ROUND THE WORLD. to rob the honest Chilian who had used them so well, till my lieutenant, then their captain, by a stratagem seized on all their weapons, and threatened to speak to the Spaniard to raise all the Chilians in the mountains, and have all their throats cut; and yet that even this did not suffice, till the two midshipmen, then their lieutenants, assured them that at the first opening of the hills, and in the rivers beyond, they would have plenty of gold; and one of the midshipmen told them that if he did not see them have so much gold that they would not stoop to take up any more, they should have all his share to be divided among them, and should leave him behind in the first desolate place they could find. How this appeased them till they came to the outer edge of the mountains, where I had been, and where my patron the Spaniard left them, having supplied them with sixteen mules to carry their baggage, and some guinacoes, or sheep of Peru, which would carry burthens, and be good to eat also. the mountains, and being there free from the Here the generous Spaniard, who, at his own These things being done, the Spaniard's gentleman caused them to decamp, and march two days farther into the mountains, and then they encamped again, where the Spaniard himself came incognito to them, and with the utmost kindness and generosity was their guide himself, and their purveyor also, though two or three times the fellows were so rude, so ungovernable, and unbounded in their hunting after gold, that the Spaniard was almost frighted at them, and told the captain of it. Nor indeed was it altogether without cause; for the dogs were so ungrateful Also how here they mutinied again, and would that they robbed two of the houses of the not be drawn away, being insatiable in their Chilians, and took what gold they had, which was not much indeed, but it hazarded so much thirst after the gold, till about twenty, more the alarming the country, and raising all the reasonable than the rest, were content to move forward; and after some time the rest followed, mountaineers upon them, that the Spaniard though not till they were assured that the pick-was upon the point of flying from them, in spite ing up of gold continued all along the river, which began at the bottom of the mountains, and that it was likely to continue a great way farther. How they worked their way down these streams with still an insatiable avarice and thirst after the gold to the lake called the Golden lake, and how here they were astonished at the quantity they found; how after this they had great difficulty to furnish themselves with provisions, and greater still in carrying it along with them till they found more. I say all these accounts might suffice to make a volume as large as all the rest. How, at the farther end of this lake they found that it evacuated itself into a large river which, running away with a strong current to the S. S. E., and afterwards to the S. by E., encouraged them to build canoes, in which they embarked, and which river brought them down to the very bay where we found them; but that they met with many difficulties, sunk, and staved their canoes several times, by which they lost some of their baggage, and, in one disaster, lost a great parcel of their gold, to their great surprise and mortifi cation. How, at one place, they split two of their canoes, where they could find no timber to build new ones; and the many hardships they were put to before they got other canoes; but I shall give a brief account of it all, and bring it into as narrow a compass as I can. They set out, as I have said, with mules and horses to carry their baggage, and the Spaniard gave them a servant with them for a guide, who, carrying them by-ways, and unfrequented, so that they might give no alarm at the town of Villa Rica, or any where else, they came to the mouth of the entrance into the mountains, and there they pitched their tent. N. B. The lieutenant who kept their journal, giving an account of this merrily in his sea language, expresses it thus:-" Being all come safe into the opening that is in the entrance of of all their fire-arms and courage. But the captain begged him to stay one night more, and promised to have the fellows punished, and satisfaction to be made; and so he brought all his men together, and talked to them, and inWhen the new captain quired who it was; but never was such a piece of work in the world. came to talk of who did it, and of punishment, they cried, they all did it, and they did not value all the Spaniards and Indians in the country; they would have all the gold in the whole mounand swore to tain, ay, that they would, by it, and if the Spaniard offered to speak a word to them they would whip his head off, and the like. However, a little reasoning with them brought some of the men to their senses, and the captain, who was a man of sense and of a smooth tongue, managed so well that he brought about twentytwo of the men, and the two lieutenants and surgeons to declare for his opinion, and that they would act better for the future; and with these he clapt in between the other fellows, and separated about eighteen of them from their arms, for they had run scattering among the rocks to hunt for gold, and when they were called to this parley, had not their weapons with them, By this stratagem he seized eleven of the thieves and made them prisoners; and then he told the rest in so many words, that if they would not comply to keep order and obey the rules they were at first sworn to and had promised, he would force them to it, for he would deliver them, bound hand and foot, to the Spaniards, and they should do the poor Chilians justice upon them; for that, in short, he would not have the rest murdered for them; upon this he ordered his men to draw up, to show them he would be as good as his word, but they considered of it, and submitted. But the Spaniard had taken a wiser course than this, or perhaps they had been all murdered for he ran to the two Chilian houses where the rogues had plundered, and where, in south-east, the marks which our men had made short, there was a kind of little hubbub about it, || before, having not been so regular and exact just and with good words, promising to give them as there as in other parts of the way, or