VALPARAISO. 153 



the name of merchants ; and holding a small landed estate under one 

 of the mayorasgos near the chacra where I reside. Their man- 

 ners are decent ; and there is a grace and kindliness in the women 

 that might adorn the most polished drawing-rooms, and which pre- 

 vents the want of education from being so disgusting as in our own 

 country, where it is generally accompanied by vulgarity. Here the 

 want of cultivation sends women back to their natural means of per- 

 suasion, gentleness and caresses ; and if a little cunning mingles with 

 them, it is the protection nature has given the weak against the 

 strong. In England a pretty ignorant woman is nine times in ten 

 a vixen, and rules or tries to rule accordingly. Here the simplicity 

 of nature approaches to the highest refinements of education ; and a 

 well-born and well-bred English gentlewoman is not very different in 

 external manners from a Chilena girl. 



June 12th. — After three days' rain, this morning is as fine " as 

 that on which Paradise was created." So I spent half of it in gar- 

 dening, half in wandering about the quebradas in search of wild 

 flowers ; and first, in the sandy lane near me I found a variety of the 

 yellow horned poppy, and the common mallow of England, besides 

 the cultivated variety with pink flowers ; vervain, two or three kinds 

 of trefoil, furniatory, fennel, pimpernel, and a small scarlet mallow 

 with flowers not larger. These, with three or four geraniums, sorrel, 

 dock, the ribbed plantain, lucerne, which is the common fodder here, 

 and several other small flowers, made me imagine myself in an Eng- 

 lish lane. The new plants that first struck me were the beautiful 

 red quintral, which some call the Chile honeysuckle, from its fancied 

 resemblance to that shrub ; but it is scentless, and it is a parasite. 

 And a beautiful little flower, also a parasite, called here cabella de 

 angel, or angel's hair (Cuscuta).- It has no leaves, but their place is 

 supplied by long semi-transparent stalks ; which, waving in the air 

 from the branches of the trees on which they have fastened, appear 

 like locks of golden hair, and have given name to the plant. The 

 flower grows in thick close clusters, and looks like white wax, with a 

 rosy tinge in the centre ; it is five-petalled, about the size of the single 



A" 



