Page:A history of Chile.djvu/45

Rh all this incomparable natural beauty, mingling with these strange pastoral and agricultural Indians, Almagro and his men had but one thought in mind, gold, gold! They would not have taken the stretch of mountains, valleys, rivers and cultivated farms as a gift, had this been Elysium itself. How different was the colony which Valdivia afterward led into the country to establish cities and colonize the valleys. Gold was the object of the toil and search of these Almagrians, and when the expedition sent forward to make explorations returned after about two months, bringing unpromising accounts of the southern regions of Chile, there arose at once a clamor to return to Peru. Almagro listened to those who maintained that Cuzco lay within his grant, yielded to the importunities of his men, and, with little reluctance, decided to take up his return march to Peru by way of the desert of Atacama.

During his stay in Chile, which with his going and returning was from the latter part of the year 1535 to the first part of the year 1538, Almagro accomplished but little toward the making of his grant a Spanish province. He founded no important settlements, left no good impressions upon the minds of the natives. While at Copiapo he adopted Pizarro's tactics and undertook to ingratiate himself with one faction of the natives by ousting a usurping ulmen and reinstating a lawful heir. He gained the desired object: the natives applauded this seeming act of justice. But the contrary result followed his efforts at disciplining the aborigines. Two marauding soldiers were put to death by Indians at Huasco. For this Almagro, having proceeded to Coquimbo, put to death by burning, the ulmen, the ulmen's brother —