But Ovalle’s experience in the mountains that look down upon the agreeable valley of Central Chile called him back from his visions of a fictitious spiritual world, and inspired him to present views of nature in its most imposing forms. Passing along narrow trails, on the edge of horrible precipices, descending into the shadows of deep wooded canyons, in the presence of roaring mountain torrents throwing clouds of mist into the clear air, his mysticism was for the moment clarified into a soberer conception of the universal Creator. But ordinarily he was so profoundly impressed by the wonderful and incomprehensible in nature and the course of events that he found it apparently impossible to carry on his narrative without interrupting it here and there to tell the story of some miraculous manifestation. Montalvo affirms that “he did not know how to treat of the earth without introducing into his narrative the events of heaven.”[102] The excellence of Ovalle’s style doubtless suggested the fitness of his work for translation; it also persuaded the Royal Spanish Academy to place it in the list of works quoted for illustration in the Academy’s _Diccionario de la lengua castellana_. In 1646 Ovalle was in Rome, attending the sixth general congregation of the Jesuits, in his capacity as procurador of the vice-province of Chile. This year he published his _Histórica relación_, which the same year appeared in an Italian translation. The English translation was first printed in 1703. [Sidenote: Ovalle’s last years] From Rome Ovalle returned to Spain, where he assembled the sixteen priests who were to accompany him to America. Four years after the publication of his _Histórica relación_, in 1650, he embarked for Chile by way of Panama. At Paita, not meeting there the ship he expected to take him to Callao, he set out overland for Lima, over an almost trackless region and across the sandy wastes of the desert-like coast lands, with little preparation for meeting his need of food and water. He arrived in Lima suffering under a violent fever, from which he died a few days later. [Sidenote: Fantastic views of the Scriptures] Ovalle’s fantastic interpretations of the Scriptures, as witnessed, among many instances, by his notion that the gold of Ophir was brought from Peru and Chile by Solomon’s fleet, did not prevent him from writing clearly and rationally about the events of Chilean history. In the following paragraph he describes the destruction of Concepción by Lautaro and his Araucanians: [Sidenote: Ruin of Concepción] [Sidenote: Concepción abandoned] [Sidenote: The city burned]