people in the mass are hardy, frugal, and ardent lovers of freedom. The course of education, under her new constitution, is receiving fresh impulses, and gradually emerging into popular favor and national importance. Her public debt amounts to about ten millions of dollars, which is owned mostly in England. Her military establishment, which has burdened her treasury, and sometimes perilled her peace, is melting away under her civil institutions.

In breaking the Spanish yoke, and establishing her independence, she has had to pass through a fiery ordeal. The virtues that could achieve so much, will yet win farther triumphs. No nation or state ever rose at once from vassalage and ignorance to freedom and intelligence. She may emerge into disorder, but that will be more tolerable than the despotism from which she has escaped. To meet the consequences of a revolution, to restore order where it has been broken up, to consolidate the elements of national existence, and settle them on a new and permanent basis, requires all the time which this republic has enjoyed since she proclaimed her independence. There is nothing in the present condition of Chili which should fill the advocates of free institutions with distrust. She has clouds on her sky, but most of them are skeletons from which the storm has long since passed.

But I have no space for a disquisition on Chili. A

labored essay is beyond the scope and purpose of this diary. I have only time to wave my adieu to

VALPARAISO.

Sweet Valparaiso-fare thee well!
Thy steep romantic shore,

And toppling crags, where wildly dwell
The echoes, which thy billows pour
As o'er the rocks their anthems swell—

Shall greet my pilgrim steps no more.
When they whose tread is on thy steep,
Have down to death's dim chambers gone,

Where harp and lute in silence sleep,

Thy sweet sea-dirge will still roll on.

219

CHAPTER VII.

PASSAGE FROM VALPARAISO TO CALLAO.

FLARE UP OF THE PACIFIC.-SONGS OF SEAMEN.SAILORS ON SHORE.LOSS OF THE SAMSON OF OUR SHIP.-THE SETTING SUN AT SEA.-OUR ASTORHOUSE SAILOR. THE MAD POET OF THE CREW.-LAND HO!-ASPECT OF CALLAO.-APPEARANCE OF THE NATIVES. THE BURIAL ISLE.

"Our pennant glitters in the breeze,

Our home is on the sea:

Where wind may blow, or billow flow,

No limits to the free:

No limits to the free, my boys,

Let wind and wave waft on,
The boundless world of waters is,
My merry men, our own.”

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18. We tripped our anchors this morning and stood out to sea from the bay of Valparaiso. While getting under way, a boat from the British ship Daphne came alongside with dispatches for Admiral Seymour, in command of the Collingwood, on the coast of California. No sooner were these received, and orders given to make sail, than three other boats were seen starting from the shore at the top of their speed. Our ship was hove to till they came up. Two of them had communications to merchants in Callao. The third had in her two of our runaway sailors, who had been picked up by the police, and whom we were very sorry to see

again; for they were notoriously the two most worthless fellows on board. But we were not, it seems, to get rid of them in this way. So true is it that a bad penny always comes back.

THURSDAY, MARCH 19. Before coming into the Pacific, our imaginations were filled with dreams of its majestic tranquillity. But if the exhibition it made of itself last night be a fair specimen of its character, it is a living libel on its own name. It flared up like an enraged maniac, and stove in our cabin windows, which even Cape Horn had spared. Its rage seemed wholly unprovoked; for the sky was almost free of clouds, and even the few which did darken its face, moved on lazily as those in which the winds have fallen asleep. The moon looked down on the uproar in perfect calmness. Her light fell on the crest of the wave, soft as dew on the death-foam of the savage.

One of our boys ran away at Valparaiso. He had but just recovered from the effects of a fall down the main-hatch. He probably thought the best method of escaping the chances of another fall, would be to give the hatch the widest berth possible. But the poor lad will find worse hatches on land than he ever

yet stumbled through at sea. Here he broke only a limb, but there he may break his peace of conscience, and his hope of heaven. But sailors are of all beings

in the world the most thoughtless. The monitions of the future are lost in the impulses of the present. They have been known, for some temporary gratification, to run from a ship with two years pay due them, and to forfeit the whole by that act of folly. This running commences in rum and ends in ruin.

FRIDAY, MARCH 20. We have the wind directly aft. Our fore studding-sails are out like the wings of a bird on the breast of a gale. We have run within the last two days four hundred and forty miles. This is good sailing considering we have six months' provision on board, and lie consequently too deep for the greatest speed. The air is balmy, and the songs of our sailors, at sunset, rose exultingly into its blue depths. A sailor always sings with heart. His music rolls out like a dashing stream from its mountain source. It is never gay; it always has a deep vein of melancholy. If a few more lively notes mingle with the strain, they come only at intervals, like flakes of moonlight between the cypress shadows which mantle the marbles of the dead.

He is a gay being when he gets upon shore; but he is then no longer on his own element. Give him a day's liberty, and he will commit more follies than he would in six months at sea. If he charters a hack, he will ride out on the box with the driver and