[38] Valparaiso is sometimes called the Vale of Paradise; yet there is anything but a look of Paradise in Valparaiso and its immediate environs. It has been said that the Elysian vale of Quillota, a few leagues distant, is the Paradise alluded to in this appellation, which is a corruption of Va-al-Paraiso, _i.e._ This is the road to Paradise—namely, Quillota. [39] See Letter from Alexander Cruckshanks, Esq. to Professor Hooker, inserted in Part iv.-v. of the Botanical Miscellany for March 1831. [40] Ensayo sobre las causas de las Enfermedades que se padecen en Santiago de Chile. Por el Doctor Guillermo C. Blest. [41] This being written in 1828, it is but fair to suppose that, as the general police of Chile has been vastly improved since that time, the evils here alluded to by Dr. Blest may have been removed. [42] According to Humboldt, the farm of Enciero, near Vera Cruz, 3,043 feet above the level of the sea, is the superior limit of the vomito or yellow fever; and strangers who come by sea, and therefore pass through a gradual change of atmospherical temperature, are observed to be less liable to contract the yellow fever than the whites and mestizoes who inhabit the table-land of Mexico, (of which the mean temperature is about 60° or 62° of Fahrenheit,) when they descend during the wet season to the port of Vera Cruz. The rains begin in May and end in October, when the “_nortes_” or north winds set in; and during the prevalence of these winds the yellow fever or vomito disappears.—Translator’s Note. [43] The translator understands that chimneys and stoves have of late years become common in the houses of the higher classes in Chile; such, however, as still want these conveniencies make use of the old-fashioned brasiers, or pans of live charcoal. Over these though people may toast their legs if they please, still their backs and shoulders are suffering from cold, as the heat of the _brasero_ or brasier is not sufficient to support a proper degree of general temperature in the air of the apartment in which it is placed. These pans are very properly denounced by Dr. Blest as most unfit, and even dangerous, in the close and ill-ventilated dwellings of the poor.