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 PREFACE. reader in behalf of a much injured people,—it may also tend to remove the films of national prejudice, and convince him that virtue and courage are not confined to any particular station or country, but that they may exist as well in the wilds of the forest, as in the cultivated regions of civilization.


 * Guernsey, June, 1835.

Note.—After the preceding Preface was in type, the Editor learnt by the newspapers, that on the 20th February last, the southern parts of Chile were visited by an earthquake, which was attended with almost unprecedented devastation. Several of the towns mentioned in Colonel Tupper's Memoir were destroyed;—at Conception only one house escaped the shock; of its port, Talcahuana, not a vestige remained.—Chilian suffered nearly in equal degree; and Talca, whose handsome and regular edifices ranked it as the third town of the republic, was transformed into a mass of ruins.