After this discourse was over, I asked him what he inferred from it, as to the wealth of the country not being discovered? He answered, It was evident that it was for want of people that the wealth of the country lay hid; that there was infinitely more lay uninquired after than had yet been known; that there were several mountains in Peru equally rich in silver with that of Potosi; and, as for Chili, says he, and the country where we live, there is more gold at this time in the mountains of the Andes, and more easy to come at, than in all the world besides.

Nay, says he, with some pa.s.sion, there is more gold every year washed down out of the Andes of Chili into the sea, and lost there, than all the riches that go from New Spain to Europe in twenty years amount to.

This discourse fired my imagination you may be sure, and I renewed it upon all occasions, taking more or less time every day to talk with this Spaniard upon the subject of cultivation of the lands, improvement of the country, and the like; always making such inquiries into the state of the mountains of the Andes as best suited my purpose, but yet so as not to give him the least intimation of my design.

One day, conversing with him again about the great riches of the country, and of the mountains and rivers, as above, I asked him, that, seeing the place was so rich, why were they not all princes, or as rich as princes, who dwelt there? He shook his head, and said, it was a great reproach upon them many ways; and, when I pressed him to explain himself, he answered, it was occasioned by two things, namely, pride and sloth. Seignior, says he, we have so much pride that we have no avarice, and we do not covet enough to make us work for it. We walk about sometimes, says he, on the banks of the streams that come down from the mountains, and, if we see a bit of gold lie on the sh.o.r.e, it may be we will vouchsafe to lay off our cloak, and step forward to take it up; but, if we were sure to carry home as much as we could stand under, we would not strip and go to work in the water to wash it out of the sand, or take the pains to get it together; nor perhaps dishonour ourselves so much as to be seen carrying a load, no, not for all the value of the gold itself.

I laughed then, indeed, and told him he was disposed to jest with his countrymen, or to speak ironically; meaning, that they did not take so much pains as was required, to make them effectually rich, but that I supposed he would not have me understand him as he spoke. He said I might understand as favourably as I pleased, but I should find the fact to be true if I would go up with him to Villa Rica, when I came to Baldivia; and, with that, he made his compliment to me, and invited me to his house.

I asked him with a _con licentia_, seignior, that is, with pardon for so much freedom, that, if he lived in so rich a country, and where there was so inexhaustible a treasure of gold, how came he to fall into this state of captivity? and what made him venture himself upon the sea, to fall into the hands of pirates?

He answered, that it was on the very foot of what he had been complaining of; and that, having seen so much of the wealth of the country he lived in, and having reproached himself with that very indolence which he now blamed all his countrymen for, he had resolved in conjunction with two of his neighbours, the Spaniards, and men of good substance, to set to work in a place in the mountains where they had found some gold, and had seen much washed down by the water, and to find what might be done in a thorough search after the fund or mine of it, which they were sure was not far off; and that he was going to Lima, and from thence, if he could not be supplied, to Panama, to buy negroes for the work, that they might carry it on with the better success.

This was a feeling discourse to me, and made such an impression on me, that I secretly resolved that when I came to Baldivia, I would go up with this sincere Spaniard, for so I thought him to be, and so I found him, and would be an eyewitness to the discovery which I thought was made to my hand, and which I found now I could make more effectual than by all the attempts I was like to make by secondhand.

From this time I treated the Spaniard with more than ordinary courtesy, and told him, if I was not captain of a great ship, and had a cargo upon me of other gentleman's estates, he had said so much of those things, that I should be tempted to give him a visit as he desired, and see those wonderful mountains of the Andes.

He told me that if I would do him so much honour, I should not be obliged to any long stay; that he would procure mules for me at Baldivia, and that I should go not to his house only, but to the mountain itself, and see all that I desired, and be back again in fourteen days at the farthest. I shook my head, as if it could not be, but he never left importuning me; and once or twice, as if I had been afraid to venture myself with him, he told me he would send for his two sons, and leave them in the ship, as hostages for my safety.

I was fully satisfied as to that point, but did not let him know my mind yet; but every day we dwelt upon the same subject, and I travelled through the mountains and valleys so duly in every day's discourse with him, that when I afterwards came to the places we had talked of, it was as if I had looked over them in a map before.

I asked him if the Andes were a mere wall of mountains, contiguous and without intervals and s.p.a.ces, like a fortification, or boundary to a country? or whether they lay promiscuous, and distant from one another?

and whether there lay any way over them into the country beyond?

