three of them, though at the distance of
some miles from one another), were on the south and east sides of the
valley, which was so much on that side where we were, that we could see
nothing but the light; neither on the other side could they see any
more, it seems, than just the top of the flame, not knowing anything of
the places from whence it issued out, which no mortal creature, no, not
of the Chilians themselves, were ever hardy enough to go near. Nor would
it be possible, if any should attempt it, the tops of the hills, for
many leagues about them, being covered with new mountains of ashes and
stones, which are daily cast out of the mouths of those volcanoes, by
which they grew every day higher than they were before, and which would
overwhelm, not only men, but whole armies of men, if they should venture
to come near them.
When first we came into the long narrow way I mentioned last, I
observed, as I thought, the wind blew very hard aloft among the hills,
and that it made a noise like thunder, which I thought nothing of, but
as a thing usual. But now, when I came to this terrible sight, and that
I heard the same thunder, and yet found the air calm and quiet, I soon
understood that it was a continued thunder, occasioned by the roaring of
the fire in the bowels of the mountains.
It must be some time, as may be supposed, before a traveller,
unacquainted with such things, could make them familiar to him; and
though the horror and surprise might abate, after proper reflections on
the nature and reason of them, yet I had a kind of astonishment upon me
for a great while; every different place to which I turned my eye
presented me with a new scene of horror. I was for some time frighted at
the fire being, as it were, over my head, for I could see nothing of it;
but that the air looked as if it were all on fire; and I could not
persuade myself but it would cast down the rocks and mountains on my
head; but I was laughed out of that notion by the company.
After a while, I asked them if these volcanoes did not cast out a kind
of liquid fire, as I had seen an account of on the eruptions at
Mount-AEtna, which cast out, as we are told, a prodigious stream of fire,
and run several leagues into the sea?
Upon my putting this question to my patron, he asked the Chilian how
long ago it was since such a stream, calling it by a name of their own,
ran fire? He answered, it ran now, and if we were disposed to walk but
three furlongs we should see it.
He said little to me, but asked me if I cared to walk a little way by
this kind of light? I told him it was a surprising place we were in, but
I supposed he would lead me into no danger.
He said he would assure me he would lead me into no danger; that these
things were very familiar to them, but that I might depend there was no
hazard, and that the flames which gave all this light were six or seven
miles off, and some of them more.
We walked along the plain of the valley about half a mile, when another
great valley opened to the right, and gave us a more dreadful prospect
than any we had seen before; for at the farther end of this second
valley, but at the distance of three miles from where we stood, we saw a
livid stream of fire come running down the sides of the mountain for
near three quarters of a mile in length, running like melted metal into
a mould, until, I supposed, as it came nearer the bottom, it cooled and
separated, and so went out of itself.
Beyond this, over the summit of a prodigious mountain, we could see the
tops of the clear flame of a volcano, a dreadful one, no doubt, could we
have seen it all; and from the mouth of which it was supposed this
stream of fire came, though the Chilian assured us that the fire itself
was eight leagues off, and that the liquid fire which we saw came out of
the side of the mountain, and was two leagues from the great volcano
itself, running like liquid metal out of a furnace.
They told me there was a great deal of melted gold ran down with the
other inflamed earth in that stream, and that much of the metal was
afterwards found there; but this I was to take upon trust.
The sight, as will easily be supposed, was best at a distance, and,
indeed, I had enough of it. As for my two midshipmen, they were almost
frightened out of all their resolutions of going any farther in this
horrible place; and when we stopped they came mighty seriously to me,
and begged, for God's sake, not to venture any farther upon the faith of
these Spaniards, for that they would certainly carry us all into some
mischief or other, and betray us.
I bade them be easy, for I saw nothing in it all that looked like
treachery; that it was true, indeed, it was a terrible place to look on,
but it seemed to be no more than what was natural and familiar there,
and we should be soon out of it.
They told me very seriously that they believed it was the mouth of hell,
and that, in short, they were not able to bear it, and entreated me to
go back. I told them I could not think of that, but if they could not
endure it, I would give consent that they should go back in the morning.
However, we went for the present to the Chilian's house again, where we
got a plentiful draught of Chilian wine, for my patron had taken care to
have a good quantity of it with us; and in the morning my two
midshipmen, who got very drunk over night, had courage enough to venture
forward again; for the light of the sun put quite another face upon
things, and nothing of the fire was then to be seen, only the smoke.
All our company lodged in the tents here, but myself and my patron, the
Spaniard, who lodged within the Chilian's house, as I have said.
This Chilian was a great man among the natives, and all the valley I
spoke of, which lay round his dwelling, was called his own. He lived in
a perfect state of tranquility, neither enjoying or coveting anything
but what was necessary, and wanting nothing that was so. He had gold
merely for the trouble of picking it up, for it was found in all the
little gulleys and rills of water which, as I have said, came down from
the mountains on every side; yet I did not find that he troubled himself
to lay up any great quantity, more than served to go to Villa Rica and
buy what he wanted for himself and family.
