The women of Chili are not so pretty as their sisters in Peru. They are generally larger in feature and figure, have not the dainty feet and supple grace of the Lima belles, and lack their voluptuous languor. In Valparaiso half the ladies are of the Saxon type, and blonde hair looks grateful when one has seen nothing but midnight tresses for months. Here, too, modern costumes are worn more generally than in other South American countries, and the shops are full of Paris bonnets. But the black manta, with its fringe of lace, is still common enough to be considered the costume of the country, and is always worn to mass in the morning. The manta is becoming to almost everybody. It hides the defects of homely forms and figures, and heightens grace and beauty. It makes an old woman look young, a stout woman appears more slender under its graceful folds, and even a skeleton would look coquettish when wrapped in the rich embroidery which some bear. In Chili mantas and skirts of white flannel are worn by _penitentas_--women who have committed sin, and thus advertise their penitence, or those who have taken some holy vow to get a measure nearer heaven, and who go about the street with downcast eyes, looking at nothing and recognizing no one. They hover around the churches, and sit for hours crouched before some saint or crucifix. In the great cathedral at Santiago and in the smaller churches everywhere these penitentas, in their snow-white garments, are always to be seen on their knees, or posing in other uncomfortable postures, looking like statues. They cluster in groups around the confessionals, waiting to receive absolution from some fat and burly father, that they may rid their bodies of the mark of penitence they carry, and their souls of sin. Ladies of high social position and great wealth are commonly found among the penitentas, as well as young girls of beauty and winning grace. The women of Chili are as pious as the men are proud, and this method of securing absolution is quite fashionable. Souls that cannot be purged by this penitential dress retire to a convent in the outskirts of the city, called the Convent of the Penitentes, where they scourge themselves with whips, mortify the flesh with sackcloth, sleep in ashes and upon stone floors, and feed themselves on mouldy crusts, until the priests by whose advice they go give them absolution. They are usually women who have been unfaithful to their marriage vows, or girls who have yielded to temptation. After the society season and the carnivals, at the end of the summer, when people return from the fashionable resorts, and at the beginning of Lent, these places are full. For those whose sins have been too great to be washed out by this process, whose shame has been published to the world, and who are unfitted under social laws to associate with the pure, other convents are open as a refuge. Young mothers without husbands are here cared for, and their babes are taken