by Daniel Defoe
fire shone into the outer room, and so fartherinto ours. What are they burning there? said I to my patron. You willsee presently, says he, adding, I hope you will not be surprised, andthen he led me to the outer door.
But who can express the thoughts of a man's heart, coming on a suddeninto a place where the whole world seemed to be on fire! The valley was,on one side, so exceeding bright the eye could scarce bear to look atit; the sides of the mountains were shining like the fire itself; theflame from the top of the mountain on the other side casting its lightdirectly upon them. From thence the reflection into other parts lookedred, and more terrible; for the first was white and clear, like thelight of the sun; but the other, being, as it were, a reflection oflight mixed with some darker cavities, represented the fire of afurnace; and, in short, it might well be said here was no darkness; butcertainly, at the first view, it gives a traveller no other idea thanthat of being at the very entrance into eternal horror.
All this while there was no fire, that is to say, no real flame to beseen, only, that where the flame was it shone clearly into the valley;but the vulcano, or vulcanoes, from whence the fire issued out (for itseems there was no less than three of them, though at the distance ofsome miles from one another), were on the south and east sides of thevalley, which was so much on that side where we were, that we could seenothing but the light; neither on the other side could they see anymore, it seems, than just the top of the flame, not knowing anything ofthe places from whence it issued out, which no mortal creature, no, notof the Chilians themselves, were ever hardy enough to go near. Nor wouldit be possible, if any should attempt it, the tops of the hills, formany leagues about them, being covered with new mountains of ashes andstones, which are daily cast out of the mouths of those volcanoes, bywhich they grew every day higher than they were before, and which wouldoverwhelm, not only men, but whole armies of men, if they should ventureto come near them.
When first we came into the long narrow way I mentioned last, Iobserved, as I thought, the wind blew very hard aloft among the hills,and that it made a noise like thunder, which I thought nothing of, butas a thing usual. But now, when I came to this terrible sight, and thatI heard the same thunder, and yet found the air calm and quiet, I soonunderstood that it was a continued thunder, occasioned by the roaring ofthe fire in the bowels of the mountains.
It must be some time, as may be supposed, before a traveller,unacquainted with such things, could make them familiar to him; andthough the horror and surprise might abate, after proper reflections onthe nature and reason of them, yet I had a kind of astonishment upon mefor a great while; every different place to which I turned my eyepresented me with a new scene of horror. I was for some time frighted atthe fire being, as it were, over my head, for I could see nothing of it;but that the air looked as if it were all on fire; and I could notpersuade myself but it would cast down the rocks and mountains on myhead; but I was laughed out of that notion by the company.
After a while, I asked them if these volcanoes did not cast out a kindof liquid fire, as I had seen an account of on the eruptions atMount-AEtna, which cast out, as we are told, a prodigious stream of fire,and run several leagues into the sea?
Upon my putting this question to my patron, he asked the Chilian howlong ago it was since such a stream, calling it by a name of their own,ran fire? He answered, it ran now, and if we were disposed to walk butthree furlongs we should see it.
He said little to me, but asked me if I cared to walk a little way bythis kind of light? I told him it was a surprising place we were in, butI supposed he would lead me into no danger.
He said he would assure me he would lead me into no danger; that thesethings were very familiar to them, but that I might depend there was nohazard, and that the flames which gave all this light were six or sevenmiles off, and some of them more.
We walked along the plain of the valley about half a mile, when anothergreat valley opened to the right, and gave us a more dreadful prospectthan any we had seen before; for at the farther end of this secondvalley, but at the distance of three miles from where we stood, we saw alivid stream of fire come running down the sides of the mountain fornear three quarters of a mile in length, running like melted metal intoa mould, until, I supposed, as it came nearer the bottom, it cooled andseparated, and so went out of itself.
Beyond this, over the summit of a prodigious mountain, we could see thetops of the clear flame of a volcano, a dreadful one, no doubt, could wehave seen it all; and from the mouth of which it was supposed thisstream of fire came, though the Chilian assured us that the fire itselfwas eight leagues off, and that the liquid fire which we saw came out ofthe side of the mountain, and was two leagues from the great volcanoitself, running like liquid metal out of a furnace.
They told me there was a great deal of melted gold ran down with theother inflamed earth in that stream, and that much of the metal wasafterwards 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 almostfrightened out of all their resolutions of going any farther in thishorrible 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 ofthese Spaniards, for that they would certainly carry us all into somemischief or other, and betray us.
I bade them be easy, for I saw nothing in it all that looked liketreachery; 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 togo back. I told them I could not think of that, but if they could notendure 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 wegot a plentiful draught of Chilian wine, for my patron had taken care tohave a good quantity of it with us; and in the morning my twomidshipmen, who got very drunk over night, had courage enough to ventureforward again; for the light of the sun put quite another face uponthings, and nothing of the fire was then to be seen, only the smoke.
All our company lodged in the tents here, but myself and my patron, theSpaniard, who lodged within the Chilian's house, as I have said.
This Chilian was a great man among the natives, and all the valley Ispoke of, which lay round his dwelling, was called his own. He lived ina perfect state of tranquility, neither enjoying or coveting anythingbut what was necessary, and wanting nothing that was so. He had goldmerely for the trouble of picking it up, for it was found in all thelittle gulleys and rills of water which, as I have said, came down fromthe mountains on every side; yet I did not find that he troubled himselfto lay up any great quantity, more than served to go to Villa Rica andbuy what he wanted for himself and family.
He had, it seems, a wife and some daughters, but no sons; these lived ina separate house, about a furlong from that where he lived, and werekept there as a family by themselves, and if he had any sons they wouldhave lived with him.
He did not offer to go with us any part of our way, as the other haddone, but, having entertained us with great civility, took his leave. Icaused one of my midshipmen to make him a present, when we came away, ofa piece of black baize, enough to make him a cloak, as I did the other,and a piece of blue English serge, enough to make him a jerkin andbreeches, which he accepted as a great bounty.
We set out again, though not very early in the morning, having, as Isaid, sat up late, and drank freely over night, and we found, thatafter we had been gone to sleep it had rained very hard, and though therain was over before we went out, yet the falling of the water from thehills made such a confused noise, and was echoed so backward and forwardfrom all sides, that it was like a strange mixture of distant thunder,and though we knew the causes, yet it could not but be surprising to usfor awhile.
However, we set forward, the way un
der foot being pretty good; and firsthe went up the steps again by which we had come down, our last hostwaiting on us thither, and there I gave him back his gun, for he wouldnot take it before.
In this valley, which was the pleasantest by day and the most dismal bynight that ever I saw, I observed abundance of goats, as well tame inthe enclosures, as wild upon the rocks; and we found afterwards, thatthe last were perfectly wild, and to be had, like those at JuanFernandez, by any one who could catch them. My patron sent off two ofhis men, just as a huntsman casts off his hounds, to go and catch goats,and they brought us in three, which they shot in less than half an hour,and these we carried with us for our evening supply; for we made nodinner this day, having fed heartily in the morning about nine, and hadchocolate two hours before that.
We travelled now along the narrow winding passage, which I mentionedbefore, for about four hours, until I found, that though we had ascendedbut gently, yet that, as we had done so for almost twenty milestogether, we were got
