The whole
air is quite perfumed with roses, principally large double pink roses,
something like the old-fashioned cabbage rose, though there are a good
many of the monthly kind and a few white and deep scarlet ones. They
formed hedgerows on either side of the road, and in many places
climbed thirty or forty feet up the trees, and then threw down long
brambles laden with bloom, almost producing the effect of a wall of
pink. There were also plenty of wild flowers of other sorts, such as
scarlet and white lilies, larkspurs, eschscholtzias, evening
primroses, and many others whose names I do not know.
At Llaillai we stopped for breakfast, procured at a small restaurant
at the station. While waiting for the train for Santiago to come in,
we had plenty of time to observe the half-Indian girls selling fruit,
flowers, cakes, &c., and jabbering away in a sort of _patois_ Spanish,
in recommendation of their wares. Some of them were really pretty,
and all were picturesquely dressed in bright-coloured stuffs, their
hair neatly done up and decorated with flowers, their faces clean and
smiling. At 11.15 a.m. we reached Quillota, where the train was
literally besieged by men, women, and children, offering bouquets for
sale--two or three of which were thrust in at every carriage
window--and baskets of strawberries, cherimoyas, nisperos, melons,
oranges, sugar-cane, plantain, bananas, asparagus, green peas, French
beans, eggs, chickens, and even fish--nice little pejereyes, fresh
from the stream close by.
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