ARRIVAL AT VALPARAISO. 73 tween the 15th of May and the middle of June as one of the best periods in the year for accomplishing this passage, and our experience on this occasion corroborates the belief. We experienced some hail and snow, but less falling weather than in the Thames in midsummer, and the temperature has not been much colder. The mercury, on one occasion only, fell as low as 29°. The greater shortness of the day makes the most important difference; but with the benefit of a full moon, we have felt no particular inconvenience from nights of sixteen hours' duration. There is reason for much thankfulness that we have thus escaped every extreme of danger, and a long delay in this region; and that we have been favoured with such weather, that, except during the continuance of the gale, we were permitted, at the very remotest point to which we were driven, to continue on the open deck our evening worship, and, at the very extremity of the globe, daily to offer our praises and our prayers to Him who is "the confidence alike of all the ends of the earth, and of them that are afar off upon the sea." LETTER XV. DESCRIPTION OF VALPARAISO. U. S. ship Guerriere, off Valparaiso, "SAIL ho!" from aloft, on the morning of the 5th inst., broke the monotony of the preceding fortnight. A vessel was on our lee-bow; and we bore away for her. It proved to be the brig Fortune, from Huacho, bound to Boston; and we gladly boarded her, with letters, to communicate to our friends the safe arrival of the Guerriere on this side the continent. The still more animating and welcome sound of "land ahead!" echoed round our decks yesterday. The faintest outline of a mountainous coast could, at first, scarcely be traced in the east; but long before night, we had noble views of the Cordilleras, standing like a wall of eternal snow against a sombre sky. They were still sixty or seventy miles distant; but the gleaming of a declining sun against their icy summits, presented them, in clear and strongly defined outlines, to our eager and admiring gaze. This morning, while it was scarce yet light, Mr. Babbitt, our first lieutenant, entered my state-room, to hasten me on deck for a sunrise view of the coast. We were yet twenty miles or more from land; and the cold gray of the dawn was just giving place over it to the warmer tints of the rising day. At first the whole seemed only a dark, gigantic wall rising from the sea; but irregular lines of light and shade soon became perceptible, disclosing the formation of the country intervening between the coast and the Andes; and throwing these last far in the distance inland. As the day advanced, the landscape grew more and more distinct; and the colouring of the whole increased in richness, till just as the sun burst from behind the mountains, the scene became one of the finest I have witnessed; exhibiting first, along the water's edge, a brown, sterile, and iron-bound coast, with a headland here and there of wild, fantastic rock; then the nearer hills tinged with green, and backed by loftier ranges, rising one above another in every variety of form, till piled against the sides of the Andes themselves, whose ragged and inaccessible peaks, glittering with perpetual ice and snow, towered over the whole, in such magnitude of dimension, and such loftiness of height, as irresistibly to fill the mind with emotions of sublimity and admiration. Above these, "The azure arch'd sky Look'd pure as the Spirit that made it." With the appearance of the sun, the charm was dissoived; a blurring haze overspread the whole from BAY OF VALPARAISO. 75 the Andes to the shore; and every hue was in a moment dashed with a general neutral tint. Valparaiso was yet forty or fifty miles north of us; and we sailed five or six hours closely along a bold and seemingly uninhabited shore, before reaching the vicinity of the harbour. The bay is a small indenture in the coast, a few miles only in circumference, open, and entirely unsheltered on the north: and this being the season for heavy gales from that direction, in which great danger to the shipping is often experienced, Commodore Thompson determined not to bring the frigate to anchor, and to visit the shore only for an hour or two in boats. Towards noon, a telegraph on a lofty wooded hill, intimated the vicinity of a port; and, on coming abreast of a high, rocky point, the farther side of the bay, called the Almendral, from the almond gardens covering it, appeared; followed rapidly, as we glided forward, by the town lying in one irregular street close by the water, under a naked precipice of red earth and rock. The curvature of the bay, from the Almendral to the point, is about three miles; and the buildings of the town extend, in a greater or less degree of compactness, the whole distance. They are generally of one story only, and, being of unburnt brick, with roofs of red tile, have, for the most part, a shabby and uninviting appearance. The principal landing is near the western end, in front of a quebrada, or narrow glen, dividing the precipice which overhangs the town. The mouth of this ravine affords space for a kind of open square, from which zigzag streets run up the sides of the hills. The houses along these, being whitened, and ornamented with flowers and shrubbery, have a cottage-like and pleasing aspect, and show to advantage, as seen from the bay. On the top of the precipice, on one side of the quebrada, is the British consulate, and the residences of several English merchants. Being under one roof, and surrounded by a common veranda, the whole seems but a single establishment, and is the most conspicuous and ornamental object in the view. The opposite height across the ravine is occupied by the ruins of a castle, shattered down in one of the earthquakes, of such frequent occurrence here. Behind these, the land rises gradually for a mile or more ; but, covered only with stunted grass, and shrubs of the cactus tribe, and deformed by the dry channels of watercourses and crevices of red clay torn in the surface by earthquakes, it increases rather than diminishes the general sterility and dreariness of the place. A less appropriate name than that of Valparaiso, "Vale of Paradise," could scarce have been chosen for such a spot; the sublime amphitheatre of mountains in the distance being the only redeeming feature in the scene. A cutter was soon ordered to be lowered, and a party, including myself, hastened on shore. Mr. Hogan, the American consul-general, received us with great cordiality on the beach, and led the way to the consulate; an office only-his residence being at the Almendral, too far for a visit during the short time we could be from the ship. A first thought, that forced itself on me in landing, will convey, at least to you, dear H, in general description, a better idea of the aspect of Valparaiso as a whole, than any thing else, equally concise, I could say; and I will premise by it the few hasty and desultory observations I had it in my power to make. It is, that had I been asked, without knowing in what part of the world I was, how far on our voyage I thought myself, from the general appearance of things, to be; I should, without hesitation, have answered, "Two-thirds of the way to the Sandwich Islands." On the other hand, there was much very unlike every thing at the principal port of Hawaii. Streets, well paved with round stone, and lined with good houses, many of them two stories, stuccoed and white-washed, with glazed windows, and painted wood-work. Handsome, well-furnished shops, with a general appearance of neatness, enlivened by the activity of business. An abundance of fine horses and horsemen, carts, waggons, oxen, &c., all tending to a favourable impression of the thriftiness of the country, and improving state of the people. The Chilenos are also a much nobler-looking people than the islanders. I scarce know when I have seen finer forms, or more muscular and powerful-looking men; and these are fair specimens, I am told, of the whole population of the country. I greatly regretted that time did not allow of a walk to the Almendral, which, with its groves of almond and olive trees, had so inviting an appearance from the water.-The market of Valparaiso is the best on the coast: and whatever else may be said of Chile, Mr. Hogan assures us, that she can boast as good eating and drinking as can be found in any part of the world. The climate is at all times fine; and in the winter season, which is now just commencing, not surpassed in any section of the globe. This republic is said to be decidedly and greatly in advance of all the other South American states; and St. Jago, her capital, the most interesting and delightful city on the continent. Just at present, however, the country is politically in a disturbed state, from a strongly-contested election for the presidency. The excitement and violence at the public meetings have been such, as in several instances to terminate in bloodshed and death. Still the foundations of civil polity seem here more securely laid than elsewhere: elementary instruction, and means for the diffusion of knowledge, are in operation; and the policy of the government is better calculated than in |