Departures of note

Amédée‑François Frézier passed himself off as a trader or merchant captain and visited the fortifications as a tourist. He ingratiated himself with the Spanish governors, based himself in Concepción, and sketched maps of the ports that showed the best approaches for attack, ammunition storage, escape routes, and estimated the strength of the Spanish colonial governments, the living conditions of Indigenous peoples, and examined the Spanish gold and silver mines.

Frézier reported on the operations of the Church, the physical geography, flora and fauna, and agricultural products of the area, including a species of strawberry that he later introduced to Europe. He wrote that the beach strawberry had rounder leaves, fleshier fruit, strong runners, and fruits as large as a walnut or small egg, whitish‑red in colour and slightly less delicate in taste than woodland strawberries.