some other much gold as they lost, and the price of some turning being so very like the same, that they other things that were taken away, he appeased took one for the other; and thus going straight the people; and so our men were not ruined, as forward too far before they turned, they came to they would certainly have been, if the moun- an opening indeed, and saw the plain country taineers had taken the alarm. under them as they had done before, but the de|| scent was not so practicable. After this they grew a little more governable; but, in short, the sight of the gold, and the easy getting it, for they picked it up in abundance of places; I say, the sight of the gold made them stark mad; for now they were not as they were before, trafficking for the owners and for the voyage. But as I had promised the gold they got should be their own, and that they were now working for themselves, there was no getting them to go on, but, in short, they would dwell here; and this was as fatal a humour as the other. But to bring this part of the voyage to an end, after eight days they came to the hospitable, wealthy Chilian's house, who I mentioned before; and here, as the Spaniard had contrived it, they found all kind of needful stores for provisions laid up, as it were, on purpose: and, in a word, here they were not fed only but feasted. Here again the captain discovered a cursed conspiracy, which, had it taken effect, would, besides the baseness of the fact, have ended in their total destruction; in short, they had resolved to rob this Chilian who was so kind to them; but, as I said, one of the lieutenants discovered and detected this villanous contrivance, and quashed it, so as never to let the Spaniard know of it. But, I say, to end this part. They were oneand-twenty days in this traverse, for they could not go on so easy and so fast now they were a little army, as we did, who were but six or seven. At length they came to the view of the open country, and, being all encamped at the edge of a descent, the generous Spaniard, with his three servants, took his leave, wishing them a good journey, and so went back, having the day before brought them some deer, five or six cows, and some sheep, for their subsisting at their entrance into and travel through the plain country. And now they began to descend towards the plain, but they met with more difficulty here than they expected; for, as I observed, that the way for some miles went with an ascent towards the farthest part of the hill, that continued ascent had, by degrees, brought them to a very great, and in some places an unpassable, descent; so that, however my guide found his way down, when I was through, it was not so easy for them to do it, who were so many in number, and encumbered with mules and horses, and with their baggage, so that they knew not what to do; and if they had known that our ships were gone away, there had been some odds but, like the old Israelites, they would have murmured against their leader, and have all gone back to Egypt. In a word, they were at their wit's end, and knew not what course to take for two or three days, trying and essaying to get down here and there, and then frightened with precipices and rocks, and climbing up to get back again; the whole of the matter was, that they had missed a narrow way, where they should have turned off to the After they had puzzled themselves here, as I said, two or three days, one of the lieutenants and a man with him, seeing a hut or house of a Chilian at some distance, rode away towards it; but passing into a valley that lay between; he met with a river which he could by no means get over with the mules, so he came back again in despair. The captain then resolved to send back to the honest, rich Chilian, who had entertained them so well, for a guide, or to desire him to give them such directions as they might not mistake. But as the person sent back was 'one of those who had taken the journal which I mentioned, and was therefore greatly vexed at missing his way in such a manner, so he had his eyes in every corner, and pulled out his pocket-book at every turning, to see how the marks of the places agreed; and at last, the very next morning after he set out, he espied the turning where they should all have gone in, to have come to the place which they were at before. This being so remarkable a discovery, he came back again directly without going to the Chilian's house, which was two days' journey further. Our men were revived with this discovery, and all agreed to march back; so, having lost about six days in this false step, they got into the right way, and in four more came to the descent where I had been before. Here the hill was still very high, and the passage down was steep and difficult enough; but still it was practicable, and our men could see the marks of cattle having passed there, as if they had gone in drifts or droves; also it was apparent that, by some help and labour of hands, the way might be led winding and turning on the slope of the hill, so as to make it much easier to get down than it was now. It cost them no small labour, however, to get down, chiefly because of the mules, which very often fell down with their loads, and our men said they believed they could, with much more ease, have mounted up from the east side to the top than they came from the west side to the bottom. They encamped one night on the declivity of the hill, but got up early and was at the bottom and on the plain ground by noon. As soon as they came there, they encamped and refreshed themselves, that is to say, went to dinner; but it being very hot there, the cool breezes of the mountains having now left them, they were more inclined to sleep than to eat; so the captain ordered the tent to be set up, and they made the whole day of it, calling a council in the morning to consider what course they should steer, and how they should go on. Here they came to this resolution, that they should send a man or two a considerable way up the hill again, to take the strictest observation he could of the plain, with the largest glasses || they had, and to mark which way the nearest river or water was to be seen, and they should direct their course, first to the water, and that if the course of it lay south, or any way to the