In the morning, we had our chocolate as regularly as we used to have it in his own house, and we were soon ready to pursue our journey. We went winding now from the south-east to the left, till our course looked east by north, when we came again to have the river in view. But I should have observed here, that my two midshipmen, and two of my patron's servants, had, by his direction, been very early in the morning climbing up the rocks in the opening on the right hand, and had come back again about a quarter of an hour after we set out; when, missing my two men, I inquired for them, and my patron said they were coming; for, it seems he saw them at a distance, and so we halted for them. When they were come almost up to us, he called to his men in Spanish, to ask if they had had Una bon vejo? They answered, Poco, poco; and when they came quite up, one of my midshipmen showed me three or four small bits of clean perfect gold, which they had picked up in the hill or gullet where the water trickled down from the rocks; and the Spaniard told them that, had they had time, they should have found much more, the water being quite down, and nobody having been there since the last hard rain. One of the Spaniards had three small bits in his hand also. I said nothing for the present, but charged my midshipmen to mark the place, and so we went on. We followed up the stream of this water for three days more, encamping every night as before, in which time we passed by several such openings into the rocks on either side. On the fourth day we had the prospect of a very pleasant valley and river below us, on the north side, keeping its course almost in the middle; the valley reaching near four miles in length, and in some places near two miles broad. This sight was perfectly surprising, because here we found the vale fruitful, level, and inhabited, there being several small villages or clusters of houses, such as the Chilians live in, which are low houses, covered with a kind of sedge, and sheltered with little rows of thick grown trees, but of what kind we knew not. We saw no way through the valley, nor which way we were to go out, but perceived it everywhere bounded with prodigious mountains, look to which side of it we would. We kept still on the right, which was now the south-east side of the river, and as we followed it up the stream, it was still less than at first, and lessened every step we went, because of the number of rills we left behind us; and here we encamped the fifth time, and all this time the Spanish gentleman victualled us; then we turned again to the right, where we had a new and beautiful prospect of another valley, as broad as the other, but not above a mile in length.