He said he would assure me he would lead me into no danger; that these things were very familiar to them, but that I might depend there was no hazard, and that the flames which gave all this light were six or seven miles off, and some of them more. We walked along the plain of the valley about half a mile, when another great valley opened to the right, and gave us a more dreadful prospect than any we had seen before; for at the farther end of this second valley, but at the distance of three miles from where we stood, we saw a livid stream of fire come running down the sides of the mountain for near three quarters of a mile in length, running like melted metal into a mould, until, I supposed, as it came nearer the bottom, it cooled and separated, and so went out of itself. Beyond this, over the summit of a prodigious mountain, we could see the tops of the clear flame of a volcano, a dreadful one, no doubt, could we have seen it all; and from the mouth of which it was supposed this stream of fire came, though the Chilian assured us that the fire itself was eight leagues off, and that the liquid fire which we saw came out of the side of the mountain, and was two leagues from the great volcano itself, running like liquid metal out of a furnace. They told me there was a great deal of melted gold ran down with the other inflamed earth in that stream, and that much of the metal was afterwards found there; but this I was to take upon trust. 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.