SANTIAGO. 



209 



so dexterously, as to show she was well accustomed to the manoeuvre. 

 However, the young ladies, and all who would be thought so, are 

 leaving off these ugly habits fast. 



At about ten o'clock we left the palace, and found our young 

 people at home still engaged in their minuets. I sat with them a short 

 time, and then came to my alto to write the journal of this my second 

 day in Santiago, with which I am very well pleased. 



21th. — Visited Dona Mercedes do Solar, whose father, Juan 

 Henriques Rosalis, was one of the members of the first junta of the 

 revolutionary government in 1810. She is a very pretty, and very 

 polished woman ; seems well acquainted with French authors, and 

 speaks French extremely well. I found her sitting in the bed- 

 room, which, as I have noticed, is often used as a drawing-room ; 

 she was surrounded by some lovely children, and had with her 

 some pretty nieces ; books and needlework were on a small French 

 table by her, and before her was a large chafingdish of well-burnt 

 charcoal. The dish was of massy silver, beautifully embossed, set in 

 a frame of curiously inlaid wood ; and there was a wrought silver 

 spoon to stir the coals with. I have seen several of the same kind 

 before ; but it seemed here in keeping with the rest of the room, 

 and the persons. The stately French bed, the open piano, the guitar, 

 the ormoulu time-piece, the ladies, the children, the books, the work, 

 and the flowers in French porcelain, with the rich Chilian brassiere, 

 into which perfume is now and then cast, made a charming picture, 

 which, lighted as it was from a high window behind me, I heartily 

 wished in proper hands to copy. I would not have changed the 

 purple pelisse of the mother, setting off her white and rather full 

 throat, or even the pale looks of little Vicente, for all the inventions 

 of all the painters that ever tricked out interiors with fullest effect. 

 I have a particular interest in Vicente, besides his being a clever 

 child. He came with me in the Doris from Rio, whither he had 

 gone in the Owen Glendower. He suffered from cold in coming 

 round the Horn, and I had him with me in the cabin as much as 

 circumstances would permit. One day we were speaking of the 



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