He smiled when I talked of going over them. He told me they were so infinitely high, that no human creature could live upon the top; and withal so steep and so frightful, that if there was even a pair of stairs up on one side, and down on the other, no man would dare to mount up, or venture down.

But that as for the notion of the hills being contiguous, like a wall that had no gates, that was all fabulous; that there were several fair entrances in among the mountains, and large pleasant and fruitful valleys among the hills, with pleasant rivers, and numbers of inhabitants, and cattle and provisions of all sorts; and that some of the most delightful places to live in that were in the whole world were among the valleys, in the very centre of the highest and most dreadful mountains.

Well, said I, seignior, but how do they go out of one valley into another? and whither do they go at last? He answered me, those valleys are always full of pleasant rivers and brooks, which fall from the hills, and are formed generally into one princ.i.p.al stream to every vale: and that as these must have their outlets on one side of the hills or on the other, so, following the course of those streams, one is always sure to find the way out of one valley into another, and at last out of the whole into the open country; so that it was very frequent to pa.s.s from one side to the other of the whole body of the mountains, and not go much higher up hill or down hill, compared to the hills in other places.

It was true, he said, there was no abrupt visible parting in the mountains, that should seem like a way cut through from the bottom to the top, which would be indeed frightful; but that as they pa.s.s from some of the valleys to others, there are ascents and descents, windings and turnings, sloping up and sloping down, where we may stand on those little ridges, and see the waters on one side run to the west, and on the other side to the east.

I asked him what kind of a country was on the other side? and how long time it would take up to go through from one side to the other? He told me there were ways indeed that were more mountainous and uneasy, in which men kept upon the sides or declivity of the hills; in which the natives would go, and guide others to go, and so might pa.s.s the whole ridge of the Andes in eight or nine days, but that those ways were esteemed very dismal, lonely, and dangerous, because of wild beasts; but that through the valleys, the way was easy and pleasant, and perfectly safe, only farther about; and that those ways a man might be sixteen or seventeen days going through.

I laid up all this in my heart, to make use of as I should have occasion, but I acknowledged that it was surprising to me, as it was so perfectly agreeing with the notion that I always entertained of those mountains, of the riches of them, the facility of access to and from them, and the easy pa.s.sage from one side to another.

The next discourse I had with him upon this subject I began thus: Well, seignior, said I, we are now come quite through the valleys and pa.s.sages of the Andes, and, methinks I see a vast open country before me on the other side; pray tell me, have you ever been so far as to look into that part of the world, and what kind of a country it is?

He answered gravely, that he had been far enough several times to look at a distance into the vast country I spoke of; And such, indeed, it is, said he; and, as we come upon the rising part of the hills we see a great way, and a country without end; but, as to any descriptions of it, I can say but little, added he, only this, that it is a very fruitful country on that side next the hills; what it is farther, I know not.

I asked him if there were any considerable rivers in it, and which way they generally run? He said it could not be but that from such a ridge of mountains as the Andes there must be a great many rivers on that side, as there were apparently on this; and that, as the country was infinitely larger, and their course, in proportion, longer, it would necessarily follow that those small rivers would run one into another, and so form great navigable rivers, as was the case in the Rio de la Plata, which originally sprung from the same hills, about the city La Plata, in Peru, and swallowing up all the streams of less note, became, by the mere length of its course, one of the greatest rivers in the world. That, as he observed, most of those rivers ran rather south-eastward than northward, he believed they ran away to the sea, a great way farther to the south than the Rio de la Plata; but, as to what part of the coast they might come to the sea in, that he knew nothing of it.

This account was so rational that nothing could be more, and was, indeed, extremely satisfactory. It was also very remarkable that this agreed exactly with the accounts before given me by the two Chilian Indians, or natives, which I had on board, and with whom I still continued to discourse, as occasion presented; but whom, at this time, I removed into the Madagascar ship, to make-room for these Spanish prisoners.

I observed the Spaniard was made very sensible, by my doctor, of the obligation both he and his fellow-prisoners were under to me, in my persuading the privateers to set them at liberty, and in undertaking to carry them home to that part of Spain from whence they came; for, as they had lost their cargo, their voyage seemed to be at an end. The sense of the favour, I say, which I had done him, and was still doing him, in the civil treatment which I gave him, made this gentleman, for such he was in himself and in his disposition, whatever he was by family, for that I knew nothing of, I say, it made him exceedingly importunate with me, and with my doctor, who spoke Spanish perfectly well, to go with him to Villa Rica.

