132 JOURNAL. 



resemblance, but which is not eatable in a very few hours. * The 

 shell-fish are various and good : clams, limpets, particularly a very 

 large kind called loco, and most admirable crabs quite round in 

 shape, are abundant. A large kind of muscle is frequently brought 

 from the southern provinces ; and the rocks of Quintero furnish the 

 pico, a gigantic kind of barnacle, the most delicate shell-fish, without 

 exception, I ever tasted. 



With regard to the vegetables and fruit of the Valparaiso market, 

 they are excellent in their way ; but then the backward state of hor- 

 ticulture, as of every thing else, renders them much worse than they 

 might be. Here fruit will grow in spite of neglect ; and, though this 

 is not the season for green or fresh fruits, the apples, pears, and 

 grapes, the dried peaches, cherries f , and figs, and the abundance of 

 oranges and limes, as well as quinces, prove that culture alone is 

 wanting to bring almost every fruit to perfection. As to the kitchen 

 vegetables, the first and best are the potatoes, natives of the soil, of 

 the very first quality. Cabbages of every kind ; lettuces, inferior only 

 to those of Lambeth ; a few turnips and carrots, just beginning tp 

 be cultivated here ; every kind of pumpkin and melon ; onions in 

 perfection, with their family of chive, garlic, and eschalot ; and I am 

 promised in the season cauliflower, green peas, French beans, celery, 

 and asparagus ; the latter grows wild on the hills. The French beans 

 are, of course, the very best ; as the ripened seed is the frijole here, 

 the faggioli of Italy, the haricot of France, and the caravansa of all 

 seafaring nations. 



As to the poultry, it is good in itself; but a London poulterer would 

 be not a little shocked at the state in which it makes its appearance 

 at market. All these things are brought on mules or on horseback 

 to town. The fruit in square trunks made of hide, ingeniously plait- 

 ed and woven ; and the vegetables in a kind of net made also of hide, 

 which, indeed, serves for almost every purpose here : buckets, bas- 



* See Frezier, for a better catalogue of the fishes. 



f A single cherry plant was brought into Chile about the year 1590, whence all those of 

 Chile and Juan Fernandez have sprung. 



