Being cleere of this port, wee shaped our course for Arica, and leaft the kingdomes of Chily, one of the best countries that the sunne shineth on; for it is of a temperate clymate, and abounding in all things necessary for the use of man, with infinite rich mines of gold, copper, and sundry other mettals.[191]
The poorest houses in it, by report of their inhabitants, have of their owne store, bread, wine, flesh, and fruite; which is so plentifull, that of their superfluitie they supply other partes. Sundry kindes of cattell, as horses, goates, and oxen, brought thither by the Spaniards, are found in [For all sorts of fruits.] heardes of thousands, wilde and without owner; besides those of the countrey, which are common to most partes of America: in some of which are found the bezar stones, and those very good and great.
Amongst others, they have little beastes like unto a squirrell, but that hee is gray; his skinne is the most delicate, soft, and curious furre that I have seene, and of much estimation (as is of reason) in the Peru; few of them come into Spaine, because difficult to be come by; for that the princes and nobles laie waite for them. They call this beast _chinchilla_, and of them they have great abundance.
All fruites of Spaine they have in great plentie, saving stone fruite and almonds; for in no part of the Indies have I knowne that plumbes, cherries, or almondes have borne fruit: but they have certaine little round cocos, as those of Brasill, of the bignesse of a wall-nut, which is as good as an almond; besides it hath most of the fruites naturall to America, of which in another place I shall, God willing, speake particularly.
The gold they gather is in two manners: the one is washing the earth in great trayes of wood in many waters. as the earth washeth away, the gold in the bottome remaineth. The other is, by force of art to draw it out of the mynes, in which they finde it. In most partes of the countrie, the earth is mingled with gold; for the butizias, in which the wine was, which wee found in Balparizo, had many sparkes of gold shining in them. Of it the goldsmiths I carryed with me, for like purposes, made experience.
When Baldivia and Arawca were peaceable, they yeelded greatest plentie, and the best: but now, their greatest mynes are in Coquinbo, as also the mines of copper, which they carry to the Peru, and sell it better cheape then it is ordinarily sold in Spaine.