CHAPTER XVIII. Passage Home...
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CHAPTER XVIII.
Passage Home--Valparaiso--Cape Horn--Falkland Islands-- Spithead.
WE left Auckland in H. M. S. 'Serpent,' on the 7th August, and bade adieu to the antipodean colonies. On Thursday, the 18th, passed the 180th degree longitude, and consequently altered the next day, which, in the ordinary course of things, would be Friday, and which was Friday in the eastern hemisphere, to Thursday the 18th, in the western; thus having, of course, two following Thursdays, 18th, in order to make our time agree. A ship going round the world to the westward would have had to skip a day on crossing the meridian, or from Wednesday 17th in the one hemisphere, to Friday the 19th, as on either way you gained or lost on the world's movement round the sun. We had unfavourable winds, which took us down to 51° south lat., and we did not get up again to Valparaiso, in 32°, same latitude as Auckland, till the 26th September.
Valparaiso, the chief port of Chili, and, after San Francisco and Lima, the largest and most commercial city of Western America, is in lat. 33° S., and long. 72° W. It is built on a number of slopes and ravines of the sea-line of mountains, arid in some parts the houses are built on, the very edges of perfect precipices, with breakneck paths winding round the
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VALPARAISO.
inner sides, and there are but two or three level streets along the beach. There is more appearance of activity and business in this city than in any port of the Spanish colonies or countries. An electric telegraph is at work, ninety miles from the city, to Santiago the capital and seat of government, under the Andes; and a railroad is in course of being laid to the same place also. The boatmen and carmen, the porters and people of all kinds, appear energetic and very unlike their brethren in the peninsula. The cars (called birloches') are nasty affairs, holding two, very high from the ground, with two horses, on one of which the driver rides en postilion; these birloches are innumerable, and omnibuses are plentiful. The police, called vigilantes, are always on the alert: they use a whistle to call each other, and make a fearful noise with it all night, to try to make people believe all's well. Valparaiso is not lighted by gas. The theatre is particularly well-arranged, and neat and well attended. Catherine Hayes had just been singing, and everyone was speaking of her. There are a number of pretty public gardens, at which, on evenings of fiestas, dances take place. The English merchants take the lead in the great commerce of this city, and have their club and reading-room. One of them keeps a pack of hounds. I met them with the huntsman, an Englishman, when riding in the plain near an inn, also kept by an Englishwoman, called the First Posthouse. The huntsman spoke very discouragingly of the animals and the hunting compared with England. I should think he was too young a hand to be much of a judge. The land about has a very similar appearance to the soil in Australia where gold is found, and most probably gold does exist near Valparaiso; this was noticed by
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VALPARAISO.
others. There are a number of hotels, at all of which the hotel-keeper and his wife preside at a late dinner, and they do not prepare dinner at any other hour; so that if you want to dine before the table d'hote, you have to go to a restaurateur's. The Union is the best hotel. The great event is the arrival of the European mail by a steamer from Panama, bringing English news seven weeks old.
A Brazilian man-of-war was in the roads, being the first visit of one of their nation to the American western states. Brazil is beginning to take an interest in the affairs of the southern continent; but they find the Chilians (Chilenos) a very superior race to themselves. The Chilians are particularly fine, handsome, active people. A splendid picture of Valdina was on its way as a present from the Queen of Spain to the Republic of Chili, with a manuscript letter from Her Majesty. The Spanish artist was knighted on the occasion. This is as it ought to be.
The Chilian horses are small, active, wiry animals, and just now a large importation of their mules and asses to Australia would be an excellent speculation. They are cheap in Chili, and would do exceedingly well for the traffic on the wretched roads to the diggings, where horses are dear and not so useful in the mountain tracks as their humbler kindred.
Trade was beginning to spring up with Australia, and no doubt, before long, immense intercourse and interchange of goods will take place between the two coasts of the Pacific; and Valparaiso will come in for a great share of it. The snow-capped Andes make a magnificent background to all the views about Valparaiso--Acaucagua being the highest peak to be seen; it is a sublime-looking point in the moun-
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CAPE HORN.
tainous range, piercing the skies with its snowy peak, and its regular white slope nobly and serenely overspreading the lower ridges.
We left Valparaiso the 13th October -- having heard of the all-but-certainty of a war with Russia. On the 15th, we passed the high, green, wooded island of Juan Fernandez, the original of De Foe's "Robinson Crusoe." There are several Yankees and English in it; and immense quantities of fish are caught in the roadstead. It was a penal settlement of the Chilian Government, but is not so now.
