192 



SOUTH COAST OF PEHU. 



of all her wonted finery, was 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 fretfvilness and 

 complaint is not characteristic either of the Span- 

 iards or their descendants ; and I have invariably 

 observed amongst both a great degree of compo- 

 sure in their sorrow. 



An English gentleman, who was passenger in 

 the Conway, having letters to deliver to a Span- 

 ish 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 is, in the truest 

 sense of the word, a desert ; being covered with 

 sand as far as the eye can reach, without the 

 slightest trace or hope of vegetation. The ground 

 is varied by high ridges, immense rounded knolls, 

 and long flat steppes, and far off, we get occasion- 

 al glimpses of the lower ranges of the Andes, but, 

 high and low, they are all alike, — one bleak, com- 

 fortless, miserable, sandy waste. The colour of 



