by John Marshall

“ Lord Cochrane swept the sea of Spanish ships; blockaded the Peruvian ports; and carried off their finest frigate, from under the very guns of their strongest fort.
“The violent irritation produced in Lima, by these operations of the enemy was quite natural; for the fortunes of the inhabitants, who had been accustomed for ages to revel in luxury and wealth, were now reduced to the lowest ebb; and the Spaniards, proud by birth and education, were cut to the soul by such humiliating reverses, of which these unaccustomed privations made them only the more sensible. ”

“ Probably, had I gone in a man-of-war’s boat, the Chinese, who had treated Captain Maxwell with great politeness wherever he passed, might have been equally civil to his brother officer. But they observed no such delicacy in the case of the East India captain; for wherever we passed, they climbed to the most conspicuous parts of their boats, and saluted us in a style the very furthest removed from good manners; suiting the rudest actions to words probably not more courteous. ”

“ As the wind was against us, we had to make a tack towards the harbour’s mouth, where we were met by the whole eight sail of the line, gaily dressed out in long swallow-tailed streamers, and led by their gallant commodore, who carried a flag twice as large as any of the rest. At sunset it fell calm, and the tide having turned, we all anchored together, no one of the junks being above a cable’s length, or two hundred yards from the brig. As soon as the sails were furled, the commodore manned his barge, and came himself to pay the Lyra a visit. ”

“ In Lima, where such free sentiments were still deemed treasonable, prejudice and error had established their head-quarters; and the obstinate bigotry with which old customs and opinions were adhered to, was rather strengthened than diminished by the apprehension of a total subversion of the whole system. The contrast between the two countries. Chili and Peru, as it met our eyes, was most striking; and if due justice could be done to the description of each, a pleasing inference would be drawn by every Englishman in favour of the popular side of the question. ”

“ In an open sea, in broad day-light, and in fine weather, nothing can be more delightful than sailing along on such a voyage as ours to visit strange countries. But when the scene is changed to a dark stormy night, in narrow rocky passages, with rapid tides sweeping through them, the blessing of such charts as those of Captain Ross, and such directions as those of Horsburgh, is felt in a manner that the ‘gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease,’ can form but a faint conception of. ”

“ I was thus lulled into an undue degree of security, and permitted the tide to drift the brig silently and imperceptibly towards the eastern bank of this immense river. While I was standing on the poop, endeavouring, if possible, to catch some object on the monotonous flat shore, by which the vessel’s progress might be indicated, a small Chinese boat glided slowly up under the quarter, as if to watch our motions. ”

“ We left Valparaiso harbour filled with shipping; its custom-house wharfs piled high with goods, too numerous and bulky for the old warehouses; the road between the port and the capital was always crowded with convoys of mules, loaded with every kind of foreign manufacture; while numerous ships were busy taking in cargoes of the wines, corn , and other articles, the growth of the country; and large sums of treasure were daily embarked for Europe, in return for goods already distributed over the interior. A spirit of enquiry and intelligence animated the whole society ”

“ But it is on such occasions that the distinction between one officer and another comes into play: that the man who dreads and shuns responsibility, or whose shoulders are not broad enough to bear it when it happens to fall on them, is crushed beneath the weight; while the professional genius of another will sport with the difficulty, and, like Nelson, turn what to ordinary eyes seems irreparable disorder into the means of enhancing his country’s honor. ”

“ I learned, when at Lima this morning, that two officers of my ship had been arrested at Callao on the evening before, and were imprisoned in the Castle, on suspicion of being spies from Lord Cochrane’s Squadron, though landed by my boat. In ordinary times, had such a mistake happened, it would have been easily explained; but at a moment of such popular ferment, especially when the English were held in universal distrust, it was likely to prove a serious affair. ”

“ For my own part, I was well satisfied with seeing people so easily made happy, and thought no more of the matter. Just now, however, when I had become an object of suspicion, and when the lives of two of my officers were at stake, it was of some consequence to maintain any good will that accident might have gained for me amongst the mob – a mob, it may be added, of a notoriously sanguinary character, since, on a recent occasion, they had actually put a whole boat’s crew to death, during a popular tumult. ”

“ I attended next morning, along with the officers, whilst the declarations of all the witnesses were taken, by the commission appointed for that purpose; when fifteen men swore on the cross to the fact of these two gentlemen, whom they pointed out, having served upwards of two years with Lord Cochrane. They were all men of the most abandoned character, and well known at Callao as such; but that circumstance mattered little, as their evidence ministered to the heated imagination and violent prejudices of the people. ”

“ The ferment at Callao, a place at all times liable to violent popular commotions, was supposed to be so great on this irritating occasion, that many people counselled me not to excite the mob to greater fury by showing myself amongst them. But it seemed very obvious that any delay in visiting my officers in confinement at this particular moment, would tend directly to confirm all the suspicions against them; and possibly lead to their being sacrificed to the fury of the populace. The executive Government, it was to be feared, possessed at this critical season no very great authority ”

“ On shore all was bustle and activity. The people had no longer leisure for jealousy; and, so far from viewing us with hatred and distrust, hailed us as friends; and, for the first time, we landed at Callao without apprehension of insult.”
On the 13th Dec, Captain Hall went to the palace to breakfast with the Protector of Peru, and to see a curious mummy, or preserved figure, which had been brought the day before from a village to the northward of Lima, and is now in the British Museum, it having been sent to England in the Conway. ”

