It was altogether, as will be seen, a considerable work, and we were hard at it for a fortnight, during which time, with the exception of two shopping expeditions to the neighbouring city of Concepcion, we had little opportunity to see the surrounding country. It felt at any rate dry and warm, in fact well aired, after the damp of the Patagonian Channels, and might have been even adjudged too dry and dusty. The most refreshing sight was a little garden which adjoined the custom-house steps, at which we landed almost daily, and which, in spite of difficulties, was invariably bright with geraniums and other flowers: Chile is much more a country of gardens, in the English sense, than any other land it has been my lot to visit. Talcahuano has about 13,000 inhabitants, and consists of little beside the dockyard, in which the chief posts are filled by Englishmen. Three English officers are also lent in peace time by our own navy to that of Chile; one of these, with whom we happened to have mutual acquaintances, was kind enough to entertain us on board the Chilean warship, whose name, being translated, was _Commodore Pratt_. A point anxiously debated at the moment, and not without some practical interest for us, was whether Chile could afford to keep the Dreadnoughts which were being built for her by Messrs. Armstrong. There was a financial crisis at the time, and the exchange was much against Chile; hence firms there which owed money to England were delaying meeting their liabilities, with the result that more than one English company had failed in consequence. The sale of a Dreadnought would of course greatly affect the rate; even without that before we left the country it had materially risen, and the value received for a sovereign was, from our point of view, regrettably diminished. An Englishman feels distinctly more at home in Chile than in either Brazil or Argentina. Some of the best-known firms are genuinely English, though the possession of an English name is in itself no guarantee of more than a remote British origin: a Mr. Brown may, for instance, marry a Miss Thompson, and neither be able to speak the English tongue.[9] Our language is the only one taught free in the schools; it is presumably the most useful from the point of view of trade with ourselves and the United States. One of our countrymen resident in the Republic explained to us that “the Chileans hate all foreigners, but they hate the British rather less than the others.” Those at least were our recorded impressions at this time; on the subsequent visit of the yacht, after war broke out, the German influence was strong enough to affect her position adversely in the way of work and stores.