Of the crustaceous fishes, the xaiva, crab, has a shell that is nearly spherical, about three inches in diameter, and two inches deep, furnished with spines upon the edges. The apancora, another of the crab species, has an oval shell, denticulated, and generally larger than the xaiva; both are red when boiled, and their flesh is well tasted. Crawfish, camarones, are sometimes caught of the enormous weight of eight or nine pounds each, and are very good.
The principal commerce between this port and some of the other Spanish colonies consists in the exportation of wheat, with which article about six ships, of not less than four hundred tons burthen each, are annually laden, making an average of two thousand four hundred tons, which in an infant country, and for colonial consumption, may be considered very great. Nearly the whole of this wheat is carried to Lima. Of jerked beef, charqui, about six thousand quintals, with a proportionate quantity of tallow and fat, grasa; and of wine, on an average, two thousand jars, containing eighteen gallons each, are annually exported. The minor articles are raw hides, wool, dried fruits, salt fish and pulse. The imports are a small quantity of European manufactured goods, sugar, salt and tobacco; the taxes on which produce from one hundred and two to one hundred and five thousand dollars per annum.
I have already mentioned the benefit which would result from a soap manufactory being established at Talcahuano; another establishment, however, of still greater importance, might be formed either on the banks of the Bio-bio, or on those of the Maule: I mean a sawing mill. Both of these rivers have a sufficient current for the purpose, and an abundance of good timber in their vicinity. A dock yard on a trifling scale has been established and small craft have been built at Maule; but Guayaquil is the great dock yard on the western coast of South America, and vessels of eight hundred tons burthen have been built there; beside which the timber markets of Peru have been almost exclusively supplied with wood from the forest of Guayaquil: this article is becoming scarce in that district, and recourse must soon be had to some other parts, and there are none that present the same facilities as the two I have now mentioned. The forests of the province of Conception are as yet untouched; the price of labour there does not exceed one-third of that at Guayaquil; the hire of cattle for bringing the wood from any part of the forests to the river side bears the same proportion as the price of labour; the advantage of superiority of climate is also attached to this province, as well as that of the total absence of ravenous beasts and poisonous reptiles, which abound in the woods, rivers and estuaries of Guayaquil. The conducting of timber to the port of Talcahuano for embarkation, and its shipment in small vessels in the Maule, are facilities of considerable importance; to which we may add the short passage from either of these two places to the principal established market of Lima, the passage from Guayaquil being of a treble duration. Small vessels only can get out of the Maule, because a bar at the entrance of the river would prevent the egress of large ships when deeply laden. Another powerful reason why sawing mills might be established with greater ease on those rivers than at Guayaquil is, that they would increase the means of subsistence among the labouring classes, and consequently would merit their protection; whereas at the latter place sawing is the occupation of a great portion of the inhabitants of the city, who make very high wages, in consequence of which any establishment detrimental to so numerous a body of artizans would be strenuously resisted, and probably attended with fatal results. It will no doubt appear surprizing to persons in England acquainted with this branch of the arts, that three quarters of a dollar, equal to about three shillings and two pence, should be paid at Guayaquil for sawing a plank from a log of wood ten or twelve inches square by eighteen feet long, the timber not being harder than the English fir. The price for timber brought down to the port of Talcahuano is very low. Liñe, somewhat resembling ash, and applicable to the same uses, may be delivered in logs twenty feet long and twelve inches square, for about one dollar each, and all other kinds of wood at similar rates; while a single inch plank from the same tree would be worth nearly double the sum at Lima. Attached to an establishment of this kind, the carrying of fire wood to Lima would be attended with considerable profit—a cargo of fire wood weighing fourteen quintals is sold here for only one dollar, while in Lima it often sells for from one to one and a half dollar per quintal.
The ship Dolores de la Tierra being ready to sail for Lima, I was ordered on board, and obliged to leave with regret an enchanting country, where I had been treated with unbounded hospitality by its inhabitants. My kind host, Don Manuel Serrano, took care to recommend me to the captain, beside which he sent on board, for my use, more provisions than would have served me for three such voyages.
The foregoing is a brief description of Conception as I saw it in the year 1803. I visited it again in 1820, and in the course of my narrative I shall have occasion to mention it at my second visit, and to contrast its appearance at those two periods.
If in my description of this part of South America I have sometimes touched on the changes that have happened or are likely to happen, it has been when speaking of places which I did not afterwards visit.
CHAPTER VII.
Leave Talcahuano in the Dolores. … Passage to Callao. … Arrival. … Taken to the Castle. … Leave Callao. … Road to Lima. … Conveyed to Prison.
My present situation was very disagreeable. The government of Conception had placed me on board a Spanish vessel, and had given orders to the captain to deliver me up, the moment he should arrive at Callao, to the governor of the fortress. At the same time he had been charged with letters, containing perhaps an account of my having landed on the Araucanian coast; of having visited part of that almost unknown territory, as also part of the province of Conception. Such it was reasonable to expect would be the information conveyed, if either the reports prevailing at that time respecting the cruel system of Spanish jealousy in their colonies were to be credited; or those which have been more recently circulated, that all foreigners would be incarcerated, sent to the mines or to places of exile, for having merely dared to tread the shores of this prohibited country. I should have desponded, had not practice taught me to regard those reports as exaggerated tales, the fictions or dreams of the biassed, and not worthy of the least belief. I was, at the time I landed, ignorant of the existence of any prohibitory laws; but I now reflected, that no doubt foreigners were not allowed to settle in a Spanish colony without having obtained those permissions and passports which are considered equally as indispensable here as in the British colonies; documents which are as essentially necessary to Englishmen as to foreigners; but I also recollected the kind treatment which I had received at Conception, as much a Spanish colony as the place of my destination; I had learned, too, that foreigners resided in this part of the country, some of whom were in the actual employ of the government; it had come to my knowledge that an Irishman, Don Ambrose Higgins, had filled the offices of Captain-General of Chile, and of Viceroy of Peru.—These reflections contributed to make me comparatively happy, and by adhering to a maxim which I had established, never to allow the shadow of future adversity to cloud the existence of present comfort, my life was always free from fear and disquietude. My stay among the pastoral indians of Arauco, for barbarous I cannot call them, had been one continued scene of enjoyment, unalloyed with any apprehension of approaching evils, and this conduct had not contributed a little to make me so welcome a guest. I had followed the same