442 FROM LIMA TO VALPARAISO. 



writers whose volumes are accessible to me. A father of the church, on board, assured me that 

 Christ himself wrought it in a single night, during the rule of Pizarro, and as a warning to 

 the sun worshippers, whose country he was empowered to take possession of; hut, as I after- 

 wards saw the reverend gentleman gambling with other passengers at monte, it occurred to me 

 that his assertion was possibly made under the influence of a little too much wine with the water 

 he had imbibed for breakfast. Annually the devoutly inclined come with the priests from Pisco 

 to the cross, and a great ceremony is performed there its conclusion smacking more of "earth, 

 earthly," than of "heaven, heavenly." 



At the southern entrance of the bay the wind increased to freshness from the southeast, and 

 gave us the first wholly clear sky that had been witnessed in many clays. To myself its temper- 

 ature felt wholesome and invigorating ; but the multitude of sea-sick passengers, who had been 

 tempted on deck by smooth water near the anchorage, hurried shivering to their berths again, 

 the sea that it created bringing the landsman's pestilence to them with greater force than 

 before. Towards night there was some decrease in its strength, and by 10 o'clock the heavens 

 were entirely obscured ; but there was no diminution of the swell, and the ship could only make 

 five miles and a half per hour against them. 



October 16. During the night the southeast wind lulled, the swell subsided to a considerable 

 extent, and at sunrise the ship was again making fair progress. But with the sun's elevation 

 the wind rose ; and before noon we had a breeze as fierce and sea as heavy as on the preceding 

 day a condition of affairs altogether irreconcilable with the idea of a Pacific ocean. All the 

 morning we were steaming very close to land most abrupt, broken, sterile, and desolate in its 

 aspect; with multitudes of penguins, cape pigeons, cormorants, loons, and ice-birds, about the 

 ship. The afternoon brought with it an accession both of wind and sea, with a temperature 

 varying little from 62 in the open air, so that the passengers huddled about the smoke and 

 steam pipes to keep warm. The night was more moderate, but densely overcast. 



October 17. Our captain says, from the commencement of August until the end of October 

 the southeast trade winds on the coast, for 200 miles to the southward of Pisco, are much more 

 violent than during the other nine months of the year, and often make a difference of eight to 

 ten hours in the length of the voyage between that place and Yslay. The distance between the 

 two is 333 miles. By daylight the wind had wholly subsided, though a long swell continued 

 to set from the southward. The shore along which we were steaming scarcely five miles 

 distant was much varied in outline; and after passing the quebrada of Ocona, at 9 o'clock, 

 gradually became quite densely covered with cactus, which somewhat relieved the arid appear- 

 ance so long offered to us. There were only a few cape pigeons about the ship during the 

 morning. Later in the day considerable numbers of whales were encountered, principally of 

 the Jin-back species, and the sea-fowl returned in countless flocks. The dark, fawn-colored rocks 

 of the shore were diversified by white patches hundreds of feet in extent, and in hollows, or 

 sheltered places, several inches thick. A difference of opinion exists respecting the origin of 

 this substance, which is as consistent as flour that has been damped and suffered to dry in a 

 damaged barrel. The people of the neighborhood assert that it was thrown out of the volcano 

 of Arequipa many years ago; to which view Capt. Basil Hall inclines. But the more rational 

 supposition is, that it is a crust of common salt and stratified saliferous alluvium, deposited as 

 the land slowly rose above the sea-level similar in every respect to the depositions found by 

 Dr. Darwin between Iquique and the saltpetre mines fourteen leagues distant. He found "the 

 appearance of this superficial mass very closely resembled that of a country after snow before 

 the last dirty patches are thawed." 



Anchored in the port of Yslay just after dark, and were excessively annoyed all night by the 

 effluvia emitted by whales sporting in the waters around us. 



October 18. Yslay, in latitude 17 S,, a collection of less than two hundred wretched 

 houses perched on the brow of a gradually sloping bluff, without a tree or even a blade of grass 

 to relieve its barren look, is at the bottom of a little bay formed by the main coast and a cluster 



