A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before

by Daniel Defoe

This being the farthest port south which the Spaniards are masters of in Chili, or, indeed, on the whole continent of America, they could not desire me to carry them any farther. They allowed us a quantity of meal and cocoa out of their booty for the subsistence of the prisoners, and I bought a larger quantity besides, there being more than they knew how to stow, and they did not resolve to keep the Spanish ship which they took; by this means I was doubly stocked with flour and bread, but, as the first was very good, and well packed in casks and very good jars, it received no injury.

We bought also some of their cocoa, and made chocolate, till our men gorged themselves with it, and would have no more.

Having furnished ourselves here with goats' flesh, as usual, and taking in water sufficient, we left Juan Fernandez, and saw the cruisers go out the same tide, they steering north-north-east, and we south-south-east. They saluted us at parting, and we bade them good-bye in the same language.

While we were now sailing for the coast of Chili, with fair wind and pleasant weather, my Spanish doctor came to me and told me he had a piece of news to acquaint me with, which, he said, he believed would please me very well; and this was, that one of the Spanish prisoners was a planter, as it is called in the West Indies, or a farmer, as we should call it in England, of Villa Rica, a town built by the Spaniards, near the foot of the Andes, above the town of Baldivia; and that he had entered into discourse with him upon the situation of those hills, the nature of the surface, the rivers, hollows, passages into them, &c. Whether there were any valleys within the hills, of what extent, how watered, what cattle, what people, how disposed, and the like; and, in short, if there was any way of passing over the Andes, or hills above mentioned; and he told me, in few words, that he found him to be a very honest, frank, open sort of a person, who seemed to speak without reserve, without the least jealousy or apprehension; and that he believed I might have an ample discovery from him of all that I desired to know.

I was very glad of this news; and, at my request, it was not many hours before he brought the Spaniard into the great cabin to me, where I treated him very civilly, and gave him opportunity several times to see himself very well used; and, indeed, all the Spaniards in the ship were very thankful for my bringing them out of the hands of the privateers, and took all occasions to let us see it.

I said little the first time, but discoursed in general of America, of the greatness and opulency of the Spaniards there, the infinite wealth of the country, &c.; and I remember well, discoursing once of the great riches of the Spaniards in America, the silver mines of Potosi, and other places, he turned short upon me, smiling, and said, We Spaniards are the worst nation in the world that such a treasure as this could have belonged to; for if it had fallen into any other hands than ours, they would have searched farther into it before now. I asked him what he meant by that? and added, I thought they had searched it thoroughly enough; for that I believed no other nation in the world could ever have spread such vast dominions, and planted a country of such a prodigious extent, they having not only kept possession of it, but maintained the government also, and even inhabited it with only a few people.

Perhaps, seignior, says he, you think, notwithstanding that opinion of yours, that we have many more people of our nation in New Spain than we have. I do not know, said I, how many you may have; but, if I should believe you have as many here as in Old Spain, it would be but a few in comparison of the infinite extent of the King of Spain's dominions in America. And then, replied he, I assure you, seignior, there is not one Spaniard to a thousand acres of land, take one place with another, throughout New Spain.

Very well, said I, then I think the riches and wealth of America is very well searched, in comparison to the number of people you have to search after it. No, says he, it is not, neither; for the greatest number of our people live in that part where the wealth is not the greatest, and where even the governor and viceroy, enjoying a plentiful and luxurious life, they take no thought for the increase either of the king's revenues, or the national wealth. This he spoke of the city of Mexico, whose greatness, and the number of its inhabitants, he said, was a disease to the rest of the body. And what, think you, seignior, said he, that in that one city, where there is neither silver nor gold but what is brought from the mountains of St. Clara, the mines at St. Augustine's and Our Lady, some of which are a hundred leagues from it, and yet there are more Spaniards in Mexico than in both those two prodigious empires of Chili and Peru?

I seemed not to believe him; and, indeed, I did not believe him at first, till he returned to me with a question. Pray, seignior capitain, says he, how many Spaniards do you think there may be in this vast country of Chili? I told him I could make no guess of the numbers; but, without doubt, there were many thousands, intimating that I might suppose, near a hundred thousand. At which he laughed heartily, and assured me, that there were not above two thousand five hundred in the whole kingdom, besides women and children, and some few soldiers, which they looked upon as nothing to inhabitants, because they were not settled anywhere.

I was indeed surprised, and began to name several large places, which, I thought, had singly more Spaniards in them than what he talked of. He presently ran over some of them, and, naming Baldivia first, as the most southward, he asked me how many I thought were there? And I told him about three hundred families. He smiled, and assured me there were not above three or four-and-fifty families in the whole place, and about twenty-five soldiers, although it was a fortification, and a frontier. At Villa Rica, or the Rich Town, where he lived, he said there might be about sixty families, and a lieutenant, with twenty soldiers. In a word, we passed over the many places between and came to the capital, St. Jago, where after I had supposed there were five thousand Spaniards, he protested to me there were not above eight hundred, including the viceroy's court, and including the families at Valparaiso, which is the seaport, and excluding only the soldiers, which as he said, being the capital of the whole kingdom, might be about two hundred, and excluding the religious, who he added, laughing, signified nothing to the planting a country, for they neither cultivated the land nor increased the people.