6o NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



Mr. Hurlbut, the last American representative, had 

 died, and Mr. Trescott, who supplied his place, was 

 ostensibly charged with the attempt to bring about a 

 peace between Chili and Peru, but was supposed to 

 be chiefly intent on extricating his Government from 

 a position into which it had been led by a series of 

 proceedings which had neither raised the national 

 reputation nor secured the good-will of either Chili 

 or Peru. 



While we lay off the harbour, watched day and 

 night by the crew of a launch stationed beside us 

 to prevent communication with the land, we received 

 three successive visits from the officers of the American 

 man-of-war lying in the harbour, who approached 

 near enough to hold conversation with our captain. 

 The message was a request, finally conveyed in some- 

 what imperious terms, that the despatches addressed 

 to the American envoy should at once be delivered. 

 The American foreign office is not, I believe, accus- 

 tomed to forward diplomatic despatches in a separate 

 bag, but merely uses the ordinary post. Our captain 

 properly declined to take the responsibility of opening 

 the mail-bags, which he was bound to deliver intact to 

 the postal authorities as soon as we were admitted to 

 pratique. The result was that on Monday, just as we 

 were beginning to be seriously uneasy at the prospect 

 of a long detention, a steam launch was seen to 

 approach, having a number of officials on board. A 

 seemingly interminable conversation between these 

 and the captain and medical officer of our ship finally 

 resulted in a Chilian medical man coming on board 

 to make a careful examination of the ship, the crew, 



