VALPARAISO. 133 
kets, bags, doors, flooring, hods to carry mortar in, hand-barrows, 
every thing, in short, is occasionally made of it. 
Besides these articles of ordinary consumption, ponchos, hats, 
shoes, coarse stuffs, coarse earthenware, and sometimes jars of fine 
clay from Mellipilla, or even Penco, and small cups of the same for 
the purpose of taking matee, are exposed for sale by the country 
people ; who crowd round the stalls with an air of the greatest impor- 
tance, smoking, and occasionally retiring to a line in the back- 
ground, where the savoury smell and the crackling of the boiling fat 
inform the passengers, that fritters both sweet and savoury are to 
be procured ; nor are the cups of wine or aguardiente wanting to im- 
prove the repast. But the greatest comfort to the market people is 
a fountain of excellent water which falls from a hideous lion’s mouth 
in the wall of the government house, or rather of the little fort which 
the governor inhabits, into a rude granite basin. There is no want 
of water about Valparaiso; but it is clumsily managed, as far as 
relates to domestic comfort and to watering the shipping in the 
harbour. The most convenient watering-place is supplied by a pretty 
abundant stream that is led close to the beach; but it passes by and 
through the hospital, and there is consequently a prejudice against it. 
Besides, I have heard that the water of this stream does not keep. 
There is another which has not that defect, where a small sum is paid 
for every vessel filled, whether large or small; and I believe the 
English ships of war usually fill their tanks there. 
Returning from my shopping, I stopped at the apothecary’s (for 
there is but one), to buy some powder-blue, which, to my surprise, I 
found could only be procured there. I fancy it must resemble an 
apothecary’s of the fourteenth century, for it is even more antique 
looking than those I have seen in Italy or France. The man has a 
taste for natural history; so that besides his jars of old-fashioned 
medicines, inscribed all over with the celestial signs, oddly inter- 
mixed with packets of patent medicines from London, dried herbs, 
and filthy gallipots, there are fishes’ heads and snakes’ skins; in 
one corner a great condor tearing the flesh from the bones of a 