I made him no promise, but talked at a distance. I told him, if he had lived by the sea, and I could have sailed to his door in my ship, I would have made him a visit. He returned, that he wished he could make the river of Baldivia navigable for me, that I might bring my ship up to his door; and, he would venture to say, that neither I, nor any of my ship's company, should starve while we were with him. In the interval of these discourses, I asked my doctor his opinion, whether he thought I might trust this Spaniard, if I had a mind to go up and see the country for a few days?

Seignior, says he, the Spaniards are, in some respects, the worst nation under the sun; they are cruel, inexorable, uncharitable, voracious, and, in several cases, treacherous; but, in two things, they are to be depended upon beyond all the nations in the world; that is to say, when they give their honour, to perform anything, and when they have a return to make for any favour received. And here he entertained me with a long story of a merchant of Carthagena, who, in a sloop, was shipwrecked at sea, and was taken up by an English merchant on board a ship bound to London from Barbadoes, or some other of our islands; that the English merchant, meeting another English ship bound to Jamaica, put the Spanish merchant on board him, paid him for his pa.s.sage, and desired him to set him on sh.o.r.e on the Spanish coast, as near to Carthagena as he could. This Spanish merchant could never rest till he found means to ship himself from Carthagena to the Havannah, in the galleons; from thence to Cadiz in Old Spain; and from thence to London, to find out the English merchant, and make him a present to the value of a thousand pistoles for saving his life, and for his civility in returning him to Jamaica, &c. Whether the story was true or not, his inference from it was just, namely, that a Spaniard never forgot a kindness. But take it withal, says the doctor, that I believe it is as much the effect of their pride as of their virtue; for at the same time, said he, they never forget an ill turn any more than they do a good one; and they frequently entail their enmities on their families, and prosecute the revenge from one generation to another, so that the heir has, with the estate of his ancestors, all the family broils upon his hands as he comes to his estate.

From all this he inferred that, as this Spaniard found himself so very much obliged to me, I might depend upon it that he had so much pride in him, that if he could pull down the Andes for me to go through, and I wanted it, he would do it for me; and that nothing would be a greater satisfaction to him, than to find some way or other how to requite me.

All these discourses shortened our voyage, and we arrived fair and softly (for it was very good weather, and little wind) at Tucapel, or the river Imperial, within ten leagues of Baldivia, that is to say, of Cape Bonifacio, which is the north point of the entrance into the river of Baldivia. And here I took one of the most unaccountable, and I must needs acknowledge, unjustifiably resolutions, that ever any commander, intrusted with a ship of such force, and a cargo of such consequence, adventured upon before, and which I by no means recommend to any commander of any ship to imitate; and this was, to venture up into the country above a hundred and fifty miles from my ship, leaving the success of the whole voyage, the estates of my employers, and the richest ship and cargo that ever came out of those seas, to the care and fidelity of two or three men. Such was the unsatisfied thirst of new discoveries which I brought out of England with me, and which I nourished, at all hazards, to the end of the voyage.

However, though I condemn myself in the main for the rashness of the undertaking, yet let me do myself so much justice as to leave it on record too, that I did not run this risk without all needful precautions for the safety of the ship and cargo.

And first, I found out a safe place for the ships to ride, and this neither in the river of Tucapel, nor in the river of Baldivia, but in an opening or inlet of water, without a name, about a league to the south of Tucapel, embayed and secured from almost all the winds that could blow. Here the ships lay easy, with water enough, having about eleven fathoms good holding ground, and about half a league from sh.o.r.e.

I left the supercargo and my mate, also a kinsman of my own, a true sailor, who had been a midshipman, but was now a lieutenant; I say, to those I left the command of both my ships, but with express orders not to stir nor unmoor, upon any account whatever, unavoidable accidents excepted, until my return, or until, if I should die, they should hear of that event; no, though they were to stay there six months, for they had provisions enough, and an excellent place for watering lay just by them. And I made all the men swear to me that they would make no mutiny or disorder, but obey my said kinsman in one ship, and the supercargo in the other, in all things, except removing from that place; and that, if they should command them to stir from thence, they would not so much as touch a sail or a rope for the purpose.

When I made all these conditions, and told my men that the design I went upon was for the good of their voyage, for the service of the owners, and should, if it succeeded, be for all their advantages, I asked them if they were all willing I should go? To which they all answered, that they were very willing, and would take the same care of the ships, and of all things belonging to them, as if I were on board. This encouraged me greatly, and I now resolved nothing should hinder me.

