40 



DESOLATION CAUSED BY CIVIL WAR. 



of affairs, and seeking to counteract their mea- 

 sures, they will join heartily in supporting them 

 when right, or in exerting a salutary influence 

 over them when wrong. At all events, even now, 

 all parties would unite upon the least threat of an 

 attack ; and so the result will prove, should any- 

 thing so wild and unjust be attempted. 



CHAPTER XII. 



PERU. 



Coasting Voyage.— Melancholy Effects of the War at Arica. 

 —Desolation of the Town.— Description of the Sandy 

 Desert.— Fallacy respecting Mines. 



On the 26th of May 1821, we sailed from Val- 

 paraiso, and proceeded along the coast to Lima. 

 During the greater part of this voyage the land 

 was in sight, and we had many opportunities of 

 seeing not only the Andes, but other interesting 

 features of the country. The sky was sometimes 

 covered by a low dark unbroken cloud, oversha- 

 dowing the sea, and resting on the top of the high 

 cliffs which guard the coast ; so that the Andes, 

 and indeed the whole country, except the imme- 

 diate shore, were then screened from our view. 

 But at some places this lofty range of cliffs was 

 intersected by deep gullies, called quebradas, con- 

 nected with wide valleys stretching far into the 

 ulterior. At these openings we were admitted to 

 a view of regions which, being beyond the limits 

 of the cloud I have described, and therefore 

 exposed to the full blaze of the sun, formed a 

 brilliant contrast to the darkness and gloom in 

 which we were involved. As we sailed past, and 

 looked through these mysterious breaks, it seemed 

 as if the eye penetrated into another world ; and 

 had the darkness around us been more complete, 

 the light beyond would have seemed equally 

 resplendent with that of the full moon, to which 

 every one was disposed to compare this most 

 curious and surprising appearance. 



As the sun's rays were not, in this case, re- 

 flected from a bright snowy surface, but from a 

 dark-coloured sand, we are perhaps thus fur- 

 nished, by analogy, with an answer to the diffi- 

 culties sometimes started, with respect to the 

 probable dark nature of the soil composing the 

 moon's surface. 



On the 7th of June, we anchored off Arica, 

 about mid-day ; and on landing found the town 

 almost completely deserted, exhibiting in every 

 part marks of having been recently the scene of 

 military operations. The houses had been broken 

 open and pillaged, the doors mostly unhinged and 

 gone, the furniture destroyed, the shops and store- 

 houses all empty. The first house we entered was 

 that of the person styled Governor ; he lay 

 stretched on a mattress placed on the floor, for no 

 bedstead or other vestige of furniture had been 

 left ; and the poor man was suffering under the 

 cold fit of an ague. His wife and daughter were 

 seated on the floor of an adjoining room, where 

 they had collected a few friends ; the whole party 

 looking most disconsolate and miserable. The 

 town had recently been attacked by a Patriot force, 

 and had, as usual, suffered by being made the 

 scene of conflict. Most of the people had fled to 

 the interior, and the empty streets and houses 



gave an air of silent desolation to the place, which 

 was very striking. Such of the inhabitants as 

 were obliged to remain, either from sickness or 

 from other causes, were reduced to severe priva- 

 tions. We saw some families that had not a table 

 or a bed left, nor a chair to offer us when we 

 entered : the governor's wife declared she had not 

 a change of dress ; and her daughter was in the 

 same predicament ; a pretty round-faced modest 

 girl, whose attempts to tie a piece of a handkerchief 

 round her neck, in the absence of all her wonted 

 finery, were affecting enough. The people in 

 general were silent, with an air of deep-settled 

 anger on their countenances. That species of grief 

 which breaks out in fretfulness and complaint is 

 not characteristic either of the Spaniards or their 

 South American descendants ; and I have in- 

 variably observed amongst both a great degree of 

 composure in their sorrow. 



As an English gentleman, who was passenger 

 in the Conway, had letters to deliver to a Spanish 

 merchant, we hunted long for him amongst the 

 desolate streets, and at length learned that he, like 

 the rest, had fled to the interior. We had some 

 difficulty in getting mounted, but at length set off 

 in quest of the Spaniard up the valley of Arica, 

 the country round which was, in the truest sense of 

 the word, a desert ; being covered with sand as 

 far as the eye could reach, without the slightest 

 trace or hope of vegetation. The ground was 

 varied by high ridges, immense rounded knolls, 

 and long flat steppes, and far off could be gained 

 an occasional glimpse of the lower ranges of the 

 Andes ; but, high and low, it was all alike, — one 

 bleak, comfortless, miserable, sandy waste. The 

 colour of the ground was at some places quite black, 

 generally, however, of a dark brown, and here and 

 there was a streak of white. Such a scene I 

 believe cannot be well conceived without being wit- 

 nessed ; at least all the ideas I had formed of it 

 fell infinitely short of the reality ; which had the 

 effect of depressing the spirits in a remarkable 

 degree, and inspiring a horror, difficult to describe 

 or account for. 



Nearly in the middle of the valley ran a small 

 stream of water, accompanied in its course through 

 the desert by a strip of rich foliage, infinitely 

 grateful to the eye, from the repose it afforded, 

 after looking over the surrounding country. The 

 road was judiciously carried amongst the trees, 

 near the margin of the stream ; and so luxu- 

 riant was the vegetation, that we fairly lost 

 sight of the neighbouring hills, amongst the 

 great leaves of the banana, and the thick bushy 

 cotton-trees, the pods of which were in full 

 blossom. 



Being in quest of adventures, we rode up to the 

 first house we came to, which we found occupied 

 by a respectable old Don, a merchant of Arica, 

 who had been totally ruined by the recent events 

 of the war. He described the battles to us, and 

 in very affecting terms recounted his own misfor- 

 tunes, and, what seemed to distress him more, the 

 loss of a great quantity of property belonging to 

 others, intrusted to his care. His family were 

 about him, but they appeared equally destitute ; 

 and the picture was every moment heightened and 

 rendered more painful by some little touch of 

 distress, too trifling to be described, or to 

 be thought much of at a distance. There is a 



