374 



a few of the principal families, who sacrifice convenience to 

 pride ; for in a country *so continually wet, it is safer to expose 

 the feet than to cover them. The men usually wear th<* 

 poncho instead of the cloak. Their houses, or rather hovels, 

 are built of wood, and the crevices stopped with pieces of 

 sheep-skin, and with rags ; the roofs are of thatch, which rots so 

 soon in that rainy climate, that it must frequently be renewed. 

 They consist of a shigle room, in which the family, the 

 poultry, and whatever cattle they happen to possess, are 

 equally accomodated. The few who can afford it build better 

 houses, but still of wood, divide them into several apartments, 

 \vainscot them within, and roof them with planks. Fires are 

 very frequent, but as the houses are scattered, the mischief 

 does not extend. 



Such is the inclemency of the weather, and such the state 

 of the roads, that a family in one of these solitary habitations 

 is often weeks, and sometimes months, without any communis 

 cation with their neighbours. There is neither hospital, phy- 

 sician, nor physic, in the Archipelago. A sick person is laid 

 upon a bed, or upon a heap of skins, close to a large fire, and 

 there they let him lie. The missionaries could find no books 

 to teach the children to read ; and when they would have 

 taught them to write, there was no paper. Necessity produced 

 a substitute : they made wooden tablets, which, like slates, 

 could be washed clean when they were filled. Such is the miser 

 able situation of the Spaniards in Chilo^, they dare not leave 

 their wretched birth-place in the hope of bettering their for- 

 tunes ; for those who have attempted it have been cut off by 

 the smail-pox, a disease unknown in the Archipelago. The 

 whole population, in 1783, amounted to 23,477, of whom 

 1 1,985 were Spaniards. . E. 



