We caught many with fishing-lines baited with pork.
We also took in the same way many albatrosses. The white ones are
very large, and their down is equal to that of the swan. At last
Cape Horn and its swelling seas were left behind, and we reached
Valparaiso in about sixty days from Rio. We anchored in the open
roadstead, and spent there about ten days, visiting all the usual
places of interest, its foretop, main-top, mizzen-top, etc.
Halleck and Ord went up to Santiago, the capital of Chili, some
sixty miles inland, but I did not go. Valparaiso did not impress
me favorably at all. Seen from the sea, it looked like a long
string of houses along the narrow beach, surmounted with red banks
of earth, with little verdure, and no trees at all. Northward the
space widened out somewhat, and gave room for a plaza, but the mass
of houses in that quarter were poor. We were there in November,
corresponding to our early spring, and we enjoyed the large
strawberries which abounded. The Independence frigate, Commodore
Shubrick, came in while we were there, having overtaken us, bound
also for California. We met there also the sloop-of-war levant,
from California, and from the officers heard of many of the events
that had transpired about the time the navy, under Commodore Sloat,
had taken possession of the country.
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