118 JOURNAL. 
browsing for mules or horses. Now most of the shrubs are leafless, 
and it is totally without grass. But the milky tribe of trees and 
shrubs are still green enough to please the eye. A few of them, as 
the lobelia, retain here and there an orange or a crimson flower ; 
and there are several sorts of parasitic plants, whose exquisitely beau- 
tiful blossoms adorn the naked branches of the deciduous shrubs, and 
whose bright green leaves, and vivid red and yellow blossoms shame 
the sober grey of the neighbouring olives, whose fruit is now ripen- 
ing. The red soil of my hill is crossed here and there by great ridges 
of white half marble, half sparry stone; and all its sides bear deep 
marks of winter torrents; in the beds of these I have found pieces of 
green stone of a soft soapy appearance, and lumps of quartz and coarse 
granite. One of these water-courses was once worked for gold, but 
the quantity found was so inconsiderable, that the proprietor was 
glad to quit the precarious adventure, and to cultivate the cHacra or 
garden-ground which joins to mine, and whose produce has been 
much more beneficial to his family. 
I went to walk in that garden, and found there, besides the fruits 
common to my own, figs, lemons, and pomegranates, and the hedges 
full of white cluster roses. The mistress of the house is a near rela- 
tion of my landlady, and takes in washing, but that by no means im- 
plies that either her rank or her pretensions are as low as those of 
an European washerwoman. Her mother was possessed of no less 
than eight chacras ; but as she is ninety years old, that must have been 
a hundred years ago, when Valparaiso was by no means so large a 
place, and consequently chacras were less valuable. However, she 
was a great proprietor of land; but, as is usual here, most of it went 
to portion off a large family of daughters, and some I am afraid to 
pay the expenses of the gold found on the estate. 
The old lady, seeing me in the garden, courteously invited me to 
walk in. The veranda in front of the house is like my own, paved 
with bricks nine inches square, and supported by rude wooden 
pillars, which the Chileno architects fancy they have carved hand- 
somely ; I found under it two of the most beautiful boys I ever saw, 
