A Fellow Passenger
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Sunday, October 22nd.—Though it was Sunday, we had no choice but to travel on, or we should not have been able to start until Tuesday. We were therefore up at five o'clock, and at the station before seven. From San Carlos, where we arrived at 8.15 a.m., we started for Linares, which was reached a couple of hours later. It is a much smaller town than Chilian, but is built on exactly the same plan—Plaza, cathedral, and all. To-day the streets were crowded with men on horseback, who had brought their wives in, seated pillion-fashion on the crupper behind them, to attend mass.

Our road lay through a rich country, intersected by small rivers; with the distant snowy chain of the Andes as a background, and through thickly planted groves of poplars, growing in long shady avenues, fragrant with perfume from the magnificent roses which blossomed beneath their shade. In the course of our four hours' drive, we crossed a great many streams, in some of which the water was deep enough to come in at the bottom of the carriage, and cause us to tuck ourselves up on the seats; there was always a little pleasing excitement and doubt, as we approached one of these rivulets, as to whether we were to be inundated or not. We met a good many people riding and walking about in their holiday clothes, and at all the cabarets groups of talkers, drinkers, and players were assembled.

The cottages we have seen by the roadside have been picturesque but wretched-looking edifices, generally composed of the branches of trees stuck in the ground, plastered with mud and thatched with reeds. Two outhouses, or arbours, consisting of a few posts and sticks, fastened together and overgrown with roses and other flowers, serve respectively as a cool sitting-room and a kitchen, the oven being invariably built on the ground outside the latter, for the sake of coolness. The women, when young, are singularly good-looking, with dark complexions, bright eyes, and luxuriant tresses, which they wear in two plaits, hanging down their backs far below the waist. The men are also, as a rule, fine-looking. In fact, the land is good, and everybody and everything looks prosperous. The beasts are up to their knees in rich pasture, are fat and sleek, and lie down to chew the cud of contentment, instead of searching anxiously for a scanty sustenance. The horses are well fed, and their coats are fine and glossy, and the sheep, pigs, and other animals are in equally good condition. It is therefore a cheery country to travel through, and at this spring-time of the year one sees it in its highest perfection.

Before reaching Talca we had to cross the Maule, a wide, deep river, with a swift current. The carriage was first put on board a large flat-bottomed boat, into which the horses then jumped, one by one, the last to embark tumbling down and rolling among the legs of the others. With a large oar the boat was steered across the stream, down which it drifted about 200 yards into shallow water, where the boatmen jumped out and towed us to a convenient landing-place. Here we found several people waiting to be ferried over. A troop of mules having been driven into the water, which they seemed rather to enjoy, swam across safely, though they were carried some distance down the river.

About five o'clock we arrived at Talca, and went straight to the Hotel Colon, kept by Gassaroni. Every Italian who starts an hotel in this part of the world calls it, as a matter of course, 'The Columbus Hotel;' for they are very anxious to claim the great navigator as a countryman, though the Spaniards dispute their right to do so, on the ground that Genoa, where he was really born, was at that time an independent State. While we were waiting for dinner we walked about the town, which so exactly resembles Concepcion and Chilian in the arrangement of its streets, buildings, and trees, that I doubt whether any one familiar with the three places could tell immediately which town he was in, if transported suddenly to the middle of the Plaza, though I believe Talca is rather the largest. It still retains its old Indian name, meaning 'thunder,' doubtless on account of the frequency and violence of the thunder-storms by which it is visited.

Monday, October 23rd.—Soon after midnight I was aroused by a great noise. At first I thought I was dreaming, but a very brief reflection convinced me of the existence of an energetically played big-drum, somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of my bed-room. I at once got up and, peeping through the window in the door, saw a military band of twenty-five performers, standing on the other side of the courtyard, blowing and hitting their hardest. It must be confessed that they played well, and that their selection of music was good, but it was, nevertheless, rather annoying, after a long and fatiguing day, and with the prospect of an early start, to be kept awake until half-past three in the morning, while they serenaded and toasted the prima donna, and each of the other members of the theatrical company who are staying here. The noise was, of course, increased by the reverberation from the walls of the courtyard, and, finding it impossible to sleep, I abandoned the attempt, and took to writing instead. At last the welcome notes of the Chilian national air gave me hope that the entertainment was over for the night—or rather morning—and soon afterwards all was once more quiet.