east of the south, they would follow on the bank of it, and as soon as it was large enough to carry them, they would make them some canoes or shallops, or what they could do with the most ease, to carry them on by water; also they directed him to observe if he could see any cattle feeding at a distance, or the like. The messenger returned, and brought them word that all the way to the east, and so on to south-east, they could discover nothing of water, but that they had seen a great lake or lough of water at a great distance, which looked like a sea, and lay from them to the northward of the east, about two points; adding, that they did not know but it might afterwards empty itself to the eastward, and it was their opinion to make the best of their way thither. Accordingly the next morning they decamped and marched east-north-east very cheerfully, but found the way much longer than they expected, for, though from the mountains the country seemed to lie flat and plain, yet, when they came to measure it by their feet, they found a great many little hills. Little, I say, compared to the great mountains, but great to them who were to travel over them in the heat, and with but very indifferent support as to provisions; so that, in a word, the captain very prudently ordered that they should travel one three hours in the morning, and three hours in the evening, and encamp in the heat of the day, to refresh themselves as well as they could. The best thing they met with in that part of the country was, that they had plenty of water, for though they were not yet come to any large, considerable river, yet every low piece of ground had a small rill of water in it, and the springs coming out from the rising grounds on the sides of the mountains being innumerable, made many || such small brooks. It cost them six days' travel, with two days' resting between, to advance to that river of water, which, from the height of the mountains, seemed to be but a little way off. They could not march, by their computation, above ten or twelve miles a day, and rest every third day too, for their luggage was heavy, and their mules but few; also some of their mules tired and jaded by their long march, or fell lame, and were good for nothing. Besides all this, the days which I call days of rest were really not so to them, for those intervals were employed to range about and hunt for food, and it was for that more than for want of rest that they halted every third day. In this exercise they did, however, meet with such success that they made shift to kill one sort of creature or another every day, sufficient to keep them from famishing; sometimes they met with some deer, other times with the guinacoes or Peruvian sheep, and sometimes with fowls of several kinds, so that they did pretty well for food. At length, viz. the seventh day, they came to a river, which was at first small, but having received another small river or two from the northern part of the country, began to seem large enough for their purpose, and as it ran eastsouth-east they concluded it would run into the lake, and that they might float down this river if they could make anything to carry them. But their first discouragement was, the country was all open, with very little wood and no trees, or very few, to be found large enough to make canoes, or boats of any sort; but the skill of their carpenters, of which they had four, soon conquered this difficulty, for, coming to a low swampy ground on the side of the river, they found a tree something like a beech, very firm good sort of wood, and yet soft enough to work easy; and they went to work with this, and at first made them some rafts, which they thought might carry them along till the river was bigger. While this was doing (which took up two or three days) the men straggled up and down; some with their guns to shoot fowls, some with contrivances to catch fish, some one thing, some another; when on a sudden one of their fishermen, not in the river, but in a little brook which afterwards runs into the river, found a little bit of shining stuff among the sand, or earth, in the bank, and one cried he had found a piece of gold. Now it seems all was not gold that glit. tered, for the lump had no gold in it, whatever it was; but the word being given out at first, it immediately set all our men a-rummaging the shores of every little rill of water they came at, to see if there was no gold; and they had not looked long but they found several iittle grains of gold, very small and fine, not only in this brook but in several others. So they spent their time the more cheerfully because they made some purchase. All this while they saw no people, nor ang signals of any, except once on the other side of the river, at a great distance, they thought they saw about thirty together, but whether men or women, or how many of each, they could not tell, nor would they come any nearer, only stood and gazed at our people at a distance. They were now ready to quit their camp and embark, intending to lay all their baggage on the rafts, with three or four sick men, and so the rest to march by the river-side, and as many as could to ride upon the mules; when, on a sudden, all their navigation was put to a stop, and their new vessels, such as they were, suffered a wreck. The case was thus: they had observed a great many black clouds to hang over the tops of the mountains, and some of them even below the tops, and they did believe it rained among the hills; but in the plain where they lay, and all about them, it was fair and the weather finc. But in the night the carpenters and their assistants, who had set up a little tent near the river-side, were alarmed with a great roaring noise (as they thought) in the river, though at a distance upwards; presently after they found the water begin to come into their tent, when, running out, they found the river was swelling over its banks, and all the low grounds on both sides of them. To their great satisfaction it was just break of day, so that they could see enough to make their way from the water; and the land very happily rising a little to the south of the river, they im mediately fled thither; two of them had so much || presence of mind with them as to pick up their working tools, at least some of them, and