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learn, — but at Lastra's making it. However, I went up to him and 

 gave him my hand, and desired he would come to see me in San- 

 tiago, like himself, after the 18th. This restored us to our ordinary 

 state of cheerfulness, and the rest of the evening was occupied in 

 giving and receiving details concerning the wanderer's life. He had 

 been taken in arms for Carrera, and imprisoned — and the prison in 

 Chile is cruel. He had escaped, and was consequently outlawed. For 

 years he has lived in the desert ; now and then entering the town in 

 the disguise of a common peon, to hear of his friends, or to obtain 

 some assistance from them ; sometimes living in villages where he 

 was unknown ; and then hastily escaping those who had discovered 

 his retreat, and sought to betray him ; and occasionally, as now, 

 venturing from hiding-places in the woods at nightfall to sup with 

 his friends, but retiring without sleeping. At one time he had been 

 so long exposed to the damp in the rainy season, that he was laid up 

 with rheumatism for two months in a cave ; and had it not been for 

 the fidelity of a little boy who brought him food daily, he must have 

 perished : and this was the exile's life. And thus years have passed 

 of the life of one of the best educated, most accomplished young 

 men in Chile ! When we separated for the night, I felt sorry that 

 we were to leave the hacienda of Salinas in the morning, without 

 at this time knowing more of the tonto. * 



September 11th. — We left the hacienda of Salinas in a thick drizz- 

 ling fog to ride to Melipilla, one of the chief towns of Chile, about 

 twenty leagues from 1' Angostura de Paine. We crossed the river at a 

 beautiful spot, where the branch from the pass receives another equal 

 in depth and clearness, and which I imagine to be the Paine itself. 

 They meet in a little grassy plain, where there are some very fine 

 timber trees scattered irregularly, and bounded to the north by the 

 fences of, the magnificent corn-fields of Viluco. The fog shut out all 

 the mountains, and whatever is peculiar in the landscape of Chile ; 



• Before I left Chile, I had the pleasure of shaking hands with him, — restored to his 

 family and friends. 



