the stage, while bands of music and dancing make the people merry. This is the resort of the aristocracy. The poor people go to Cousino Park, at the other end of the Alameda, drink _chicha_, and dance the _cuaca_ (pronounced _quaker_), the Chillano national dance. [Illustration: THE ZAMA-CUACA.] The cuaca is a sort of can-can, except that it is decent, and the men instead of the girls do the high kicking. But when the dancers are under the influence of chicha--that liquor which tastes like hard cider, but is ninety per cent. alcohol--skirts and modesty are no impediments to the success of the dance. The couples pair off and face each other, while on benches near by are women thrumming guitars and singing a wild barbaric air in polka time. Each woman and man has a handkerchief which he or she waves in the air, and they sway around in postures that are intended to show the grace and suppleness of the performer, and often do. The dance usually ends with a wild carousal, in which men and women mingle promiscuously, embrace each other, and then go off to the chicha bars to get stimulants for the next. It is common in fashionable society to end the tertulias with the cuaca, as in the United States with the ancient “Virginia reel;” and if the young people are unusually hilarious, scenes occur which watchful dowagers desire to prevent. School-girls at the convents dance the cuaca when the nuns will allow them; and although in its ordinary form it is not nearly so immodest as some of our dances, license has been taken so often as to bring it into disrepute. One evening at the opera a pretty married woman was pointed out as the most graceful and agile cuaca dancer in Chili, and it was asserted that she could throw her heels higher than her head. At the other end of the Alameda are the Exposition grounds and Horticultural gardens, laid out in good style, and improved to the highest degree of landscape architecture. There is a fine stone and glass building, a miniature copy of the Crystal Palace in London, used as the National Museum of Chili, whose contents were mostly stolen from Peru during the late war. A zoological garden has been added, to exhibit the animals brought from Peru, like the curiosities of the museum, as contraband of war. The elephant died from the severity of the climate, two of the lions are missing from the same cause, and the rest of the menagerie are suffering from exposure and cold to which they are unaccustomed.