carry off, and the water rising gradually, the other two carpenters ventured back to save the rest; but they were put to it to get back again with them; in a word, the water rose to such a height that it carried away their tent and everything that was in it, and, which was worse, their rafts (for they had almost finished four large rafts) were all lifted off from the place where they were framed, which was a kind of dry dock, and dashed all to pieces, and the timber, such as it was, all carried away; the smaller brooks also swelled in proportion to the larger river, so that, in a word, our men lay, as it were, surrounded with water, and began to be in a terrible consternation; for, though they lay in a hard dry piece of ground, too high for the land-flood to reach them, yet had the rains continued in the mountains they might have lain there till they had been obliged to eat one another, and so there had been an end of our new discovery. But the weather cleared up among the hills the next day, which heartened them up again; and as the flood rose so soon, so the current, being furiously rapid, the waters ran off again as easily as they came on, and in two days the water was all gone again. But our little float was shipwrecked, as I have said, and the carpenters finding how dangerous such great unwieldly rafts would be, resolved to set to it and build one large float with sides to it like a punt or ferryboat. They worked so hard at this, ten of the men always working with them to help, that in five days they had her finished. The only thing they wanted was pitch and tar to make her upper work keep out the water; and they made a shift to fetch a juice out of some of the wood they had cut, by help of fire, that answered the end tolerably well. But that which made this disappointment less afflicting was, that our other men, hunting about the small streams where this water had come down so furiously, found that there was more gold, and the more for the late flood. This made them run straggling up the streams; and, as the captain said, he thought once they would run quite back to the mountains again. But that was his ignorance too, for after awhile, and the nearer they came to the rising of the hills, the quantity abated; for where the streams were so furious the water washed it all away, and carried it down with it, so that by the end of five days the men found but little, and began to come back again. But then they discovered that though there was less in the higher part of the rivers, there was more farther down, and they found it so well worth while, that they went fishing along for gold all the way towards the lake, and left their fellows and the boat to come after. At last, when nothing else would do it, hunger called them off, and so, once more, they got all their company together again; and now they began to load the float, indeed it might be called a luggage-boat; however, it answered very well, and was a great relief to our men; but when they came to load it, they found it would not carry so much by a great deal as they had to put in it; besides, that they would be all obliged to march on foot by the shore, which had this particular inconvenience in it, that whenever they came to any small river or brook which runs into the other, as was very often the case, they would be forced to march up a great way to get over it, or unload the great float to make a ferry-boat of it to waft them over. Upon this they resolved that the first place they came at where stuff was to be had for build. ing, they would go to work again, and make two or three more floats not so big as the other, that so they might embark themselves and their stuff, and their provisions too, altogether, and take the full benefit of the river where it would afford them help, and not some sail on the water and some go on foot upon the land, which was very fatiguing. Upon this, as soon as they found stuff, as I have said, and a convenient place, they went all hands to work to build more floats, or boats, call them as you will. While this was doing all the spare men, and all the men at spare hours, spent their time and pains in hunting about for gold in the brooks and small streams, as well those they had been at before as others; and that after they had, as it were, plundered them at the first discovery, for as they had found some gold after the hasty rain, they were loth to give it over, though they had been assured there was more to be found in the lake where they were yet to come than in the brooks. All this while their making the floats went slowly on, for the men thought it a great hardship to keep chopping of blocks, as they called it, while their fellows were picking up of gold, though they knew they were to have their share of what they found, as much as if they had been all the while with them. But it seems there is a kind of satisfaction in the work of picking up gold, besides the mere gain. However, at length the gold failing, they be gan to think of their more immediate work, which was going forward; and the carpenters having made three more floats like flat-bottomed barges, which they brought to be able to carry their baggage and themselves too, if they thought fit, they began to embark and fall down the river. but they grew sick of their navigation in a very few days; for before they got to the lake, which was but three days going, they run several times on ground, and were obliged to lighten them to get them off again, then load again, and lighten again, and so off and on, till they were so tired of them that they would much rather have ear ried all their baggage, and have travelled by land; and at last they were forced to cast off two of them, and put all their baggage on board the other two, which at best, though large, were but very poor crazy things. At length they came in sight of their beloved lake, and the next day they entered into the open part or sea of it, which they found was very large, and in some places very deep. Their floats, or what they might be called. were by no means fit to carry them upon this inland sea; for as, if the water had been stirred by the least gust of wind, it would presently have washed over them, and have spoiled, if not sunk, their baggage; so they had no way to steer or guide them whenever they came