4 INTRODUCTION. 
to the southward ; but ‘after crossing the Maule was defeated at 
Itata, and obliged to go in person to Peru to obtain reinforcements. 
During his absence, the people of Copiapo, who had not forgotten 
the treacherous murder of their young chief by Monroy and Miranda, 
fell upon a detachment of forty Spaniards, and put them to death ; 
and those of Coquimbo massacred all the inhabitants of the new 
colony, and levelled its walls to the ground. Francis Aquirre was 
immediately sent thither, and rebuilt the town in a more convenient 
situation in 1549; and Valdivia having returned with a considerable 
number of new adventurers, the northern part of Chile was, after 
nine years of incessant and excessive fatigue on the part of the 
general, reduced to tranquillity, and the lands parcelled out amongst 
his oldest followers, according to the feudal customs then prevailing 
in Europe. | 
The next year, 1550, Valdivia proceeded as far south as the 
Biobio, near whose mouth, in the beautiful bay of Penco, he founded 
the city of Conception, in one of. the richest and most fertile pro- 
vinces of Chile. But his progress was stopped here by the Cacique 
or Toqui Aillavilla, the chief of the Araucanians, who crossed the 
Biobio in order to succour the people of Penco, and to resist to the 
death these invaders of their territory. 
Araucana is a rich and fertile province, extending from the Biobio 
to the Callacalla, generally very woody, full of hills, and well 
watered. The inhabitants are hardy, brave, and passionately fond of 
liberty: they have never yet been subdued, having equally resisted 
the armies of the Incas, and those of the Spaniards. It has been 
their fortune to have a poet in the person of Ercilla, among their 
enemies, who has done justice to their valour, and preserved the 
memory of their very singular customs and polity, of which he was 
an eye-witness, having taken a distinguished part in most of the 
battles he describes. 
Between the first foundation of Conception, 1550, and its destruc- 
tion in 1554, the activity of Valdivia had founded Imperial on the 
river, which forms a port at the very walls of the city, which, during 
