The Town Consisted Of About Fifty Straw Huts, Where The Dutch
Were Regaled With A Sour Kind Of Drink, Called Cici, Made Of Maiz
Steeped In Water, Which Is The Favourite Drink Of The Chilese At Their
Feasts.
Polygamy is much practised among these people, who buy as many
wives as they can afford to maintain; so that a man who has many
daughters, especially if they be handsome, is accounted rich.
If one man
kill another, he is judged by the relations of the deceased, as they
have no laws or magistrates among them, so that the murderer may
sometimes buy off his punishment by giving a drinking-bout of cici.
Their cloathing is manufactured from the wool of a large kind of sheep,
which animal they also employ to carry burdens. They would not sell any
of these, but parted freely with another kind, not very different.
[Footnote 76: This probably means battatas or potatoes, a native
production of Chili. - E.]
From thence they went to the island of St Mary, in lat. 37 deg. S. eighteen
miles [ninety-five English] from Mocha, where they fell in with a
Spanish ship carrying lard and meal from Conception to Valdivia in
Araucania, which they chased and took. The pilot of this ship informed
them that they would not be able to return to the island of St Mary,
owing to the south wind, and that two Spanish ships of war were waiting
for them at Arica. Upon this information they resolved to sail for
Valparaiso, and by that means quite lost all chance of being rejoined by
the Henry Frederick, which might otherwise have got up with them.
Besides, they concluded that the missing ship had failed to find St
Mary's isle, owing to its being wrong placed in the map of Plancius, in
lat. 38 deg. S. which error they themselves had fallen into, had they not
been set right by the observations of Mr Mellish. They were farther
confirmed in the resolution of not returning to the island of St Mary,
by hearing of the misfortune which had there 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.
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