EOUND CAPE HORN VALPARAISO — SANTIAGO. 119 



came out to Chile in a sailing vessel that touched at 

 Coquimbo ; in the course of his rambles about the city 

 of La Serena, the capital of the province, he saw that the 

 pavements in front of the houses of some of the poorer 

 classes were ornamented with the knuckle bones of 

 sheep, arranged in fantastic order ; some friend who 

 was with him told him as a joke that they were the 

 bones of the Spaniards who had been killed in a battle ! 

 The gentleman subsequently wrote a book on Chile (I am 

 not quite sure, but I think he did go to Valparaiso), and 

 actually introduced this circumstance as " an instance of 

 the extreme ferocity of the inhabitants V' This is a fact. 

 Poor Chile ! she catches it occasionally. Most of my 

 readers will doubtless recollect, two or three years back, 

 an account which appeared in the English daily papers 

 about a bandit, named Largo-baron. Of course it was a 

 hoax, but still it went a long time unrefuted. The 

 papers stated that Mr. Largo-baron, whatever that may 

 mean, was eventually killed in a cave, whither he used 

 to drag his victims, principally women, and feed on their 

 breasts ! Now Chile is bad enough, but I protest 

 against her people being called cannibals. The roars of 

 laughter the account excited in Valparaiso may be 

 imagined. Talca was said to be his head-quarters; 

 Talca is a large well-governed city of about 20,000 

 inhabitants. 



The oddest thing about Valparaiso is that you are 

 expected to fall down and worship it ; people get really 

 quite annoyed if you do not praise it to the skies. I sup- 

 pose in the first week I was there I must have been asked 

 the question a hundred times, '^ How do you like Val- 

 paraiso ?" At first I was candid — " I don^t think much 

 of it '," '^ I think it rather a dull uninteresting place,^^ or 



