SANTIAGO. 213 



gious sum of money, were destroyed by the Carreras, in the retreat 

 before Osorio, in 1814, and have never been re-established, although 

 much wanted. We found part of the ground about the mills occu- 

 pied by Mr. Goldsegg, an ingenious artist, formerly employed in 

 Woolwich warren, but who came here with his wife and family, after 

 the peace, in order to make rockets for the expedition against Callao. 

 By some fatality his rockets failed, and he has been living on here 

 in hopes of employment. But the mercantile speculations of the 

 minister Rodriguez have diverted the funds that should repair public 

 works and repay public artificers into such very different channels, 

 that I fear poor Goldsegg, with all his merit, will add one to the 

 many victims of disappointed hope. 



From the powder-mills the road continues along a low rich plain, 

 watered by numerous artificial streams, and surrounded by hills ; at 

 the foot of one of the steepest of these, we beheld the water of the 

 Salta (Leap) leaping from cliff to cliff, from the summit, sometimes 

 concealed by tufted wood, and sometimes shining in the midday sun. 

 Those who have seen the Cascatelle of Tivoli, have seen the only 

 thing I remember at all to be compared to this ; but there is no villa 

 of Mecsenas to crown the hill, no Sybil's temple to give the charm of 

 classic poetry to the scene. I was a few minutes apart from my com- 

 panions ; and, as a dense cloud rolled from the Andes across the sky, 

 I could, in the spirit of Ossian, have believed, that the soul of some 

 old Cacique had flitted by ; and, if he regretted that his name and 

 nation were no longer supreme here, was not ungratified at the sight 

 of the smiling cultivated plain his labours had tended to render fruit- 

 ful ; nor, it may be, of me, as one of the white children of the East, 

 whence freedom to the sons of the Indians was once more to arise. 

 However that may be, the cloud passed, and my good horse began 

 to make way up one of the steepest pieces of road any four-footed 

 thing, except a goat, ever thought of climbing ; so that I began to 

 think I had a good chance of being drowned in one of the water- 

 courses, after having crossed the ocean. However, a short time 

 brought both horse and rider safe to the top of the cliff, about two 

 hundred and fifty feet or thereabouts, more rather than less, of actual 



