We departed from Valparaiso in a cart drawn by oxen, and arrived on the morning of the twenty-fifth at Quillota--a small town situated in a beautiful and fertile valley on a river thirty-six miles from Valparaiso. Here we have hired a house and live with a widow and two daughters, young ladies of fifteen and seventeen; they are very sociable, and much pleased with us. They can read Spanish, and they take every possible pains to teach us the language. They are very frank and friendly, and seem a much void of guile as little children. I read to them in the Spanish Testament, which pleases them much, as they have never read it. The people in this town seem to be a neat, plain, loving and sociable people; very friendly, frank, and easy to become acquainted with. They are mostly white, intelligent, and good looking; very plain and simple in dress and manners. The houses are mostly neat and comely, and are situated on a line with the mud walls which separate the streets from the gardens and vineyards. The houses are built of sun dried brick, plastered and whitewashed outside and inside; with brick floors and tiled roofs. Many of them, however, have no floors except the earth, and but few of them have glass windows. The streets are straight, and cross at right angles. A clear, cool stream runs in the center of each street, and of tall stately poplars, as well as fruit trees and vines adorn the entire vale, both in town and country. A mountain or round hill, perhaps 500 feet in height, rises in the midst of the town, and is surrounded on all sides by the level of the fertile, well watered and well cultivated plain. This hill is near our residence, easy of access, and commands a view of the whole valley with its farms, orchards, vineyards, towns, streets, river and water ditches, fertile as Eden and stretching away till lost in the dim distance; or bounded by lofty hills and mountain chains, whose lower swells are checked with fences and houses, and covered with flocks and herds, while their bosoms are rugged with rocky precipices, and checkered by dark ravines, or mantled with clouds; while the rugged summits repose in solemn grandeur on the bosom of the clear blue sky, unobscured by clouds or any of the gloomy shadows of the lower world. The land of this valley is extremely fertile, and easily irrigated by small canals from the river. The whole taken in at one view from the summit of the center hill, presents one of the most beautiful scenes I ever beheld in the old or new world.