NOTICES OF CHILE. 



95 



Indian girl from Arauco, bearing a silver salver of cakes, &c. 

 The Araucanians, when taken and instructed young, make ex- 

 cellent servants ; and there is scarcely a family without one in 

 its service, particularly where there are young ladies. This 

 race has borne the character of fierce and warlike from the 

 earliest times ; their valor and martial prowess have been cele- 

 brated in an epic of thirty-seven cantos, entitled *^La Arau- 

 cana," by Don Alonzo de Ercilla y Zuniga. — Speaking of the 

 country of Arauco, he says, 



** V^nus y Aman aqui no alcanzan parte. 

 Solo domina el iracundo Marte." 



The "mate," or, as it is familiarly called, "yerba mate," 

 {Ilex Paraguensis), is a plant of Paraguay used in almost 

 every part of South America, as a substitute for tea. It ar- 

 rives in Chile from the Rio de la Plata, by the way of Cape 

 Horn, or by crossing the Cordilleras, packed in bales of hide. 

 It presents to the eye a greenish yellow dust, in which are 

 mingled broken leaves and stems of the plant. This mate- 

 rial, infused in boiling water, forms the "mate," which every 

 where in Chile, previous to the revolution, was substituted 

 for the more costly tea of China ; since that period, the old 

 ladies only adhere to the practice, while the young ones, 

 more refined in taste, prefer sipping Young Hyson or Bohea, 

 from a gilt edged China tea-cup. The " yerba," with sugar 

 and the outer rind of orange or lemon peel, or pieces of cin- 

 namon, are placed in a globular vessel holding about a gill, 

 and boiling water is poured in upon them. The vessel con- 

 taining the infusion, termed "a mate," is either entirely of 

 silver, or of a small gourd, banded with silver, supported by 

 a stem and plate of the same metal. A silver cover, perforated 

 with a hole for the passage of the "bombilla," and secured to 

 the side by a chain, serves to retain the heat and aroma of the 

 plant. The "bombilla" is a tube from ten to twelve inches 

 long, terminated at one end by a bulb (not unlike that of a 

 thermometer) pierced with many small holes ; like " the mat6," 

 it is silver, or consists of a cane tube with a metal bulb. 



Such is the apparatus from which the elderly Chil6nas sip, 



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