WRECK OF THE CHALLENGER. IQ 



washed on shore, were received by those on the 

 beach. In addition to these articles were casks 

 filled with bread, casks of salt pork, and a great 

 number and variety of other things. Amongst 

 these a quantity of segars, which had been put 

 into empty bottles and securely corked, were 

 washed up in good condition. 



Captain Seymour had hastily written a letter 

 to His Majesty's consul at Conception, from 

 which place we hoped we were not very distant, 

 of which the assistant surgeon, who spoke a 

 little Spanish, and the clerk of the Challenger, 

 had volunteered to be the bearers. They had 

 landed in the second raft; and to find a fit per- 

 son to conduct these gentlemen, in an unknown 

 country, through thick woods, across rivers, 

 along roads in places almost impassable, was an 

 object of the greatest interest and importance, 

 and which the suspicious countenances of the 

 Indians, who had become numerous around us, 

 and to whom we could not make ourselves 

 understood, afforded little promise of accom- 

 plishing. By a most providential circumstance 

 Camilo Hermosillo, a Spanish Chilino from the 

 neighbourhood of the frontier town of Arauco, 

 had come to the southward to purchase cattle, 



c 2 



