A General History And Collection Of Voyages And Travels - Volume X - By Robert Kerr


















































































































 -  After living a day or two on
wholesome food, we wondered how our stomachs could receive and digest
the rank - Page 408
A General History And Collection Of Voyages And Travels - Volume X - By Robert Kerr - Page 408 of 431 - First - Home

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After Living A Day Or Two On Wholesome Food, We Wondered How Our Stomachs Could Receive And Digest The Rank Nauseous Congers Fried In Train-Oil, And Could Hardly Believe We Had Lived On Nothing Else For A Month Past.

I was assured by my second lieutenant, who commanded the boat on this occasion, that the Indians seemed rather pleased at our plundering the Spaniards; so natural is it for bad masters to find enemies in their servants.

The island of Iquique is in the lat. of 19 deg. 50' S.[271] about a mile from the main land, and only about a mile and a half in circuit, the channel between it and the coast of Peru being full of rocks. It is of moderate height, and the surface consists mostly of cormorant's dung, which is so very white that places covered with it appear at a distance like chalk cliffs. Its smell is very offensive, yet it produces considerable gain, as several ships load here with it every year for Arica, where it is used as manure for growing capsicums. The only inhabitants of this island are negro slaves, who gather this dung into large heaps near the shore, ready for boats to take it off. The village where the lieutenant resides, and which our people plundered, is on the main land close by the sea, and consists of about sixty scattered ill-built houses, or huts rather, and a small church. There is not the smallest verdure to be seen about it, neither does its neighbourhood afford even the smallest necessary of life, not even water, which the inhabitants have to bring in boats from the Quebrada, or breach of Pisagua, ten leagues to the northward; wherefore, being so miserable a place, the advantage derived from the guana or cormorant's dung seems the only inducement for its being inhabited. To be at some distance from the excessively offensive stench of the dung, they have built their wretched habitations on the main, in a most hideous situation, and still even too near the guana, the vapours from which are even there very bad, yet not quite so suffocating as on the island. The sea here affords abundance of excellent fish, some kinds of which I had never before seen; one of them resembling a large silver eel, but much thicker in proportion. The inhabitants of this desolate and forbidding place cure these fish in a very cleanly manner, and export large quantities of them by the vessels which come for the guana.

[Footnote 271: There is no island on the coast of Peru in that latitude. Iquique is a town on the main land, about thirty miles from the sea. The islands called los Patillos, or the Claws, are near the coast, in lat. 20 deg. 45' S. and probably one of these may have got the name of Iquique, as being under the jurisdiction of that town. The mountain Carapacha of the text, is probably the hills of Tarapaca of our maps.

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