VALPARAISO. 133 



kets, bags, doors, flooring, hods to carry mortar in, hand-barrows, 

 every thing, in short, is occasionally made of it. 



Besides these articles of ordinary consumption, ponchos, hats, 

 shoes, coarse stuffs, coarse earthenware, and sometimes jars of fine 

 clay from Mellipilla, or even Penco, and small cups of the same for 

 the purpose of taking matee, are exposed for sale by the country 

 people ; who crowd round the stalls with an air of the greatest impor- 

 tance, smoking, and occasionally retiring to a line in the back- 

 ground, where the savoury smell and the crackling of the boiling fat 

 inform the passengers, that fritters both sweet and savoury are to 

 be procured ; nor are the cups of wine or aguardiente wanting to im- 

 prove the repast. But the greatest comfort to the market people is 

 a fountain of excellent water which falls from a hideous lion's mouth 

 in the wall of the government house, or rather of the little fort which 

 the governor inhabits, into a rude granite basin. There is no want 

 of water about Valparaiso ; but it is clumsily managed, as far as 

 relates to domestic comfort and to watering the shipping in the 

 harbour. The most convenient watering-place is supplied by a pretty 

 abundant stream that is led close to the beach ; but it passes by and 

 through the hospital, and there is consequently a prejudice against it. 

 Besides, I have heard that the water of this stream does not keep. 

 There is another which has not that defect, where a small sum is paid 

 for every vessel filled, whether large or small ; and I believe the 

 English ships of war usually fill their tanks there. 



Returning from my shopping, I stopped at the apothecary's (for 

 there is but one), to buy some powder-blue, which, to my surprise, I 

 found could only be procured there. I fancy it must resemble an 

 apothecary's of the fourteenth century, for it is even more antique 

 looking than those I have seen- in Italy or France. The man has a 

 taste for natural history; so that besides his jars of old-fashioned 

 medicines, inscribed all over with the celestial signs, oddly inter- 

 mixed with packets of patent medicines from London, dried herbs, 

 and filthy gallipots, there are fishes' heads and snakes' skins; in 

 one corner a great condor tearing the flesh from the bones of a 



