VALPARAISO. 153 
the name of merchants; and holding a small landed estate under one 
of the mayorasgos near the chacra where I reside. Their man- 
ners are decent; and there is a grace and kindliness in the women 
that might adorn the most polished drawing-rooms, and which pre- 
vents the want of education from being so disgusting as in our own 
country, where it is generally accompanied by vulgarity. Here the 
want of cultivation sends women back to their natural means of per- 
suasion, gentleness and caresses; and if a little cunning mingles with 
them, it is the protection nature has given the weak against the 
strong. In England a pretty ignorant woman is nine times in ten 
a vixen, and rules or tries to rule accordingly. Here the simplicity 
of nature approaches to the highest refinements of education; and a 
well-born and well-bred English gentlewoman is not very different in 
external manners from a Chilena girl. 
June 12th.— After three days’ rain, this morning is as fine “ as 
that on which Paradise was created.” So I spent half of it in gar- 
dening, half in wandering about the quebradas in search of wild 
flowers ; and first, in the sandy lane near me I found a variety of the 
yellow horned poppy, and the common mallow of England, besides 
the cultivated variety with pink flowers ; vervain, two or three kinds 
of trefoil, furniatory, fennel, punpernel, and a small scarlet mallow 
with flowers not larger. These, with three or four geraniums, sorrel, 
dock, the ribbed plantain, lucerne, which is the common fodder here, 
and several other small flowers, made me imagine myself in an Eng- 
lish lane. The new plants that first struck me were the beautiful 
red quintral, which some call the Chile honeysuckle, from its fancied 
resemblance to that shrub; but it is scentless, and it is a parasite. 
And a beautiful little flower, also a parasite, called here cabella de 
angel, or angel’s hair (Cuscuta). It has no leaves, but their place is 
supplied by long semi-transparent stalks ; which, waving in the air 
from the branches of the trees on which they have fastened, appear 
like locks of golden hair, and have given name to the plant. The 
flower grows in thick close clusters, and looks like white wax, with a 
rosy tinge in the centre ; it is five-petalled, about the size of the single 
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