On the 28th we passed Cape Horn, the southernmost point of a collection of islands and rocks at the extreme of South America. The weather was delightful, and not particularly cold; and with a fair wind we ran into the Falkland Islands to water (not wishing to touch at Rio on our way home), and anchored in Port Stanley on the 31st. Here we were surprised to find a really decent-sized little town, with its church, exchange, two public-houses called hotels, and two billiard-rooms, with a port full of vessels at anchor, including two large American ships; all had put in for repairs, for which the port affords every facility. Excellent water is got easily. Provisions of all kinds, except vegetables and sea-stores, at more moderate prices than at Valparaiso. The inhabitants are composed of Buenos Ayrean Gauchos and pensioners, with their families, the former being the most numerous. The Gauchos are kept to look after the cattle -- to lasso them in the camp, as the grassy country in the interior is called, from the Spanish word campo, field. We got great numbers of wild fowls, geese and ducks, and rabbits as plentiful as vermin. There are quantities of a very
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FALKLAND ISLANDS.
large description of snipe, but we saw none while there.
The wild-ox beef was not good; and although the people there try to persuade you they have vegetables, they decidedly fail to do so, except that they have them preserved in tins, &c.; the spinach grows pretty rich. No corn of any kind ripens; the ground is covered with a swampy grass, with, In some places, that peculiar plant the tussock grass, which affords most excellent nourishment to the numberless herds of cattle. The whole of the islands are indented in all directions with the most splendid land-locked harbours. A company, called the Falkland Island Company, have a lease of a large tract of land for 300,000l., paid to Government nominally; and if, at the end of thirty years, they can show three hundred thousand head of cattle on the land, the lease is to be made a grant. The sheep and cattle thrive well except in spring, when the young grass weakens them, and they die of cold in numbers. The company hope to pay themselves by the tallow, wool, bones, and hides. This company, with another on a smaller scale, do everything in the islands. The Falklands have a governor, his secretary, a paid magistrate, Mr. Montagu (who was dismissed from Van Diemen's Land), a colonial chaplain and surgeon, &c, ---the two representatives of the companies, a surveyor, an American consul, three or four storekeepers or shopkeepers, one or two settled officers, with about thirty pensioners and their families, and the Gauchos, being in all about five hundred and fifty souls. The colony pays none of its own expenses, and an annual grant is made by Government according to its necessities, part of which has been expended in a ridiculous building,
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FALKLAND ISLANDS.
called an Exchange, and sometimes a Market-place; but in reality a useless building without a purpose, as there is no market required, nor any business to be transacted in an exchange. It is now appropriated to the meeting of captains of merchant-vessels ashore, but the billiard-room at the public-house offers greater inducements. These colonies must be of importance, no doubt, as a position to Government, but they are decidedly too bleak to offer inducements to settlers, except of the pushing, speculating, shopkeeping class, who manage to make money out of any seafaring people, let them be ever so poor. There is no wood whatever (a little laurel exists on the western island, the only shrub), nor is there coal; but for consumption in the islands, there is very good turf, and enough of it to last for a century. Fresh water trickles everywhere--and the ground is so bare, except of the grass, that you can ride in all directions over the whole country, except where there are impassable swamps. No trouble is required for agriculture; merely turn up the soil after burning the peat, and sow your crop; and boats can take produce from every spot to all other parts, no places being distant from water-carriage, except the very interior, from which you can ride to the coast without an obstacle.
Touching at these islands from the Pacific coast on the way home, and bound thence on the way out, is a great saving in the length of the voyage to the usual plan of going to Rio; and Government stores of all kinds can always be got.
Land is sold as in the Australian colonies, the upset price being, for country land, 8s. an acre. Town lots of half an acre each, and suburban lots of twenty-five acres each, are put up at 50l., and deposits may
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FALKLAND ISLANDS.
be made in England, as for the Australian colonies, but depositors nominate, for a free passage, six instead of four adult labourers, for every 100l. deposited.
Nine hundred thousand acres of land in these islands are sold or leased, and three million acres remain to be sold.
H. M. S. 'Serpent' left the Falkland Islands on the 6th November, and after the most boisterous and unpleasant passage I have ever made, during a servitude of nearly twenty years, anchored at Spithead, on the 10th January 1854; so that I have now completed the three years, and close my little narrative.
