172 JOURNAL. 



July 2d. — To-day, as I was standing on the hill behind my house 

 admiring the beautiful landscape before me, and the shadows over the 

 sea as the clouds rolled swiftly along, and sometimes concealed and 

 sometimes displayed the cliffs of Valparaiso, the scene was rendered 

 more grand by the firing a salute from the Aurora, the smoke from 

 which, after creeping in fleecy whiteness along the water, gradually 

 dilated into volumes of grey cloud, and mixed with the vapours that 

 lay on the bosoms of the hills. This salute was in honour of Lord 

 Cochrane, who had gone on board that frigate on his return from 

 Santiago. His Lordship rode down to my house in the evening to 

 tea. He tells me he has leave of absence for four months, with the 

 schooner Montezuma at his disposal, and that he means to go to visit 

 the estate in Conception decreed to him by the government long 

 ago ; but from which he has, as yet, derived no advantage, although 

 it is one of the most fertile of that fertile province. The truth is, it 

 is so near the Indians' frontier, and so exposed to their depredations, 

 that it has lain for some years unoccupied, and the pix>duce has been 

 only in part gathered in. The bringing such an estate again into 

 cultivation would be a public much more than a private benefit. The 

 very example of so courageous an undertaking would do much ; and, 

 in a short time, it might be hoped that that delightful land, which has 

 suffered more than any of the other provinces, will once more be 

 what it was when Villa Rica was its capital, and when the author of 

 Robinson Crusoe, collecting the narratives of the English adventurers 

 of his day concerning the southern part of Chile, described this pro- 

 vince as the terrestrial paradise, and the inhabitants as beings worthy 

 to possess it. * 



July 1th. — Yesterday morning I rode early to the port, on Lord 

 Cochrane's invitation, to join a party which was to sail with him in 

 the steam-vessel, the Rising-star, to his estate of Quintero, which lies 

 due north from this place about twenty miles, though the road by 

 land, being round the bay of Concon, is thirty. 



* See De Foe's New Voyage round the World. 



