SANTIAGO. 213 
gious sum of money, were destroyed by the Carreras, in the retreat 
before Osorio, in 1814, and have never been re-established, although 
much wanted. We found part of the ground about the mills occu- 
pied by Mr. Goldsegg, an ingenious artist, formerly employed in 
Woolwich warren, but who came here with his wife and family, after 
the peace, in order to make rockets for the expedition against Callao. 
By some fatality his rockets failed, and he has been living on here 
in hopes of employment. But the mercantile speculations of the 
minister Rodriguez have diverted the funds that should repair public 
works and repay public artificers into such very different channels, 
that I fear poor Goldsege, with all his merit, will add one to the 
many victims of disappointed hope. 
From the powder-mills the road continues along a low rich plain, 
watered by numerous artificial streams, and surrounded by hills; at 
the foot of one of the steepest of these, we beheld the water of the 
Salta (Leap) leaping from cliff to cliff, from the summit, sometimes 
concealed by tufted wood, and sometimes shining in the midday sun. 
Those who have seen the Cascatelle of Tivoli, have- seen the only 
thing I remember at all to be compared to this; but there is no villa 
of Meceenas to crown the hill, no Sybil’s temple to give the charm of 
classic poetry to the scene. Iwas a few minutes apart from my com- 
panions ; and, as a dense cloud rolled from the Andes across the sky, 
I could, in the spirit of Ossian, have believed, that the soul of some 
old Cacique had flitted by; and, if he regretted that his name and 
nation were no longer supreme-here, was not ungratified at the sight 
of the smiling cultivated plain his labours had tended to render fruit- 
ful ; nor, it may be, of me, as one of the white children of the East, 
whence freedom to the sons of the Indians was once more to arise. 
However that may be, the cloud passed, and my good horse began 
to make way up one of the steepest pieces of road any four-footed 
thing, except a goat, ever thought of climbing; so that I began to 
think I had a good chance of being drowned in one of the water- 
courses, after having crossed the ocean. However, a short time 
brought both horse and rider safe to the top of the cliff, about two 
hundred and fifty feet or thereabouts, more rather than less, of actual 
