I Returned An Answer In As Proper Terms As I
Could Devise, And Next Morning Had Another Letter, Couched In The Utmost
Civility, But Absolutely Refusing Me Any Refreshments, And Demanding The
Restitution Of The Indians Said To Have Been Made Prisoners By Our
Pinnace.
In fact I knew less of our pinnace than he did, and believed
that he actually had the people in his hands of whom he now complained.
Despairing of ever seeing my people, and still ignorant where Chacao was
situated, having no chart of the island on which I could depend, I
determined to change my style of writing to the governor, and try what
could be done by threatening to use force. I therefore wrote, that I
was determined to have provisions by fair means or foul. Next day I sent
my first lieutenant, Mr Brooks, with twenty-nine men well armed in the
launch, ordering him to bring off all the provisions he could find.
Shortly after, a boat came with a message from the governor, offering to
treat with me, if I would send an officer to Chacao: But I answered,
that I would treat no where but on board, and that he was now too late,
as I had already sent eighty men on shore to take all they could find.
In the evening the launch returned, accompanied by a large piragua, and
both were completely laden with sheep, hogs, fowls, barley, and green
peas and beans. Soon afterwards, the pinnace arrived with all her crew,
but so terrified that I did not expect them to be again fit for service
for one while. The officer told me, that he had been forced to fight his
way through several canoes, filled with armed Indians, from whom he got
clear with the utmost difficulty, and had been under the necessity of
making his passage quite round the island, a course of not less than
seventy leagues.[258] This proceeded only from excess of terror, as they
only met one boat with unarmed Indians and a Spanish sergeant, who came
off to them without the least shew of violence, as some of them
afterwards confessed, but with this addition, that there were great
numbers of people on shore, who they were apprehensive would come off to
them. The only excuse the officer could allege was, that the tide had
hurried him away, and he forgot in his fright that he had a grappling in
the boat, with which he might have anchored till the tide turned.
[Footnote 258: The circuit of the island of Chiloe by sea, could hardly
be less than 350 English miles; an arduous navigation in an open boat
upon an utterly unknown coast. - E.]
By this strange mismanagement, I missed a favourable opportunity of
seizing the town of Chacao, which I might easily have done if I had
appeared before it within forty-eight hours after our arrival, when the
governor was totally unprovided for resistance. But now, having a whole
week allowed for mustering the force of the island, he had collected
near a thousand armed Spaniards, as I learnt from the Indian prisoners
in the pinnace.
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