264 JOURNAL. 
lihood. As soon as I had changed my dress I went out to walk round 
the little town, which J found laid out with great neatness; and 
admired the gardens and fields, though I could perceive that San 
Francisco had once boasted inhabitants of a higher class than those I 
saw. The best houses are shut up, and there was an air of decay in 
their immediate neighbourhood. They did belong to the Carreras. 
The heiress, Dofia Xaviera, is now living as an exile at Monte Video. 
I went towards the Placa, where there are the church and convent of 
the Franciscans, and several extremely good houses. I was attracted 
by a great crowd at the door of one of these. The mounted guasos 
were standing by with their hats off, and every body seemed as if 
performing an act of devotion. I was a little astonished when I 
arrived at the centre of the crowd, to which every body made way for 
me, to find nine persons dancing, as the Spaniards say, con mucho 
compas. They were arranged like nine-pins, the centre one being a 
young boy dressed in a grotesque manner, who only changed his place 
occasionally with two others, one of whom had a guitar, the other a 
ravel. The height and size of limb of the dancers might have belonged 
to men, the apparel was female; and I thought I had been suddenly 
introduced to a tribe of Patagonian women, and enquired of a by-. 
stander whence they came, when I received the following information 
concerning the dancers and the dance. — When the Franciscans first 
began the conversion of the Indians in this part of Chile, they fixed 
their convent at Talagante, the village of the palms which we passed 
through the other day, their proselytes being the caciques of Talagante, 
Yupeo, and Chenigué. The good fathers found that the Indians were 
more easily brought over to a new faith, than weaned from certain su- 
perstitious practices belonging to their old idolatry ; and the annual 
dance under the shade of the cinnamon, in honour of a preserving 
Power, they found it impossible to make them forget. They therefore 
permitted them to continue it ; but it was to be performed within the 
convept walls, and in honour of Nuestra Senhora de la Merced, and 
each cuacique in turn was to take upon him the expense of the feast. 
On the removal of the convent to its present station the dance was 
