In Chili, intolerance flows purely from the mandates of the Papal hierarchy. Legislators, as a body, are well disposed, but they cannot carry their liberal measures without putting the stability of their civil institutions in peril. An act of religious toleration would be followed by ecclesiastical denunciations and appeals to the passions of the mass, which would result in revolution and blood. Come here, my bishop of New York, with your smooth doctrines about the rights of conscience, and talk a little to your brother bishops in this quarter. If these doctrines are good when proclaimed to American Protestants, let us see how they will sound in the ears of Chilian Catholics. Do a few leagues of salt water destroy their force and propriety? Do they cease to be orthodox the moment they leave a Protestant shore and enter a Papal domain?
Come, my dear bishop, set down here in Chili with me, and let us talk together a little. You tell us the rights of the human conscience are sacred. What rights of conscience have Protestants in Chili—or even in Rome? You go there once in three years to report in person to the holy Father, you see Protestants filing off on the Sabbath through a narrow, dirty street, to a little, obscure chapel, without steeple or bell, where they may worship, if they won’t speak above a whisper. And then you return to New York and talk to its corporation about the sacred rights of conscience! Your toleration, my dear bishop, is much like the Yankee hunter’s division of game with his Indian companion—all turkey on one side and all buzzard on the other.
Monday, March 9. I encountered, in my rambles to-day, a specimen of Chilian horsemanship. The costume of the rider was in wild harmony with his occupation. His hat rose in a high cone, like that of a whirling dervish in Turkey. His poncho, resembling a large shawl, fell in careless folds around his person. His gaiters rose to the knee; his heels were armed with a huge pair of silver-mounted spurs, while a brace of pistols peered from the holster of his saddle-bow. He was mounted on a powerful animal, impatient of the bit, and sure of foot as the mountain roe. The strong muscles betrayed their swelling lines in his limbs; the dilating nostril was full of panting force, while his arching neck seemed clothed with thunder. He was such a steed as you would choose for that last decisive charge, in which a Waterloo is to be won or lost.
His rider knew him well and gave him the rein; on he dashed, over hill and vale, with the speed of the wind. Now shaking the toppling crags with his iron hoof, now plunging down the steep ravine, now leaping, with frightful force, the sudden chasm; never missing his foothold, never throwing his rider. Both were safe where the neck of neither seemed worth a farthing. I have seen the Tartar ride at Constantinople, and witnessed, with silent admiration, the Grand Sultan’s horsemanship, but he is outdone by the Chilano.
A company of circus-riders, from Europe, came here a few years since to astonish the Chilians. But they soon found they had brought their ware to a wrong market. The Chilanos took the business out of their hands; and so far outdid them that they suddenly disappeared, and have not been heard of in these parts since. It was like a buffalo entering a herd of deer to astonish them with his fleetness, or like a bull attempting a race with one of Baldwin’s locomotives.
The Chilian women betray their Spanish blood. It is seen in their stately forms, their firm elastic step, their nut-brown complexion, their large black eyes, and their earnestness of manner, which is full of silent, significant force. They wear their hair in two plaits, which are sometimes coiled into a turban and interlaced with flowers, and at others flows from a slight fillet, quite down to the heel. They use no stays; the tide of nature ebbs and flows without constraint. The rich shawl which covers the neck and shoulders, neglects at times its occupation, and the silk stocking forgets now and then that it has taken the veil.
They are fond of attentions, and will much sooner excuse a liberty, which flows from admiration, than a neglect, which results from indifference; still they are not considered as very exacting. What they want is the homage of the heart. Civility that has no soul in it, they consider a mockery. Love is consequently with them a passion. As daughters, they are wild and thoughtless; as mothers, fond of their children and attached to their homes. The most sober flower will often blossom from the bud that has danced the most lightly in the sunbeam.
Tuesday, March 10. I encountered to-day in the environs of Valparaiso, a long string of donkeys, laden with vegetables and fruit from Quilota, some forty miles distant. The little hardy fellows were plodding along in single file, covered up under their huge panniers, and turning this way or that to the cry of their driver, who brought up the rear. I never could encounter one of these creatures without a sentiment of pity and even respect. He seems as one doomed to drudgery, merely because nature has wronged him in making him up. And then his patience—it is a model. He has long ears it is true, but then he never, like those who consider themselves his betters, tries to conceal them. He is an honest ass!
The markets of Valparaiso are supplied from valleys in the interior. The grounds in the immediate neighborhood are, for many months in the year, parched up with drouth. Large tracts of land, well suited to the harrow, are herbless from want of means to irrigate them. Springs have been hunted, and rocks bored almost halfway to the earth’s centre, but in vain. Even the monks have tried their miraculous charms, but nature’s great Nile obeys no such incantations. Their fleece, unlike that of Gideon, remained dry. No snow falls on these vallies, and no rain, except in the three winter months. The earth becomes baked and broken into deep fissures. When the winds are abroad the dust is driven over it in clouds thick enough to bury a Gipsy encampment.