198 SANTIAGO. 



disposed of to the highest bidder at auction. But as the successful competitor never reveals his 

 profits, and takes especial care to conceal the quantity that has heen consumed, or what he 

 receives in tolls or tithes from the landed proprietors, there are few persons willing to risk the 

 uncertainty. Ices are called for at all seasons, and by all classes from the peon about the 

 market at early light, to the rotos (loafers) and street loungers at midnight. The favorites are 

 water-ices flavored with cinnamon, coffee, or chocolate, though almost every imaginable condi- 

 ment is used ; and they may be had day and night, not only in the confectioners' and pastry- 

 shops and market-houses, but also from dozens of itinerant venders. Not to like dulces and 

 helados (confectionery and ices) at all hours, is an evidence of want of taste at Santiago which only 

 a Goth will acknowledge. Sunday is the day for the dulceros (venders of confectionery). Then, 

 children are at home from school; all journeymen, as well as many servants, have been paid 

 off; it is a holiday (not a holy day) all facts of which confectioners are aware ; and, in conse- 

 quence, they let loose troops of peddlers on the city, to tempt the nation on one of its weakest 

 sides with the stale cake and candy accumulated during the week. 



Besides the jail at the northeast corner of the Plaza de la Independencia, there is a penitentiary 

 on the plain beyond the southern suburbs. Its walls enclose near ten acres of ground. Within, 

 the cells are built in radial lines, with intermediate open courts between them of a triangular 

 form. This arrangement facilitates inspection, and will one day afford places for workshops. 

 Two hundred and fifty cells have been completed on about one half of the enclosed area. They 

 are of brick, with arched roofs of the same material, and extremely small. Each has a little 

 opening at the bottom of an iron door which may be closed with a slide, and one of like size 

 above the door the only mediums of light and ventilation. An alley three feet wide, with a 

 gutter in the middle, separates each pair of the radial lines. . There is a water-closet to each. 



A large number having been sent to the colony at Magellan only a short time previously, 

 there were but about 350 state prisoners at the time of our visit in October, 1851. A few 

 were in solitary confinement ; others in cells with as many as three companions; many of them in 

 these little dens heavily loaded with chains. All were either idle or performing voluntary labor, 

 and in discomfort the most painful to witness. None seemed to have water for ablution ; many 

 were scarcely half clad. Beds were equally rare ; indeed, the best were but pallets, a few skins, 

 or perhaps a poncho spread on the bare, unclean brick floor. Their food, of the coarsest and 

 commonest kind, is served to them in dirty tin pots, the discipline seeming to embrace neither 

 cleanliness nor the preservation of health. A like aggregation of vice and misery to that 

 which sent Howard on his mission of humanity may yet be found in Chile. Instead of compel- 

 ling convicts to work and earn- something towards their maintenance, affording occupation to 

 their minds whilst forcing them into habits of industry in the acquisition of a useful trade, the 

 months and years of captivity are passed in idleness and indolence, each hour more strongly 

 confirming vices whose exhibition had already brought upon them the penalties of the law. 

 What but manifold crimes can result from such a system? Of the prisoners, few had attained 

 middle age ; a still smaller number were old men : nearly all were young and active just at 

 that period of life when associations and habits take the strongest hold ; and it was distressing 

 to think of the career to which they are hereafter condemned by the present course of treat- 

 ment. Among them Avere several officers of the Chacabuco regiment, who had taken part 

 in the revolt of the 13th of September. Their cells were of the same dimensions as the rest, 

 though a little whitewash had imparted an air of cleanliness which other criminals less fortunate 

 in means did not possess. They had the freedom of the narrow alley. Formerly, as there were 

 no cells, (it was only in 1847 that any part of the penitentiary was completed,) when night 

 came, the prisoners were huddled into cages and locked up. A part of these vehicles yet remain 

 in the penitentiary yard. They are about 12 feet long, 4 feet high, mounted on wheels, and in 

 no respect differ from those constructed for the safe-keeping of wild beasts. When to be em- 

 ployed on the public works, they are still conveyed from one place to another in these cages. 



The benevolent friends whom I accompanied had provided a heavy purse of silver change, 



