VALPARAISO. 131 



English tailors, shoemakers, saddlers, and inn-keepers, hang out 

 their signs in every street ; and the preponderance of the English 

 language over every other spoken in the chief streets, would make 

 one fancy Valparaiso a coast town in Britain. The North Americans 

 greatly assist in this, however. Their goods, consisting of common 

 furniture, flour, biscuit, and naval stores, necessarily keep them 

 busier out of doors than any other set of people. The more elegant 

 Parisian or London furniture is generally despatched unopened to 

 Santiago, where the demand for articles of mere luxury is of course 

 greater. The number of piano-fortes brought from England is 

 astonishing. There is scarcely a house without one, as the fondness 

 for music is excessive ; and many of the young ladies play with skill 

 and taste, though few take the trouble to learn the gamut, but trust 

 entirely to the ear. 



As to the market, meat is not often exposed in it, the shambles 

 being out of town in the Almendral, and the carcases are brought 

 into the butchers' houses on horseback or in carts. The beef, mutton, 

 and pork, are all excellent ; but the clumsy method of cutting it up 

 spoils it to the English eye and taste. A few Englishmen, however, 

 have set up butcheries, whei'e they also corn meat ; and one of them 

 has lately made mould candles as fine as any made in England, which 

 is a real benefit to the country. The common candles, with thick 

 wicks and unrefined and unbleached tallow, are, indeed, disgusting 

 and wasteful. 



The fish-market is indifferently supplied, I think chiefly from indo- 

 lence, for the fish is both excellent and abundant. One of the most 

 delicate is a kind of smelt ; another, called the congrio, is as good as 

 the best salmon trout, which it resembles in taste ; but the flesh is 

 white, the fish itself long, very flat towards the tail, and covered with 

 a beautiful red-and-white marbled skin. There are excellent mullet, 

 which the natives dry as the Devonshire fishers do the whiting to 

 make buckhorn; besides a number of others whose names, either 

 English or native, I know not. There is one which, if eaten quite 

 fresh, is as good as the John doree, to which it bears great external 



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