274 



It is but a few years since that Don Antonio Boza 

 died there at the age of one hundred and six. My 

 grandfather and my great grandfather, both Cre- 

 oles, lived, the first to the age of ninety-five, the 

 other to ninety-six. These instances are not un- 

 common among the natives of the, country. The 

 women are generally prolific and there are few 

 countries where they more frequently give birth 

 to twins. This fecundity, and the abolition of 

 some practices which were injurious to the pro- 

 pagation of the human species, will explain the 

 rapid increase of population, which has taken 

 place within the last thirty years. 



The inhabitants of Chili are either aboriginal, 

 or the descendants of Europeans or Africans. 

 Those descended from Europeans are well 

 shaped, particularly the women, some of whom 

 are very beautiful./ The aborigines form but 

 one nation, divided into many tribes, all of whom 

 speak the same language, which they call^hili- 

 duga, or the Chilian tongue This language is 

 soft, harmonious, expressive, and regular^ and 

 possesses a great number of words^ not only ex- 

 pressive of natural objects, but also of moral and 

 metaphysical ideas. The colour of the natives is 

 a reddish or coppery brown, excepting the Bo- 

 roanes, who live in the midst of the Araucanian 

 provinces, in the thirty-ninth degree of latitude ; 

 these are white, and as well featured as the 

 northern Europeans. Nothing appears to me to be 

 more ridiculous than the assertion of several an- 



