ANTIPATHY TO FOREIGNERS. 97 



nostrils distended, the comers of their mouth for- 

 cibly drawn back, and the expulsion of their breath 

 most laborious. Each time they draw their breath 

 they utter an articulate cry of " ay-ay," which enda 

 in a sound rising from deep in the chest, but shrill 

 like the note of a fife. After staggering to the 

 pile of ore, they emptied the "carpacho;" in two 

 or three seconds, recovering their breath, they 

 wiped the sweat from their brows, and, apparently 

 quite fresh, descended the mine again at a quick 

 pace. This appears to me a wonderful instance 

 of the amount of labour which habit, for it can be 

 nothing else, will enable a man to endure. 



In the evening, talking with the inayor-domo of 

 these mines about the number of foreigners now 

 scattered over the whole country, he told me that, 

 though quite a young man, he remembers when he 

 was a boy at school at Coquimbo, a holyday being 

 given to see the captain of an English ship, who 

 was brought to the city to speak to the governor. 

 He believes that nothing would have induced any 

 boy in the school, himself included, to have gone 

 close to the Englishman, so deeply had they been 

 impressed with an idea of the heresy, contamina- 

 tion, and evil to be derived from contact with such 

 a person. To this day they relate the atrocious 

 actions of the bucaniers ; and especially of one 

 man, who took away the figure of the Virgin Mary, 

 and returned the year after for that of St. Joseph, 

 saying it was a pity the lady should not have a hus- 

 band. I heard also of an old lady who, at a dinner 

 in Coquimbo, remarked how wonderfully strange 

 it was that she should have lived to dine in the 

 same room with an Englishman ; for she remem- 

 bered as a girl, that twice, at the mere cry of " Los 

 Ingleses," every soul, carrying what valuables they 

 could, had taken to the mountains. 

 II. 7 