He had, it seems, a wife and some daughters, but no sons; these lived in
a separate house, about a furlong from that where he lived, and were
kept there as a family by themselves, and if he had any sons they would
have lived with him.
He did not offer to go with us any part of our way, as the other had
done, but, having entertained us with great civility, took his leave. I
caused one of my midshipmen to make him a present, when we came away, of
a piece of black baize, enough to make him a cloak, as I did the other,
and a piece of blue English serge, enough to make him a jerkin and
breeches, which he accepted as a great bounty.
We set out again, though not very early in the morning, having, as I
said, sat up late, and drank freely over night, and we found, that
after we had been gone to sleep it had rained very hard, and though the
rain was over before we went out, yet the falling of the water from the
hills made such a confused noise, and was echoed so backward and forward
from all sides, that it was like a strange mixture of distant thunder,
and though we knew the causes, yet it could not but be surprising to us
for awhile.
However, we set forward, the way under foot being pretty good; and first
he went up the steps again by which we had come down, our last host
waiting on us thither, and there I gave him back his gun, for he would
not take it before.
In this valley, which was the pleasantest by day and the most dismal by
night that ever I saw, I observed abundance of goats, as well tame in
the enclosures, as wild upon the rocks; and we found afterwards, that
the last were perfectly wild, and to be had, like those at Juan
Fernandez, by any one who could catch them. My patron sent off two of
his men, just as a huntsman casts off his hounds, to go and catch goats,
and they brought us in three, which they shot in less than half an hour,
and these we carried with us for our evening supply; for we made no
dinner this day, having fed heartily in the morning about nine, and had
chocolate two hours before that.
We travelled now along the narrow winding passage, which I mentioned
before, for about four hours, until I found, that though we had ascended
but gently, yet that, as we had done so for almost twenty miles
together, we were got up to a frightful height, and I began to expect
some very difficult descent on the other side; but we were made easy
about two o'clock, when the way not only declined again to the east, but
grew wider, though with frequent turnings and windings about, so that we
could seldom see above half a mile before us.
We went on thus pretty much on a level, now rising, now falling; but
still I found that we were a very great height from our first entrance,
and, as to the running of the water, I found that it flowed neither east
nor west, but ran all down the little turnings that we frequently met
with on the north side of our way, which my patron told me fell all into
the great valley where we saw the fire, and so passed off by a general
channel north-west, until it found its way out into the open country of
Chili, and so to the South Seas.
We were now come to another night's lodging, which we were obliged to
take up with on the green grass, as we did the first night; but, by the
help of our proveditor-general, my patron, we fared very well, our
goat's flesh being reduced into so many sorts of venison, that none of
us could distinguish it from the best venison we ever tasted.
Here we slept without any of the frightful things we saw the night
before, except that we might see the light of the fire in the air at a
great distance, like a great city in flames, but that gave us no
disturbance at all.
In the morning our two hunters shot a deer, or rather a young fawn,
before we were awake, and this was the first we met with in this part of
our travel, and thus we were provided for dinner even before
breakfast-time; as for our breakfast, it was always a Spanish one, that
is to say, about a pint of chocolate.
We set out very merrily in the morning, and we that were Englishmen
could not refrain smiling at one another, to think how we passed through
a country where the gold lay in every ditch, as we might call it, and
never troubled ourselves so much as to stoop to take it up; so certain
is it, that it is easy to be placed in a station of life where that very
gold, the heaping up of which is elsewhere made the main business of
man's living in the world, would be of no value, and not worth taking
off from the ground; nay, not of signification enough to make a present
of, for that was the case here.
Two or three yards of Colchester baize, a coarse rug-like manufacture,
worth in London about 151/2_d._ per yard, was here a present for a man of
quality, when, for a handful of gold dust, the same person would scarce
say, Thank you; or, perhaps, would think himself not kindly treated to
have it offered him.
We travelled this day pretty smartly, having rested at noon about two
hours, as before, and, by my calculation, went about twenty-two English
miles in all. About five o'clock in the afternoon, we came into a broad,
plain open place, where, though it was not properly a valley, yet we
found it lay very level for a good way together, our way lying almost
east-south-east. After we had marched so about two miles, I found the
way go evidently down hill, and, in half a mile more, to our singular
satisfaction we found the water from the mountains ran plainly
eastward, and, consequently, to the North Sea.
We saw at a distance several huts or houses of the mountaineer
inhabitants, but went near none of them, but kept on our way, going down
two or three pretty steep places, not at all dangerous, though something
difficult.
We encamped again the next night as before, and still our good caterer
had plenty of food for us; but I observed that the next morning, when we
set forward, our tents were left standing, the baggage mules tied
together to graze, and our company lessened by all my patron's servants,
which, when I inquired about, he told me he hoped we should have good
quarters quickly without them.
I did not understand him for the present, but it unriddled itself soon
after; for, though we travelled four days more in that narrow way, yet
he always found us lodging at the cottages of the mountaineers.
The sixth day we went all day up hill; at last, on a sudden, the way
turned short east, and opened into a vast wide country, boundless to the
eye every way, and delivered us entirely from the mountains of the
Andes, in which we had wandered so long.