Having thus concluded everything, then, and not till then, I told my Spaniard that I had almost resolved to go along with him, at which he appeared exceedingly pleased, and, indeed, in a surprise of joy. I should have said, that, before I told him this, I had set all the rest of the prisoners on sh.o.r.e, at their own request, just between the port of Tucapel and the bay of the Conception, excepting two men, who, as he told me, lived in the open country beyond Baldivia, and, as he observed, were very glad to be set on sh.o.r.e with him, so to travel home, having lost what little they had in the ship, and to whom he communicated nothing of the discourse we had so frequently held, concerning the affair of the mountains.

I also dismissed now the two Chilian Indians, but not without a very good reward, not proportioned to their trouble and time only, but proportioned to what I seemed to expect of them, and filled them still with expectations that I would come again, and take a journey with them into the mountains.

And now it became necessary that I should, use the utmost freedom with my new friend, the Spaniard, being, as I told him, to put my life in his hands, and the prosperity of my whole adventure, both ship and ship's company.

He told me he was sensible that I did put my life into his hands, and that it was a very great token of my confidence in him, even such a one that he, being a stranger to me, had no reason to expect; but he desired me to consider that he was a Christian, not a savage; that he was one I had laid the highest obligation upon, in voluntarily taking him out of the hands of the freebooters, where he might have lost his life. And, in the next place, he said, it was some recommendation that he was a gentleman, and that I should find him to be a man of honour; and, lastly, that it did not appear that he could make any advantage of me, or that he could get anything by using me ill; and, if even that was no argument, yet I should find, when I came to his house, that he was not in a condition to want anything that might be gained, so much as to procure it by such a piece of villany and treachery as to betray and destroy the man who had saved his life, and brought him out of the hands of the devil safe to his country and family, when he might have been carried away G.o.d knows whither. But to conclude all, he desired me to accept the offer he had made me at sea, viz., that he would send for his two sons, and leave them on board the ship as hostages for my safety, and desired they might be used on board no otherwise than I was used with him in the country.

I was ashamed to accept such an offer as this, but he pressed it earnestly, and importuned the doctor to move me to accept it, telling him that he should not be easy if I did not; so that, in short, the doctor advised me to agree to it, and, accordingly, he hired a messenger and a mule, and sent away for his two sons to come to him; and such expedition the messenger made, that in six days he returned with the two sons and three servants, all on horseback. His two sons were very pretty, well-behaved youths, who appeared to be gentlemen in their very countenances; the eldest was about thirteen years old, and the other about eleven. I treated them on board, as I had done their father, with all possible respect; and, having entertained them two days, left orders that they should be treated in the same manner when I was gone; and to this I added aloud, that their father might hear it, that whenever they had a mind to go away, they should let them go. But their father laid a great many solemn charges upon them that they should not stir out of the ship till I came back safe, and that I gave them leave, and he made them promise they would not; and the young gentlemen kept their word so punctually, that, when our supercargo, whom I left in command, offered to let them go on sh.o.r.e several times, to divert them with shooting and hunting, they would not stir out of the ship, and did not till I came back again.

Having gone this length, and made everything ready for my adventure, we set out, viz., Captain Merlotte, the Spanish doctor, the old mutineer who had been my second mate, but who was now captain of the Madagascar ship, and myself, with two midshipmen, whom he took as servants, but whom I resolved to make the directors of the main enterprise. As to the number, I found my Spaniard made no scruple of that, if it had been half my ship's company.

We set out, some on horses and some on mules, as we could get them, but the Spaniard and myself rode on two very good horses, being the same that his two sons came on. We arrived at a n.o.ble country-seat, about a league short of the town, where, at first, I thought we had been only to put in for refreshment, but I soon found that it was really his dwelling-house, and where his family and servants resided.

Here we were received like princes, and with as much ceremony as if he had been a prince that entertained us. The major-domo, or steward of his house, received us, took in our baggage, and ordered our servants to be taken care of.

It is sufficient to say, that the Spaniard did all that pride and ostentation was capable of inspiring him with, to entertain us; and the truth is, he could not have lived in a country in the world more capable of gratifying his pride; for here, without anything uncommon, he was able to show more gold plate than many good families in our country have of silver; and as for silver, it quite eclipsed the appearance, or rather took away the very use of pewter, of which we did not see one vessel, no not in the meanest part of his house. It is true, I believe, the Spaniard had not a piece of plate, or of any household furniture, which we did not see, except what belonged to the apartment of his wife; and, it is to be observed, that the women never appeared, except at a distance, and in the gardens, and then, being under veils, we could not know the lady from her women, or the maids from the mistress.