into deep water, where they could not reach the ground with their poles. This obliged them, as soon as they came into the open lake, to keep close under one share, that is to say, to the right hand, where the land falling away to the S., and the S. by E., seemed to carry them still forward on their way; the other side widening to the N. made the lake seem there to be really a sea, for they could not see over it unless they went on shore, and got up upon some rising ground. Here, at first, they found the shore steep too, and a great depth of water close to the land, which made them very uneasy; for if the least gale of wind had disturbed the water, especially blowing from off the lake, they would have been shipwrecked close to the shore. However, after they had gone for two days along the side by the help of towing and setting as well as they could, they came to a flatter shore and a fairer strand, to their great joy and satisfaction. But if the shore proved to their satisfaction for its safety, it was much more so on another account; for they had not long been here before they found the sands or shore infinitely rich in gold, beyond all they had seen, or thought of seeing before. They had no sooner made the discovery but they resolved to fall on, as upon a lasting spoil that was to enrich them all, and they went to work with such an avaricious rage that they seemed as if they were plundering an enemy's camp, and that there was an army at hand to drive them from the place; and, as it proved they were right to do so; for in this gust of their greedy appetite they considered not where they were, and upon what tender, ticklish terms their navigation stood. They had indeed drawn their two floats to the shore as well as they could, and with pieces of wood, like piles, stuck in on every side, brought them to ride easy, but had not taken the least thought about change of weather, though they knew they had neither anchor or cable, nor so much as a rope large enough to fasten them on the shore. But they were taught more wit to their cost in two or three days, for the very second night they felt a little unusual rising of the water, as they thought, though without any wind, and the next morning they found the water of the lake was swelled about two feet perpendicular, and that their floats, by that means, lay a great way further from the shore than they did before, the water still increasing. This made them at first imagine there was a tide in the lake, and that after a little time it would abate again, but they soon found their mistake, for after some time they perceived the water, which was perfectly fine and clear before, grew by degrees of a paler colour, thick, and whitish, till at last it was quite white and muddy, as is usual in land floods, and as it still continued rising, so they continued thrusting in their floats farther and farther towards the shore, till they had, in short, lost all the fine golden sands they were upon before, and found the lake overflowed the land so far beyond them, that in short they seemed to be in the middle of the lake, for they could scarce see to the end of the water, even on that very side where, but a few hours before, they were fast on shore. You may easily judge that this put them into a great consternation, and they might well conclude that they should be all drowned and lost, for they were now as it were in the middle of the sea upon two open floats or rafts, fenced nowhere from the least surge or swell of the water, except by a kind of waste board about two feet high built up on the sides, without any caulking or pitching, or anything to keep out the water. They had neither mast or sail, anchor or cable, head or stern, no bows to fence off the waves or rudder to steer any course, or oars to give any motion, but, like a flat-bottomed punt, they thrust them along with such poles as they had, some of which were about eight or ten feet long, and which gave them a little way, but very slowly. All the remedy they had in this case, was to set on with their poles towards the shore and to observe by their pocket compasses which way it lay; and this they laboured hard at lest they should be lost in the night and not know which way to go. Their carpenters in the mean time with some spare boards which they had, or rather made, raised their sides as well as they could to keep off the wash of the sea, if any wind should rise so as to make the water rough, and thus they though all put together they were in but a very fenced against every danger as well as they could, sorry condition. Now they had time to reflect upon their voracious fury in ranging the shore to pick up gold, without considering where and in what condition they were, and without looking out on shore reflected on the madness of venturing out into a for a place of safety. Nay, they might now have lake or inland sea of that vast extent, in such business, doubtless, had been to have stopped pitiful bottoms as they had under them. Their within the mouth of the river and found a con. venient place to land their goods and secure their lives; and when they had pitched their camp upon any safe high ground, where they might be sure they could neither be overflowed or surrounded with water, they might have searched the shores of the lake as far as they thought fit; but thus to launch out into in an unknown water, and in such a condition as to their vessels as is described above, was most unaccountably incon siderate. Never was a crew of fifty men, all able and experienced sailors, so embarked, or drawn into such a snare, for they were surrounded with water for three or four miles in breadth on the nearest shore, and this all on a sudden, the country lying low and flat for such a breadth, all of which appeared dry land and green like the fields but the day before, and without question they were sufficiently surprised. Now they would have given all the gold they had got, which was very considerable too, to have been on shore on the wildest and most barren part of the country, and would have trusted to their own diligence to get food; but here, besides the imminent danger of drowning they might also be in danger of starving; for had their floats grounded but upon any little hillock, they might have stuck there till they had starved and |