Any one may guess what an agreeable surprise this was to us, to whom it
was the main end of our travels. We made no question that this was the
open country extending to the North, or Atlantic Ocean; but how far it
was thither, or what inhabitants it was possessed by, what travelling,
what provisions to be found by the way, what rivers to pass, and whether
any navigable or not, this our patron himself could not tell us one word
of, owning frankly to us, that he had never been one step farther than
the place where we then stood, and that he had been there only once, to
satisfy his curiosity, as I did now.
I told him, that if I had lived where he did, and had servants and
provisions at command as he had, it would have been impossible for me to
have restrained my curiosity so far as not to have searched through that
whole country to the sea-side long ago. I also told him it seemed to be
a pleasant and fruitful soil, and, no doubt, was capable of cultivations
and improvements; and, if it had been only to have possessed such a
country in his Catholic majesty's name, it must have been worth while to
undertake the discovery for the honour of Spain; and that there could
be no room to question but his Catholic majesty would have honoured the
man who should have undertaken such a thing with some particular mark of
his favour, which might be of consequence to him and his family.
He answered me, as to that, the Spaniards seemed already to have more
dominions in America than they could keep, and much more than they were
able to reap the benefit of, and still more infinitely than they could
improve, and especially in those parts called South America.
And he, moreover, told me, that it was next to a miracle they could keep
possession of the place we were in; and, were not the natives so utterly
destitute of support from any other part of the world, as not to be able
to have either arms or ammunition put into their hands, it would be
impossible, since I might easily see they were men that wanted not
strength of body or courage; and it was evident they did not want
numbers, seeing they were already ten thousand natives to one Spaniard,
taking the whole country from one end to the other.
Thus you see, seignior, added he, how far we are from improvement in
that part of the country which we possess, and many more, which you may
be sure are among these vast mountains, and which we never discovered,
seeing all these valleys and passages among the mountains, where gold is
to be had in such quantities, and with so much ease, that every poor
Chilian gathers it up with his hands, and may have as much as he
pleases, are all left open, naked, and unregarded, in the possession of
the wild mountaineers, who are heathens and savages; and the Spaniards,
you see, are so few, and those few so indolent, so slothful, and so
satisfied with the gold they get of the Chilians for things of small
value in trade, that all this vast treasure lies unregarded by them.
Nay, continued he, is it not very strange to observe, that, when for our
diversion we come into the hills, and among these places where you see
the gold is so easily found, we come, as we call it, a-hunting, and
divert ourselves more with shooting wild parrots, or a fawn or two, for
which also we ride and run, and make our servants weary themselves more
than they would in searching for the gold among the gulleys and holes
that the water makes in the rocks, and more than would suffice to find
fifty, nay, one hundred times the value in gold! To what purpose, then,
should we seek the possession of more countries, who are already
possessed of more land than we can improve, and of more wealth than we
know what to do with? Perceiving me very attentive, he went on thus:
Were these mountains valued in Europe according to the riches to be
found in them, the viceroy would obtain orders from the king to have
strong forts erected at the entrance in, and at the coming out of them,
as well on the side of Chili, as here, and strong garrisons maintained
in them, to prevent foreign nations landing, either on our side in
Chili, or on this side in the North Seas, and taking the possession from
us. He would then order thirty thousand slaves, negroes or Chilians, to
be constantly employed, not only in picking up what gold might be found
in the channels of the water, which might easily be formed into proper
receivers, so as that if any gold washed from the rocks it should soon
be found, and be so secured, as that none of it would escape; also
others, with miners and engineers, might search into the very rocks
themselves, and would no doubt find out such mines of gold, or other
secret stores of it in those mountains, as would be sufficient to enrich
the world.
While we omit such things as these, seignior, says he, what signifies
Spain making new acquisitions, or the people of Spain seeking new
countries? This vast tract of land you see here, and some hundreds of
miles every way which your eye cannot reach to, is a fruitful, pleasant,
and agreeable part of the creation, but perfectly uncultivated, and most
of it uninhabited; and any nation in Europe that thinks fit to settle in
it are free to do so, for anything we are able to do to prevent them.
But, seignior, says I, does not his Catholic majesty claim a title to
the possession of it? and have the Spaniards no governor over it? nor
any ports or towns, settlements, or colonies in it, as is the case here
in Chili? Seignior, replied he, the king of Spain is lord of all
America, as well that which he possesses as that which he possesses not,
that right being given him by the Pope, in the right of his being a
Christian prince, making new discoveries for propagating the Christian
faith among infidels; how far that may pass for a title among the
European powers I know not. I have heard that it has always passed for a
maxim in Europe, that no country which is not planted by any prince or
people can be said to belong to them; and, indeed, I cannot say but it
seems to be rational, that no prince should pretend to any title to a
country where he does not think fit to plant and to keep possession.
For, if he leaves the country unpossessed, he leaves it free for any
other nation to come and possess; and this is the reason why the former
kings of Spain did not dispute that right of the French to the colonies
of the Mississipi and Canada, or the right of the English to the Caribee
islands, or to their colonies of Virginia and New England.