204 JOURNAL. 



I walked out to see the Plaza : one side is occupied by the palace 

 which contains the residence of the director, the courts of justice, 

 and the public prison. The building is from its size extremely hand- 

 some, but it is as yet irregular, because when the directorial palace 

 was added money was scarce, yet all the lower story corresponds 

 with the Doric order of the rest, and may be raised upon whenever 

 the government is rich enough. The west side of the square is oc- 

 cupied by the unfinished cathedral, also Doric, the bishop's palace, 

 and a few inferior buildings : the south side has an arcade in front of 

 private houses, the lower stories of which are shops, and under the 

 arcade are booths something in the style of the bazars of modern 

 London. On moonlight nights this arcade is exceedingly gay. It 

 is the fashion then for ladies to go shopping on foot ; and as every 

 booth has its light, the scene is extremely pretty ; the fourth side 

 is filled up by mean houses, one of the best of which is the Eng- 

 lish inn. We passed several other public buildings which are, gene- 

 rally speaking, handsome, the Doric order being almost universally 

 adopted ; yet the streets have a mean air, owing to the dead walls of 

 the private houses. 



After dinner, Mr. de Roos and I walked to the Tacama and the Al- 

 meida. The Tacama is a strong mound of masonry built to defend 

 the city from the floods of the Mapocho, which, though now a mere 

 rivulet stealing its way in a narrow channel in the midst of a wide 

 bed of pebbles, is twice a year an ungovernable flood. The winter 

 rains and the melting of the snows being the seasons when it rolls its 

 mighty flood across the plain, and but for the Tacama would over- 

 flow the greater part of the city. The Almeida is within the 

 Tacama : it is a charming walk, bordered with rows of willow trees, 

 and commanding delightful views. From thence we followed a 

 narrow street to the fort on the little rock of Santa Lucia, which 

 should be the citadel of Santiago. It rises in the midst of it, or 

 nearly so, and commands it, and there are now in fact two little 

 batteries on its opposite extremities. As we went we could not but 

 admire the huge blocks of granite that nature seems to have disposed 



