86 CEMETERIES. [1839 



On a high hill overlooking the town, are the burial grounds 

 The principal one is divided by mud walls into two compart- 

 ments, one of which is used by Catholics, and the other is 

 appropriated to heretics. Near by is a charnel house full of 

 skulls and bones. Interments are conducted with very little 

 Care or attention. The graves are shallow excavations, in 

 which the dead are laid, with their heads to the west, often 

 without either coffin or shroud. A small quantity of earth 

 is then thrown in and beaten down with a billet of wood ; 

 not unfrequently half of this thin covering is blown off by the 

 wind in a few days, anl the decaying body exposed, wholly 

 or in part, to the sight. A rudely-fashioned cross placed at 

 the head of the grave, is, usually, the only designation em- 

 ployed. In the Protestant cemetery, which adjoins the for- 

 mer, there are neat marble slabs, and every other indication 

 of the respect paid by the living to the dead. 



(3.) Previous to the Spanish conquest, Chili formed a part 

 of the possessions of the Peruvian Incas. In 1535, Almagro 

 invaded the country, under the orders of Pizarro ; and in 

 1540 it was overrun and subjugated, with the exception of 

 Araucania, by Valdivia. The first insurrectionary move- 

 ment looking towards a separation from the mother country, 

 was made in 1810, and terminated in 1814, when the prov- 

 ince was temporarily quieted. From that time till the year 

 1817, the disaffected inhabitants were overawed by the pres- 

 ence of a large body of royalist forces. But the tocsin of 

 liberty had not been sounded in vain ; its echoes continued 

 to reverberate among the fastnesses of the Andes, and to 

 awaken glad responses in the breasts of the true-hearted 

 patriots of Chili. In 1817, the banner of freedom was again 

 (lung to the winds, and after a bloody and obstinate engage- 

 ment on the plains of Chacabuco, in which General Mendoza, 

 at the head of the patriot army of four thousand men, de- 

 feated five thousand, the Spanish troops were expelled from 

 the country. The preliminary measures for forming an in- 

 dependent government were being taken, when a new and 

 increased force of royalists appeared in the field, under the 



