Chili, then under the directorship of O'Higgins, was the only South American province that seemed to have changed for the better, by renouncing its allegiance to "Ferdinand the Beloved." Its ports were thrown open to foreign commerce; its navy was respectable, for the ships, the officers, and the seamen were English or Americans; its inhabitants had become quite civilized and tame, for the murdered foreigners in the streets of Valparaiso did not average much more than one or two per night; which, compared with Havana and Buenos Ayres, gave Chili a preponderance of refinement scarcely credible. Mr. Effingham was highly delighted with the country; and indeed Chili, setting aside the inhabitants, for the salubrity and mildness of its climate, the fertility of its soil, and the variety and delicacy of its fruits and vegetables, is certainly one of the finest countries in the world. He found many Englishmen established in various sections of the country, and the better sort of inhabitants very much disposed to treat them with kindness and urbanity.
He had been about eighteen months in St. Jago when he sent for his daughter, who now constituted the whole of his family; his English business he knew was safe in the management of his partner, and he sat himself down with the determination of making a magnificent fortune very much at his ease. Poor man! he little dreamed that the whole of South America is as infamous for revolutions as it is for earthquakes.
Having said thus much concerning the father of Julia Effingham, it is but fair to give the reader some idea of the lady herself. Indeed, in strict gallantry, I suspect that I ought to have introduced her first, but she has already been upon the stage, and "made her obedience," as sailors call it, to the audience; and, besides, age has claims that ought to be attended to.
In person, then, Julia was not remarkably tall, (I don't like tall women; "a man never ought to look _up_ to his wife for a kiss or for advice;") her form had all that graceful and delicate roundness and fullness of outline so irresistibly pleasing to the eye. "Man," says an elegant writer upon natural history, contrasting the two sexes, "man is most angular, woman most round." Euclid himself could not have detected any thing angular in the faultless form of Julia Effingham; nothing resembling his "Asses' Bridge," or his "Windmill" problems, in the fall of her shoulders, the bend of her snowy neck, the delicate round of her chin, the delicious fulness of her ripe lip, the easy turn of her rosy cheeks, the graceful curve of her brow. Her nose was indeed a straight Grecian one, but not geometrically straight.