befallen Simon de Cordes, who was there butchered with twenty-three of his men, after being invited on shore in a friendly manner by the Indians, owing to the treachery of the Spaniards endeavouring to get possession of his two ships, and sending intelligence to Lima and all about the country of the arrival of the Dutch in these seas, with a list of their ships, and the names of all their commanders.  For these reasons they proceeded to Valparaiso, where they took two ships and killed some Indians, but all the Spaniards escaped on shore.  Valparaiso is in lat. 35 deg. 5’ S. And about eighteen miles inland, [100 English miles] is the town of St Jago, abounding in red wine and sheep.  They kill these animals merely for the sake of their tallow, with which alone they load many vessels.  Here they received letters from the captain of the Flying Hart, one of the squadron under Verhagen, who had been treacherously captured by the Spaniards; owing, as he alleged, to the wrong placement of the island of St Mary in the map, by which he had been misled.

At Valparaiso they intercepted some letters giving an account of the wars in Chili between the Spaniards and the Indians, who it seems were in rebellion, had sacked the town of Valdivia, putting vast numbers of Spaniards to the sword, and carrying off many captives.  They burnt the houses and churches, knocking off the heads of the popish images, crying, “Down go the gods of the Spaniards.”  They then crammed the mouths of these images with gold, bidding them satisfy themselves with that, for the sake of which their votaries had committed so many barbarous massacres of their nation.  They afterwards laid close siege to the city of Imperial, and had almost starved the Spanish garrison into a surrender.  The valiant Indians who undertook this enterprise were about 5000, of whom 5000 were cavalry, 100 were armed with muskets, and 70 had corslets, all of which were plunder they had taken from the Spaniards.  They so mortally hate the Spaniards, that they rip up the breasts of all they overcome, tearing out their hearts with their teeth, and they delight to drink their favourite liquor from a cup made of a Spaniard’s skull.

These Indians [the Araucans] are for the most part very stout, and skilful soldiers, and commit the management of all their military affairs to the direction of one supreme general, whose orders are implicitly obeyed.  Their method of election to this high dignity is very singular; for he who carries a certain log of wood on his shoulders the longest, and with the smallest appearance of weariness, is saluted general by the army.  In this trial several carried the log four, five, and six hours; but at length one carried it twenty-four hours on end, and this person was now general.  The whole of Chili, from St Jago to Valdivia, is one of the most fertile and most delightful countries in the world.  It abounds in all kinds of cattle and fruit, has many rich gold mines, and its climate is so sweet and salubrious as to exclude the use of medicine, being health and life in itself.