VALPARAISO. 131 
English tailors, shoemakers, saddlers, and inn-keepers, hang out 
their signs in every street ; and the preponderance of the English 
language over every other spoken in the chief streets, would make 
one fancy Valparaiso a coast town in Britain. The North Americans 
greatly assist in this, however. Their goods, consisting of common 
furniture, flour, biscuit, and naval stores, necessarily keep them 
busier out of doors than any other set of people. The more elegant 
Parisian or London furniture is generally despatched unopened to 
Santiago, where the demand for articles of mere luxury is of course 
greater. The number of piano-fortes brought from England is 
astonishing. There is scarcely a house without one, as the fondness 
for music is excessive ; and many of the young ladies play with skill 
and taste, though few take the trouble to learn the gamut, but trust 
entirely to the ear. 
As to the market, meat is not often exposed in it, the shambles 
being out of town in the Almendral, and the carcases are brought 
into the butchers’ houses on horseback or in carts. The beef, mutton, 
and pork, are all excellent ; but the clumsy method of cutting it up 
spoils it to the English eye and taste. A few Englishmen, however, 
have set up butcheries, where they also corn meat ; and one of them 
has lately made mould candles as fine as any made in England, which 
is a real benefit. to the country. The common candles, with thick 
wicks and unrefined and unbleached tallow, are, indeed, disgusting 
and wasteful. 
The fish-market is indifferently supplied, I think chiefly from indo- 
lence, for the fish is both excellent and abundant. One of the most 
delicate is a kind of smelt ; another, called the congrio, is as good as 
the best salmon trout, which it resembles in taste; but the flesh is 
white, the fish itself long, very flat towards the tail, and covered with 
a beautiful red-and-white marbled skin. There are excellent mullet, 
which the natives dry as the Devonshire fishers do the whiting to 
make buckhorn; besides a number of others whose names, either 
English or native, I know not. There is one which, if eaten quite 
fresh, is as good as the john doree, to which it bears great external 
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