We were lodged every one in separate apartments, very well furnished, but two of them very n.o.bly indeed, though all the materials for furniture there must be at an excessive price. The way of lodging upon quilts, and in beds made pavilion-wise, after the Spanish custom, I need not describe; but it surprised me to see the rooms hung with very rich tapestries, in a part of the world where they must cost so dear.

We had Chilian wine served us up in round gold cups, and water in large silver decanters, that held, at least, five quarts apiece; these stood in our chamber. Our chocolate was brought up in the same manner, in deep cups, all of gold, and it was made in vessels all of silver.

It would be tiresome to the reader to particularise my account with the relation of all the fine things our host had in his house, and I could not be persuaded but that he had borrowed all the plate in the town to furnish out his sideboard and table. But my doctor told me it was nothing but what was very usual among them that were men of any substance, as it was apparent he was; and that the silversmiths at St.

Jago supplied them generally with their plate ready wrought, in exchange (with allowance for the quality) for the gold which they found in the mountains, or in the brooks and streams which came from the mountains, into which the hasty showers of winter rain frequently washed down pretty large lumps, and others, which were smaller, they washed out of the sands by the ordinary methods of washing of ore.

I was better satisfied in this particular when, the next day, talking to our new landlord about the mountains, and the wealth of them, I asked him if he could show me any of the gold which was usually washed out of the hills by the rain, in the natural figure in which it was found? He smiled, and told me he could show me a little, and immediately conducted us into a kind of a closet, where he had a great variety of odd things gathered up about the mountains and rivers, such as fine sh.e.l.ls, stones in the form of stars, heavy pieces of ore, and the like, and, after this, he pulled out a great leather bag, which had, I believe, near fifty pounds weight in it. Here, seignior, says he, here is some of the dirt of the earth; and turning it out upon the table, it was easy to see that it was all mixed with gold, though the pieces were of different forms, and some scarce looking like gold at all, being so mixed with the spar or with earth, that it did not appear so plain; but, in every bit there was something of the clear gold to be seen, and, the smaller the lumps, the purer the gold appeared.

I was surprised at the quant.i.ty, more than at the quality of the metal, having, as I have said, seen the gold which the Indians found in the countries I have described, which seemed to have little or no mixture.

But then I was to have considered, that what those Indians gathered was farther from the hills which it came from, and that those rough, irregular pieces would not drive so far in the water, but would lodge themselves in the earth and sand of the rivers nearer home; and also, that the Indians, not knowing how to separate the gold by fire from the dross and mixture above, did not think those rough pieces worth their taking up, whereas, the Spaniards here understood much better what they were about.

But, to return to the closet. When he had shown us this leather pouch of gold, he swept the ore to one side of the table, which had ledges round it to keep it from running off, and took up another bag full of large pieces of stone, great lumps of earth, and pieces of various shapes, all of which had some gold in them, but not to be gotten out but by fire.

These, he told us, their servants bring home as they find them in the mountains, lying loose here and there, when they go after their cattle.

But still, I asked him if they found no pieces of pure gold; upon this he turned to a great old cabinet, full of pretty large drawers, and, pulling out one drawer, he showed us a surprising number of pieces of pure clean gold, some round, some long, some flat, some thick, all of irregular shapes, and worked roundish at the ends with rolling along on the sands; some of these weighed a quarter of an ounce, some more, and some less; and, as I lifted the drawer, I thought there could be no less than between twenty and thirty pounds weight of it.

Then he pulled out another drawer, which was almost full of the same kind of metal, but as small as sand, the biggest not so big as pins heads, and which might very properly be called gold dust.

After this sight, we were not to be surprised at anything he could show us of the kind. I asked him how long such a treasure might be ama.s.sing together in that country? He told me that was according to the pains they might take in the search; that he had been twelve years here, and had done little or nothing; but, had he had twenty negroes to have set on work, as he might have had, he might have procured more than this in one year. I asked him how much gold in weight he thought there might be in all he had shown me? He told me, he could not tell; that they never troubled themselves to weigh, but when the silversmith at St. Jago came to bring home any vessel, or when the merchants from Lima came to Baldivia with European goods, then they bought what they wanted of them.