“Misfortunes seldom come alone; and so it happened to this afflicted city, which, instead of receiving comfort from the approaching day, no sooner did it appear, when the noise of drums and trumpets gave a warm alarm of the enemy being at hand. Here the confusion increased; for now the concern was not for the loss of others, but for every one’s own safety, the danger threatening them so immediately. There was nothing but disorder, no counsel nor resolution being to be found in the wisest. They could not defend themselves, because they were overpowered in numbers by the enemy; and the retreat, though necessary, was difficult, because of the approach of the Indians. In this hard conflict at last the resolution that prevailed was to abandon the city without pretending to save any thing but their lives. They leave the city then, and all the gold they had got together in such quantities; they go out in long files, the mothers helping their little children along; the way that they undertook was to the city of St. Iago, a long one, in which many rivers were to be crossed, and hard passes to be gone through: this labour was accompanied with the perpetual fright of the enemy’s pursuing them. Who can relate the hardships of hunger and other sufferings through so long a tract of mountains, deserts, and uninhabited countries? How the women, the children, the old men could bear the fatigue, we must leave to imagination to represent the true idea of these misfortunes! Let us, therefore, return to the Indians. The Spaniards had hardly made an end of abandoning the city when the Indians entered it; and not being able to execute their rage upon the inhabitants, they did it upon the houses, to which they set fire, and consumed them to the very foundation, killing even the very animals which the Spaniards left behind them. Thus was lost the city most abounding in gold and situated in the most populous part of the Indian country; for it is said there were not less than a hundred thousand Indians with their families, who were all employed in gathering gold for the Spaniards, whom they enriched to that degree that Pedro de Valdivia, if he had lived, would have had fifty thousand crowns of gold a year, and others twenty and thirty thousand.”[103] VI [Sidenote: _Población de Valdivia_] [Sidenote: Aguirre] [Sidenote: Expedition against the Dutch]