proceeded to
the boat, accompanied by our new friends. Having refitted the topmast,
we waited till the gale had blown itself out; and once more putting to
sea, we had a very quick passage round Cape Horn, now no longer clothed
in storms, to Valparaiso, the sea-port of Santiago, the capital of
Chili.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

ADVENTURES IN CHILI.

One morning, when it was my watch on deck, soon after dawn the cheery
sound was heard of "Land on the starboard-bow!" I looked out; and as
daylight increased, there appeared, as if rising out of the ocean in
their desolate grandeur, capped with snow and towering high above the
clouds, the lofty summits of a range of mountains trending away north
and south far as the eye could reach. They were the giant Cordilleras.
On we sailed with a fresh breeze. The sun ascended with stately pace
from behind them, and then a mist arose and shrouded their base. Hour
after hour we ran on, and yet we seemed not to have got nearer; till
once more the mists lifted, and wild, rocky, and barren heights sloped
upwards before us from the ocean. Full sixty miles were gone over from
the time those snowy peaks were first seen till we reached Valparaiso,
far away down at their base. We must have been a hundred and twenty
miles off them at sunrise.

Coming so suddenly from the wild regions of Tierra del Fuego and the
unattractive Falklands, Valparaiso appeared to us a very beautiful
place. It is very irregularly built--at the bottoms of valleys, on the
tops of hills, and on their steep and sometimes rugged sides, rising
directly out of the blue ocean, with a succession of range after range
of lofty mountains behind it the Cordilleras towering in the background
beyond all. Gerard and I were very eager to get on shore; so was old
Surley. He wagged his tail, and ran to the ship's side and barked, and
looked up in our faces and looked at the land, as much as to say, "How I
should like to have a scamper along the beach there!"

"Yes, you may all three go, if Mr McRitchie will take care of you,"
said the captain, laughing. Fleming got leave to accompany us, as he
had been unwell for some weeks, and the captain thought a trip on shore
would do him good. We found that there would be time to get right up
among the mountains, where we hoped to find some good sport, our great
ambition being to kill a guanaco--the name given to the llama in its
wild state. A number of boatmen good-naturedly helped us t