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

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 the mountains, and being there free from the observation of the country, we called it our first port, so we brought to, and came to an anchor."

Here the generous Spaniard, who at his own request was gone before, sent his gentleman and one of his sons to them, and sent them plenty of provisions, as also caused their mules to be changed for others that were fresh, and had not been fatigued with any of the other part of the journey.

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, that they robbed two of the houses of the Chilians, and took what gold they had, which was not much, indeed, but it hazarded so much the alarming the country, and raising all the mountaineers upon them, that the Spaniard was upon the point of flying from them, in spite 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 inquired who it was? but never was such a piece of work in the world. When the new captain came to talk of who did it, and of punishment, they cried, they all did it, and they did not value all the Spaniards or Indians in the country; they would have all the gold in the whole mountains, ay, that they would, and swore to it; and, if the Spaniard offered to speak a word to them, they would chop his head off, and put a stop to his farther jawing.

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 twenty-two 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 stepped 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, when, after some consideration, they 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 which the rogues had plundered, and where, in short, there was a kind of tumult about it, and, with good words, promising to give them as much gold as they lost, and the price of some other things that were taken away, he appeased the people; and so our men were not ruined, as they would certainly have been if the mountaineers had taken the alarm.

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, whom 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 one-and-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 (and 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, impassable descent; so that, however my guide found his way down, when I was through, it was not 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 not known that our ships were gone away, there had been some odds but, like the Israelites of old, they would have murmured against their leader, and have all gone back to Egypt. In a word, they were at their wits' 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 south-east, the marks which our men had made before having not been so regular and exact just there, as in other parts of the way, or some other turning being so very like the same, that they took one for the other; and thus, going straight forward too far before they turned, they came to an opening indeed, and saw the plain country under them, as they had done before, but the descent was not so practicable.

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 spied 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 on to the Chilian's house, which was two days' journey farther.

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 were 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 were 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 two men a considerable way up the hill again, to take the strictest observation they 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 them to observe if they could see any cattle feeding at a distance, or the like.

The messengers returned, and brought 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, the whole body 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 only three hours in the morning and three 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 became 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 want of 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, it began to seem large enough for their purpose; and, as it ran east-south-east, they concluded it would run into the lake, and that they might fleet 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 yield to their tools; 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 ran into the river, found a little bit of shining stuff among the sand or earth, in the bank, and cried, he had found a piece of gold. Now, it seems, all was not gold that glistened, 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 any gold; and they had not looked long till they found several little grains, very small and fine, not only in this brook, but in several others; so they spent their time more cheerfully, because they made some advantage.

All this while they saw no people, nor any signals of any; except once, on the other side of the river, at a great distance, 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 fine.

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 immediately 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 some difficulty 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 ones) were lifted off from the place where they were framed, which was a kind of a 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 large 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 unwieldy rafts would be, resolved to set to it, and build one large float with sides to it, like a punt or ferry-boat. 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 so 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 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 this 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 looking 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, hunger called them off, and so once more all the company were got 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 near so much as they had to put in it. Besides that, they would be all obliged to march on foot by shore, which had this particular inconvenience in it, that whenever they came to any small river or brook which ran 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 were resolved, that the first place they came at where timber was to be had for building, 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, their baggage, and their provisions too, all together, 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 would be very fatiguing.

Therefore, as soon as they found timber, as I have said, and a convenient place, they went all hands to work to build more floats or boats, and, while this was doing, all the spare men spent their time and pains in searching 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 loath 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 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 began 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 ran several times on ground, and were obliged to lighten their floats 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 carried 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 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 by what other name they might be called, were by no means fit to carry them upon this inland sea; for if the water had been agitated 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 shore, that is to say, to the right hand, where the land falling away to the south and the south-by-east, seemed to carry them still forward on their way; the other side widening to the north, made the lake seem there to be really a sea, for they could not look over it, unless they went on shore and got upon some rising ground.

Here, at first, they found the shore steep too, and a great depth of water close to 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 fair 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 been long here before they found the sands or shore infinitely rich in gold, beyond all that they had seen, or thought of seeing before. They had no sooner made the discovery, than they resolved to possess themselves of a treasure that was to enrich them all for ever; accordingly, they went to work with such an avaricious spirit, that they seemed to be 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 in the right to do so; for, in this gust of their greedy appetite, they considered not where they were, and upon what tender and 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 with 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 farther from the shore than they did at first, and the water still increasing.

This made them 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 at work 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, their floats were fast on the sands.

It may be easily judged that this put them into 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 calking 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 to their floats, whose bottoms were flat like a punt, so that they were obliged to thrust them along with such poles as they had, some of which were about eight or ten feet long, which gained them a little way, though 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 fenced against every danger as well as they could, though, all put together, they were but in a very 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 for a place of safety: nay, they might now have reflected on the madness of venturing out into a lake or inland sea of that vast extent, in such pitiful bottoms as they had under them. Their business, doubtless, had been to have stopped within the mouth of the river, and found a convenient 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 nor surrounded with water, they might have searched the shores of the lake as far as they thought fit; but thus to launch into an unknown water, and in such a condition, as to their vessels, as is described above, was most unaccountably rash and inconsiderate.

Never were a crew of fifty men, all able and experienced sailors, so embarked, nor 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 which appeared dry land and green, like the fields, the day before; and, without question, the men 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 perished for hunger. Then they were in the utmost anxiety too for fear of wetting their powder, which, if it had happened, they could never have made serviceable again, and without it, they could not have killed anything for food, if they had got to the shore.

They had, in this exigence, some comforts, however, which might a little uphold their spirits; and without which, indeed, their condition must have been deplorable and desperate.

1. It was hot weather, so that as they had no shelter against the cold, if it had come, they had no cold to afflict them; but they rather wanted awnings to keep off the sun, than houses to keep off the cold.

2. The water of the lake was fresh and good; even when it looked white and thick, yet it was very sweet, wholesome, and good tasted; had it been salt water, and they thus in the middle of it, they must have perished with thirst.