As soon as it was known that the Spaniards were disposed to take the part of Chulilaquini, they were regarded as declared enemies, and preparations were made to attack them. The Indians were bent on avenging the death of their chief, and it was soon evident that, as to communicating with the Valdivians under the circumstances, it was out of the question. After some fruitless efforts, at any rate, to get a letter conveyed across the mountains, Villariño was reluctantly obliged to make up his mind to return. Since entering the Catapuliché, much snow and rain had fallen, which had increased its depth as much as three or four feet: it had become in fact a navigable river, instead of a shallow stream. Their Indian allies helped them to lay in a stock of apples, of which there are great quantities in all those parts, and of piñones, the fruit of the pine-tree, which, taken out of the husk, is not unlike a Barbary date in taste as well as appearance; and with these supplies they once more got under weigh, the swollen stream carrying them down rapidly and safely over all the shoals and dangers which had cost them so much toil and difficulty to surmount as they went up; the land too, had put on a new appearance after the rain, and many places which appeared arid and steril wastes before, were now covered with green herbage. With little more than an occasional oar to keep them in the mid-stream, they went the whole way down to Carmen without the smallest obstruction, and arrived there in just three weeks from the time of leaving the Catapuliché, after an absence altogether of eight months. Thus it was proved to be perfectly practicable to pass by this river from the shores of the Atlantic to within fifty or sixty miles of Valdivia on the Pacific, the mountain-range alone intervening. To what beneficial account this discovery of an inland water communication across the continent might in the last fifty years have been turned by an enterprising people, it is difficult to calculate. The Spaniards seemed rather desirous to conceal than to publish the fact of its existence. Till the expedition of General Rosas in 1833, against the Indians, no boat ever again went up the Negro higher than Choleechel; and but that I obtained possession of Villariño's Diary during my residence at Buenos Ayres, and published the substance of it in the "Journal of the Geographical Society," his Enterprise would probably have been consigned to perpetual oblivion. Chulilaquini followed the boats, and settled his people within reach of his Spanish friends, in the neighbourhood of Carmen; but the Indians, in general, looked upon the new settlement with the greatest jealousy, and became extremely troublesome.