“ In no country could a more lively interest be expressed than by these persons for their absent friends; and this furnishes a complete answer to the statements so often made, of their coldness and indifference in their domestic relations. After delivering all my letters and messages, I was overpowered by questions from the ladies as to the appearance, manners, and various other qualities of persons whom they had not seen, but who had married into the families of their relatives in Peru. ”

“ The natives themselves, whose principle it is to discourage all assimilation, sometimes lament this newly acquired power of communicating, and look back with regret to the times when the supercargoes drank a great deal of wine, and spoke not a word of their language. ‘Now,’ as I heard one of the Hong merchants say, with a sigh and a shake of the head, ‘the English speak Chinese as well as I do, and drink nothing but water.”
“As soon as the tide served next morning, after daybreak, we weighed in company with the fleet, and continued all day beating to windward. ”

“ Whilst we were establishing an agreeable acquaintance with the inhabitants of the capital, our intercourse was suddenly cut short by a circumstance which obliged me to return with my officers to the port. Accounts had reached Santiago, that a French line-of-battle ship and a frigate had touched at Conception, and intended soon to visit Valparaiso. The arrival of such a force at this moment, excited considerable sensation among the Chilians, many of whom entertained apprehensions of its object being hostile. ”

“ At the same time they always affected to despise their enemies, and to be perfectly indifferent to our opinion; yet, with the perversest spirit of inconsistency, they occupied themselves in watching us, and misinterpreting all our actions and expressions to such a degree, that nothing was too extravagant to be told and believed in Lima respecting our breaches of neutrality. It was in vain, by a frank and open behaviour, to hope to escape suspicion; for it had become a sort of disease amongst the Spaniards to suspect the English ”

“ The vivid interest recently excited in our minds by travelling into remote countries, and being the first to contemplate unknown nations, and a totally new state of manners, high though it had been, and universally fell, was feeble in comparison to what we now experienced, when conscious of being within so short a distance of such a man as Napoleon. ”

“ It should not be forgotten, that as neither our visit to Loo-Choo, nor the discussions with the Chinese, could have been anticipated, no specific instructions beforehand could by any possibility have been given for the performance of these services. The most perplexing dilemmas, indeed, must often occur in a profession, the extent of whose range is only limited by that of the globe itself. ”

“ As far, therefore, as this sage inquiry went, it would certainly have left matters worse than it found them, had not three Spanish gentlemen voluntarily come forward, greatly to their honour, in the very face of the popular clamour, and in a manner well deserving our acknowledgments. Two of them were naval officers, the other a respectable merchant: all three had been prisoners of war on board Lord Cochrane’s ship at the time specified by the witnesses; and they swore positively, that neither of the prisoners had then been on board the flag-ship, nor in any other of the Patriot squadron. ”

“ On his arrival there, he had several conferences with the merchants of that place, and with the agents of those at Guadalaxara, the capital of New Galicia; when it appeared, that the commercial capitalists of this part of Mexico were desirous of opening, for the first time, a direct communication; and, in order to do this safely and effectually, they proposed to remit a considerable quantity of specie to London, in the Conway, for which returns were to be made in English goods, in the manner practised ever since the opening of the trade in Peru, Chili, and Buenos Ayres. ”

“ On the first of January 1817, a grand procession of the boats of the men-of-war, and of all the Indiamen, left Canton, where they had been assembled in readiness for two days, and rowed about a league and a half up the river to meet the Ambassador. The Chinese authorities were sorely annoyed by such a host of men in their city, for there were thirty large boats, each carrying about sixteen men, all dressed alike, and kept in the strictest discipline under their respective officers. ”

“ On the 12th, he anchored at Ylo, a town which, as well as Arica, is often celebrated in the voyages of Dampier and the old Buccaneers. “We landed,” says he, “at a little sandy beach, sheltered from the swell of the sea by a reef of rocks, on which the surf broke with prodigious violence, and covered half the bay with foam. We were greeted by two men and a woman: the lady was evidently a native: her two companions also were deeply dyed with aboriginal blood; one was a young and active man, the other an old ragged beggar-like person. I asked the first to point out the Alcaldé’s house. ”

“ The East India Company have the sole merit, and a very high one it is, of having originated the splendid idea of surveying in a scientific manner, not only the vast seas and coasts of China, but all the straits, bays, and islands in the Indian Ocean and Malay Archipelago. ”

“ As no English man-of-war had ever before anchored in the port of San Bias, the arrival of the Conway created considerable interest; and she was scarcely secured before boats were seen bustling on board, from all quarters, to enquire for and to give news. On the next day. Captain Hall set out for the neighbouring town of Tepic, to learn the state of the commercial intercourse with England, and whether he could in any way contribute to advance the interests of the British trade in that quarter. ”

“ Even those of our number who, from their situation, could have no chance of seeing him, caught the fever of the moment, and the most cold and indifferent person on board was roused on the occasion into unexpected excitement. If this were true of others, it was ten times more striking in the case of those who had any expectation of being admitted to an interview; and I landed with two gentlemen who were passengers in my ship, in a state of greater anxiety than I ever experienced before or since. ”