is
usually mounted on a steed worthy of a good rider.

Valparaiso houses are European in style, with flat Italian roofs. Broad
steps lead up into a lofty entrance-hall on the first floor, from which,
through large glass doors, the visitor passes into the drawing-room and
other apartments. The drawing-room is the pride, not only of every
European settler, but of every native Chilian. The foot sinks into heavy
and costly carpets; the walls are hung with rich tapestry; the furniture
and mirrors are from European makers, and gorgeous in the extreme.

A singular custom prevails among the Chilians on the death of a little
child. Such an incident is a cause of sorrow and tears in most European
families; in Chili it is the occasion of a great festival. The deceased
_angelito_, or little angel, is adorned in various ways. Its eyes,
instead of being closed, are opened as wide as possible; its cheeks are
painted red; then the cold rigid corpse is decked in the finest clothes,
crowned with flowers, and set up on a little chair in a flower-wreathed
niche. Relatives and neighbours crowd in to wish the parents joy in the
possession of such an angel; and, during the first night, they keep a
kind of Irish wake, indulging in the most extravagant dances, and
feasting before the _angelito_ in a mood of the wildest merriment.

* * * * *

On the 1st of March our adventurous traveller, having resolved on
putting a girdle round about the world, took her passage for China in
the Dutch barque _Lootpuit_, Captain Van Wyk Jurianse. On the 26th of
April, her eyes were gladdened with a view of the "island-Eden" of the
Southern seas, Tahiti, the largest and most beautiful of the Society
group. From the days of Bougainville, its discoverer, down to those of
"the Earl and the Doctor," who recently visited it, Tahiti has moved the
admiration of voyagers by the charms of its scenery. It lifts the summit
of its pyramidal mass out of a wealth of luxuriant vegetation, which
sweeps down to the very margin of a sea as blue as the sky above it.
Cool verdurous valleys slope gently into its mountain recesses, their
swelling declivities loaded with groves of bread-fruit and cocoa-nut
trees. The inhabitants, physically speaking, are not unworthy of their
island-home; a tall, robust, and well-knit race, they would be comely
but for their custom of flattening the nose as soon as the child is
born. They have thick jet-black hair and