Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

444 QUiAPo — A ' KANCHo."' Junc hair of horses, so roughly kept as these, is proof against ordi- nary spurs, used with humanity. Going very much by chance, often losing our way, and often taking a cast round to look for the most frequented track, we at last arrived at Quiapo, a hamlet consisting of five huts only, just in sight of one another on neighbouring hills. To which of them the name belongs, I know not, as ' Todo es Quiapo,' was all the answer I could get from my guide. Riding up to the nearest hut, we tempted a young man who occupied it, to sally forth in the rain in search of fresh horses. This exertion was caused by the sure stimulant money. We might have talked of the wreck, and the Indians, until that day month, without exciting our acquaintance to move ; but the touch of dollars at once overcame the apathy with which he listened to our first request for food and horses. His wife told us to kill a fowl, if we could, for there was nothing else to be had ; so forth we sallied, and as each understood that the permission applied to himself, great was the confu- sion among the poultry. To the dismay of our hostess, we soon reappeared, each with a fowl ; but a certain silver talisman quickly hushed her scolding, and set her cooking. Meanwhile the rancho was ornamented with our wet clothes hanging about it to be dried ; but rain came through the roof in so many places that our trouble was useless. Dripping wet, having been soaked since the morning, and of course cold, we could not go near the fire, because of the smoke ; so with a long pole we poked a hole through the thatch, which let the smoke out, and then closing round the fire, we surprised the good woman by our attack upon her half-roasted fowls. All these huts are much alike. Under one thatched roof, there is a place where all the family (including the dogs, cats, and pigs) eat, while sitting or lying round the fire, which is on the ground in the middle ; and there is a kind of ' dais,""* where the same party afterwards seek that sound sleep from which none of the insect tribe appear to awake them, however * Raised half a foot above the ground.