A black fellow appeared with a shovel of live embers, one of
which another sans culotte caught up in his hand, chucking it from one
palm to another, until he ran to the breech of the first gun, where,
clapping it on the touch--hole, he fired it off, and so on seriatim,
through the whole battery, until the required number of guns were given,
several of which, by the by, were shotted, as we could hear the balls
whiz overhead. The town lies on a small plain, at the foot of very high
mountains, or rather on a sand--bank, formed from the washings from
these mountains. The summit of the highest of them, we could see from
the deck, was covered with snow, which at sunrise, in the clear light of
the cool grey dawn, shone, when struck by the first rays of the sun,
like one entire amethyst. Oh, how often I longed for the wings of the
eagle, to waft me from the hot deck of the little vessel, where the
thermometer in the shade stood at 95, far up amongst the shining
glaciers, to be comforted with cold!
One striking natural phenomenon is exhibited here, arising out of the
vicinity of this stupendous prong of the Cordilleras. The sea breeze
blows into the harbour all day, but in the night, or rather towards
morning, the cold air from the high regions rushes down, and blows with
such violence off the land, that my convoy and myself were nearly blown
out to sea the first night after we arrived; and it was only by
following the practice of the native craft, and anchoring close under
the lee of the beach--in fact, by having an anchor high and dry on the
shore itself--the player, as the Spaniards call it--that we could count
on riding through the night with security or comfort.
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