VALPARAISO. 143 



It is impossible to conceive a greater degree of apparent poverty 

 than is exhibited in the potters' cottages of the Rincona. Most, 

 however, had a decent bed ; a few stakes driven into the ground, 

 and laced across with thongs, form the bedstead ; a mattress of wool, 

 and, where the women are industrious, sheets of coarse homespun 

 cotton and thick woollen coverlets form no contemptible resting- 

 place for the man and wife, or rather for the wife, for I believe the 

 men pass the greater part of every night, according to the custom 

 of the country, sleeping, wrapped up in their ponchos, in the 

 open air. The infants are hung in little hammocks of sheep- 

 skin to the poles of the roof; and the other children or rela- 

 tions sleep as they can on skins, wrapped in their ponchos, on 

 the ground. In one of the huts there was no bed ; the whole 

 furniture consisted of two skin trunks ; and there were eleven 

 inhabitants, including two infants, twins, there being neither father 

 nor man of any kind to own or protect them. The natural gentle- 

 ness and goodness of nature of the people of Chile preserve even 

 the vicious, at least among the women, from that effrontery which 

 such a family as I here visited would, and must, have exhibited in 

 Europe. My instructress had a husband, and her house was more 

 decent: it had a bed; it had a raised bench formed of clay; and 

 there were the implements of female industry, a distaff and spindle, 

 and knitting needles formed of the spines of the great torch-thistle 

 from Coquimbo, which grow to nine inches long. * But the hamlet 

 of the Rincona is the most wretched I have yet seen. Its natives, 

 however, pointed out to me their beautiful view, which is indeed 

 magnificent, across the ocean to the snow-capped Andes, and boasted 

 of the pleasure of walking on their hills on a holiday evening: then 

 they showed me their sweet and wholesome stream of water, and 

 their ancient fig-trees, inviting me to go back " when the figs should 

 " be ripe, and the flowers looking at themselves in the stream." 

 I was ashamed of some of the expressions of pity that had escaped 



* The more delicate spines of the lesser torch-thistle serve here for pins. 



