ROUND CAPE HORN VALPARAISO — SANTIAGO. 103 



stolen from the sea. As it only rains in Chile in certain 

 months of the year, and then with great violence, all the 

 filth of the surrounding hills which has accumulated 

 during the hot dry season is washed down to the town 

 below. Part of this permeates to the springs which 

 supply the town with water, and from this source arise 

 those few cases of peculiarly deadly fever which always 

 more or less hangs about the town. As the town is not 

 drained at all, so to speak, if an epidemic were to visit 

 it, it would decimate the place. Some people of judgment 

 say, however, that an epidemic could not exist long in 

 Valparaiso, on account of the south winds that blow- 

 there during eight months of the year. 



I landed at a mole something like a Thames coal wharf, 

 which is periodically washed away by the ^^ northers,^^ or 

 northern gales, which during the Equinoxes set with 

 terrific violence straight into the bay. Facing this mole 

 is a square gravelly place filled with crimps, boatmen, 

 bumboat women, nondescript half-soldier half-custom- 

 house-looking individuals, and British touts. Of course 

 you are immediately pounced upon, your luggage carried 

 in twenty different directions, and you yourself jostled 

 and hurried here and there, like a barrel of herrings, 

 by the boatmen, a set of insolent, extortionate scamps, — 

 a Chileno will tell you they are independent and free- 

 hearted drolls. Supposing you get through the custom- 

 house all right, and supposing you manage to get your 

 luggage deposited in a coach, and supposing you sur- 

 vive the fearful drive in the said coach, you will probably 

 find yourself, somehow or other (remember, everything 

 is " somehow or other '^ in Chile ; leave all thoughts of 

 order or method behind you in Cockayne) in the Hotel 

 Colon, or Campbell's, or some other hotel in which the 



