104 RAMBLES AFTER SPORT. 



rochero thinks proper to shoot you, and where, for 

 three dollars or twelve shillings a day, you can have a- 

 room, breakfast, dinner, and lunch ; attendance is thrown 

 in for nothing, and quite fair too, for a Chileno waiter 

 is about the very strongest-smelling individual I know. 

 There is a ghastly story current in Valparaiso, that oue 

 year, when all the foxes had been drowned by a flood, 

 a well-known waiter named Juan de Dios, or Juan 

 de la Cruz, was periodically hired by the Valparaiso Hunt 

 Club to run a drag; and such was his extraordinary 

 smell when warmed to his work, that the hounds used 

 to go away at a burst on the burning scent, and run 

 clean away from the horses. I believe he never luas 

 caught ; a " kill in the open '' would have been rather 

 a playful termination to Mr. Juan de la Cruz^s career. 

 The living at the hotels on the whole is very fair ; you 

 have about twenty different little dishes, all served up 

 at the same time, American fashion, and you cannot for 

 love or money get a plate of good plain boiled or roast 

 mutton or beef. Oh, that plain roast and boiled, boiled 

 and roast ! how we ridicule it at home ! It certainly 

 does get rather monotonous sometimes ; but many a time 

 have I hankered and hungered after a slice of juicy leg 

 of mutton, as I have surveyed the microscopic dab of 

 square brown stuff which Juan sets before me. 



I mentioned a coach just now. A Chile coach or cab 

 is the most extraordinary vehicle ever designed by man, 

 and is drawn by the most surprising horse, I should say, 

 in the universe. A Naples horse and cab is bad enough, 

 but not to be named in the same breath with the Chilian 

 one. Imagine a sort of inverted coffin case, bound and 

 tied up together with odds and ends of rope and hide, 

 supported on four most suspicious-looking wheels, and 



