Part 15 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p up to his door; and, he would venture to say, that neither I, nor any of my s.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+pwrecked at sea, and was taken up by an English merchant on board a s.h.i.+p bound to London from Barbadoes, or some other of our islands; that the English merchant, meeting another English s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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.