These four attractive volumes make available long-out-of-print accounts of scenes and events along the west coast of South America in the early nineteenth century.
Araucanía y sus habitantes is a description of the Arucanian country and people in Chile, and concludes with recommendations for policies relating to those doughty folk. Ignacio Domeyko, a Polish immigrant, was a distinguished scientist and educator whose voice carried authority.
The other three volumes were written by English speakers. Samuel B. Johnston, a printer who sailed from New York to Chile, undertook a publishing enterprise for the newly-organized, independent government. He printed the early newspaper, Aurora, in 1812 in Santiago. He remained two years, during which he recorded his observations of the country and its people in the form of thirteen letters that he sent to an acquaintance in the United States. Two of the letters concerned his trip to Peru. John E. Coffin, the Joven norteamericano, sailed to Talcahuano, Chile, as a merchant in 1817. Upon reaching the port, he and his shipmates were captured by the royalists, then in control of that section of the revolution-ridden country. He was to be more or less under arrest for two years, and returned to the United States in 1819. His diary, in which he wrote many impressions of the people of the Talcahuano-Concepción region, was published in 1823. The third book, Campañas y cruceros en el Océano Pacífico, was the work of Richard Longeville Vowell, a veteran of the British Legion in northern South America, and opens with the author in Guayaquil awaiting return passage to England. But he shipped with Lord Cochrane, then commanding the Chilean fleet, and the bulk of the book comprises descriptions of the people, country, and customs of Chile over the next eight years. He also relates the experiences of the fleet as it sailed north as far as California. Enlaced with his observations are comments on the political history of Chile in the period. He reached Portsmouth in 1830.
These three volumes are most interesting because they give impressions that foreigners received of local habits and customs. As foreigners, they did not assume knowledge on the part of their readers, thus contributing social history that might otherwise be lost. The illustrations in these volumes—and in the Araucanian book as well—are from near-contemporary lithographs or engravings and convey delightful visual impressions of scenes described in the text.
