One morning, when it was my watch on deck, soon after dawn the cheery sound was heard of "Land on the starboard-bow!" I looked out; and as daylight increased, there appeared, as if rising out of the ocean in their desolate grandeur, capped with snow and towering high above the clouds, the lofty summits of a range of mountains trending away north and south far as the eye could reach. They were the giant Cordilleras. On we sailed with a fresh breeze. The sun ascended with stately pace from behind them, and then a mist arose and shrouded their base. Hour after hour we ran on, and yet we seemed not to have got nearer; till once more the mists lifted, and wild, rocky, and barren heights sloped upwards before us from the ocean. Full sixty miles were gone over from the time those snowy peaks were first seen till we reached Valparaiso, far away down at their base. We must have been a hundred and twenty miles off them at sunrise. Coming so suddenly from the wild regions of Tierra del Fuego and the unattractive Falklands, Valparaiso appeared to us a very beautiful place. It is very irregularly built--at the bottoms of valleys, on the tops of hills, and on their steep and sometimes rugged sides, rising directly out of the blue ocean, with a succession of range after range of lofty mountains behind it the Cordilleras towering in the background beyond all. Gerard and I were very eager to get on shore; so was old Surley. He wagged his tail, and ran to the ship's side and barked, and looked up in our faces and looked at the land, as much as to say, "How I should like to have a scamper along the beach there!" "Yes, you may all three go, if Mr McRitchie will take care of you," said the captain, laughing. Fleming got leave to accompany us, as he had been unwell for some weeks, and the captain thought a trip on shore would do him good. We found that there would be time to get right up among the mountains, where we hoped to find some good sport, our great ambition being to kill a guanaco--the name given to the llama in its wild state. A number of boatmen good-naturedly helped us to land on the beach, with our guns and carpet-bags. It was market-day; the market was full of vegetables and other provisions, and the place bore a very cheerful aspect. We heard that, in spite of the want of level ground, the town has very rapidly improved in the last few years. The country generally, since order has been established, has become prosperous. Everybody praises the climate, and perhaps there is not a finer in the world; for, although hot in summer, the air is dry and pure, and tempered by the sea-breeze, which regularly sets in every forenoon. In the harbour were two or three old hulks, the remains of the fleet commanded by Lord Dundonald, when he performed one of his most gallant exploits--the cutting out of the _Esmeralda_ frigate, belonging to the Spaniards, from the port of Callao. Fleming was with him, and told me all about it.