ome recent successes in two different incursions they had lately made
into the country, which they had laid waste for eight leagues all around
during twenty days.--E.]

Ten days after the destruction of Valdivia, Francisco del Campo arrived
there by sea from Peru with a reinforcement of three hundred men; and
finding it in ashes, he ineffectually endeavoured to introduce these
succours into Osorno, Villarica, and Imperial[92]. Amid so many
misfortunes, an expedition of five ships from Holland arrived on the
coast of Chili in 1660, which plundered the island of Chiloe and put the
Spanish garrison to the sword. But on a part of their people landing in
the island of Talca or Santa Maria[93], inhabited by the Araucanians,
they were repulsed with the loss of twenty-three men, being probably
mistaken for Spaniards.

[Footnote 92: In the letter quoted from Garcilasso in the preceding
note, Del Campo is said to have raised the siege of Osorno and to have
performed other actions of happy consequence.--E.]

[Footnote 93: St Mary's island is on the coast of Araucania, in lat. 37 deg.
S.--E.]

Disgusted with a war which threatened such unfortunate consequences,
Quinones solicited and obtained leave to resign the government of Chili,
and was succeeded by Garcia Ramon who had long been quarter-master of
the army in that kingdom. Great expectations were formed of success in
the war against the Araucanians under his direction, from his long
experience and thorough acquaintance with the manner in which the enemy
carried on their warlike operations. But that experience induced him to
conduct the war on prudent principles of defence, rather than to hazard
the loss of that part of Chili which was subject to Spain. Although he
received a reinforcement consisting of an entire regiment of veterans,
under the command of Don Francisco de Ovalle, father to the historian of
that name, he confined himself almost entirely to the defence of the
frontier line upon the Biobio. Garcia Ramon was however soon superseded
in the government by the appointment of Alonzo Rivera, an officer who
had acquired considerable reputation in the wars in the low countries,
and who now brought out a farther reinforcement of a regiment of veteran
troops. On assuming the government, he established a number of
additional forts on the river Biobio, to defend the frontiers, by which
he greatly encouraged the Spanish colonists, who still entertained an
idea of abandoning