of way. Two
skins of seals, or some other large animal, filled full of air, are
lashed together at one end, the other ends open like a man's legs
stretched out; and the waterman, who sits astride on the ends lashed
together, which forms the bow of the boat, works himself on with a
paddle, which has a blade at each end. He holds it in the middle, and
dips first one end and then the other into the water. These skin boats,
if boats they are, are called _balsas_. Sometimes the watermen quarrel,
and one sticks his knife into another's _balsa_, and as soon as he does
so, the man whose _balsa_ has been cut has to strike out for his life
towards the shore, for the wind soon gets out of it.

The captain got through the business which took us to Valparaiso, and
once more we were at sea, bound for Callao, the chief port in Peru.
Near it, inland, is Lima, the capital. Peru reaches nearly all the way
from Chili, along the coast, to the north part of South America. All
the upper classes are Spaniards; that is, born of Spanish parents, while
the rest are native Indians, or children of Indians, of a
yellowish-brown colour. The natives had once their own kings and
princes, and were a prosperous and wealthy people. They had cities and
roads, and tanks for water, and well-cultivated fields.

Rather more than three hundred years ago the Spaniards arrived in the
country, and cruelly killed most of their chiefs, and enslaved the
people, and have ruled the country ever since. At last the Spaniards
born in the country, rose on the Spaniards who had come from Spain, and
drove them away. It is now free, that is, governed only by people born
in the country, and has nothing to do with Spain.

We had been three days at sea, when a strong gale from the east drove us
off the land some hundred miles. The crew grumbled very much, for it
would take us, they said, a fortnight or more to beat up to Callao, and
they were eager to have fresh meat and fruit and vegetables, instead of
salt beef and hard biscuits, which was now our food.

A sailor's food on a long voyage is salt beef and pork, and biscuits,
and tea, and cocoa, and sugar, and sometimes flour, with raisins and
suet for a pudding, which is called "duff." If, however, they live too
long on salt food, they get a dreadful complaint, called scurvy, which
fresh vegetables only can cure. I was far better fed than I had ever
been on shore, yet often I longed for a cabbage and a dish of