PREFACE, 



The Journal of a residence in Chile should naturally have been 

 placed between the two visits to Brazil, which are the subject of the 

 writer's former volume. The reasons for dividing the Journals have 

 been given in the preface to that of the residence in Brazil. 



The Introduction to the present volume is, perhaps, its most im- 

 portant part. Of the first six years of the revolution in Chile, no 

 account is to be procured, either from the offices of the secretaries of 

 state, or among the papers of the actors in the scene. During the 

 few wretched days that elapsed between the defeat of the Patriots at 

 Rancagua and their crossing the Andes, the whole of the public 

 papers and documents that could be collected were burnt, in order 

 to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Spaniards, who 

 might have persecuted those families who remained in their country, 

 and whose names might have been found among those of the Patriots. 

 Hence until 1817, no records are to be traced even in the hands of 

 government; and until the middle of 1818 nothing whatever was 

 printed in Chile ; so that a few years hence all remembrance of the 

 early period of the revolution in that country may be lost. 



It was the writer's good fortune while in Chile, to become 

 acquainted with several persons, who, having participated either as 



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