Thus the attitude of the Araucanians towards foreigners was apt to
depend to some extent on whether they happened to be at peace or at war
with their Spanish neighbours. It was owing to this, moreover, that the
European adventurers found themselves attacked when they had very little
reason to fear an onslaught. One of these instances occurred in 1638,
when the natives murdered the survivors of a shipwrecked Dutch crew.
There were times, on the other hand, when the enmity between the Indians
and the Spaniards induced the former to render every assistance to the
rovers who came, whether by accident or design, to their coasts. It is
certain that the accounts of these foreigners retailed by the Spaniards
to the natives were not of a nature to render the intruders popular in
the eyes of the dusky southern dwellers.
During the chief part of the colonial era the town of Valdivia, in
Southern Chile, was employed as a sort of convict station for the white
criminals of Peru and Chile, and incidentally for a number of persons
whose sole crimes were of a political order. These prisoners were
employed in the erection of the fortifications of the spot, and the
ruins which still exist attest the solidarity and the extent of the
buildings.
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