The first comers were adventurous soldiers looking for sudden riches, but Chile furnished these gentlemen small returns for hard knocks. The reasons which led the Spanish government to discourage emigration to Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, did not apply to Chile, and when, early in the seventeenth century, the Madrid authorities abandoned the useless and expensive effort to conquer Araucania, they permitted a considerable number of real colonists. A heavy immigration followed--composed mostly of Basques and Aragonese--hardy and industrious settlers who made thrifty farmers and merchants. These people were no mere army of occupation--a privileged class living parasitically upon the Indians; they set about developing the real resources of the country, and their blood, mixing into the fine and strong aboriginal strain, vastly improved it. The lower classes in Chile are industrious, enduring, and brave, and though at times they show a touch of that primitive ferocity characteristic of young peoples, their innate energy and great physical strength have been of incalculable value to the nation. Little worth detailing is recorded in the annals of Chile during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For many years the Araucanians refused to make any treaty with the Spaniards. The chronicles are filled with accounts of the incursions made by the Indians into Spanish territory--often successful, more often repulsed, with sieges, ambushes--tales of reckless valour and unspeakable cruelty. Sometimes the Europeans carried the war over the Biobio, and during the ten years prior to 1640 they were so successful in carrying fire, slaughter, and pillage to the homes of the Araucanians, that the latter finally consented to an armistice and a formal treaty of peace. The Spanish governor went to the plain of Quillin, escorted by more than ten thousand persons, and the Araucanian general appeared in state at the head of all the toquis, ulmens, and chief warriors of the confederacy. Into the open space between the high contracting parties was led a llama for sacrifice, whose sprinkled blood remained a pledge that the historic Biobio would henceforth be respected by both nations as the boundary, and that the Araucanians would never permit colonists of third nations upon their shores, or aid the English and Dutch buccaneers. The Indians faithfully adhered to this pact of friendship and refused to furnish the Dutch with provisions when the latter took possession of Valdivia in 1643. But in 1655 the cupidity of Spanish officers caused trouble, and war devastated both sides of the border for the next ten years. In 1665 a new treaty, identical in terms, was negotiated, which continued in force until 1722. However, Spanish priests pushed their evangelising among the Indians, and officers, called "Capitanos de los amigos," appointed to guard the interests of the missionaries, assumed authority highly offensive to the Araucanians. The great council was summoned, a