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.