Fir CHILI. 
by Captain Simson, three merchant ships under 
Chilian, and three whalers under English co- 
lours also lay here. In the afternoon I went 
ashore myself, and paid the Commandant a 
visit; I was received in the most friendly man- 
ner, but with a good deal of Spanish etiquette, 
by an old man, who was evidently a zealous 
republican. He told me, that the first Presi- 
dent of the Republic, Freire, whose authority, 
he gave me to understand, would be very in- 
strumental in furthering his efforts to assist us, 
was at that moment in the town of Conception. 
Thither, therefore, I determined to proceed, 
hoping to see the President, and procure from 
him a written order for our accommodation. 
And here, though it interrupt the course of 
my narrative, I apprehend some particulars con- 
cerning this country may be agreeable to such 
of my readers as are strangers to it. 
The fruitful Chili is a long and narrow strip 
of coast-land, bathed on the West by the Great 
_ Ocean, so falsely called the Pacific; divided on 
the North from Peru by the desert tract of 
Atacoma; and on the East, from Buenos Ayres, 
by the chain of the Cordilleras, or Andes, whose 
