PREFACE. 
Tue Journal of a residence in Chile should naturally have been 
placed between the two visits to Brazil, which are the subject of the 
writer’s former volume. The reasons for dividing the Journals have 
been given in the preface to that of the residence in Brazil. 
The Introduction to the present volume is, perhaps, its most im- 
portant part. Of the first six years of the revolution in Chile, no 
account is to be procured, either from the offices of the secretaries of 
state, or among the papers of the actors in the scene. During the 
few wretched days that elapsed between the defeat of the Patriots at 
Rancagua and their crossing the Andes, the whole of the public 
papers and documents that could be collected were burnt, in order 
to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Spaniards, who 
might have persecuted those families who remained in their country, 
and whose names might have been found among those of the Patriots. 
Hence until 1817, no records are to be traced even in the hands of 
government; and until the middle of 1818 nothing whatever was 
printed in Chile; so that a few years hence all remembrance of the 
early period of the revolution in that country may be lost. 
It was the writer’s good fortune while in Chile, to become 
acquainted with several persons, who, having participated either as 
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