'Rancho at Concon, between Valparaiso and Quillota, Jany 14th 1850' [Chile]
No. 35 in Fanshawe's Pacific album, 1849 - 52. Captioned by the artist on the album page below the image, as title. Having returned to Valparaiso from Samoa in the 'Daphne' on 22 December 1849, Fanshawe remained there for a month, partly to convalesce from the dysentery that had struck him in October. For two weeks, while his cabin was being repainted, he had the use of the house of Rear-Admiral Phipps Hornby (Pacific C-in-C), who was absent at Callao. 'I rode nearly every day, and found some pleasant rides under the pilotage of Dr Aneran, surgeon of the English hospital....I went for two or three days to Quillota, forty miles from Valparaiso, where there is a good inn. This town stands in a very fine plain, well watered and surrounded by mountains, except towards the sea. There are some very fine estates (haciendas) in it. The land is prinicipally divided into "portreros" or large grazing grounds for cattle and horses, who graze on the rich level plains.....' (Fanshawe [1904], p.250). This drawing of gauchos - dressed in ponchos, riding boots and spurs - presumably derives from this excursion to Quillota.
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