After tobacco, indigo came next
in value; then capsicum, old clothes, and gunpowder. The latter
article was required for a very innocent purpose: each parish has a
public musket, and the gunpowder was wanted for making a noise on
their saint or feast days.
The people here live chiefly on shell-fish and potatoes. At certain
seasons they catch also, in "corrales," or hedges under water, many
fish which are left on the mud-banks as the tide falls. They
occasionally possess fowls, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, and cattle;
the order in which they are here mentioned, expressing their
respective numbers. I never saw anything more obliging and humble
than the manners of these people. They generally began with stating
that they were poor natives of the place, and not Spaniards and
that they were in sad want of tobacco and other comforts. At
Caylen, the most southern island, the sailors bought with a stick
of tobacco, of the value of three-halfpence, two fowls, one of
which, the Indian stated, had skin between its toes, and turned out
to be a fine duck; and with some cotton handkerchiefs, worth three
shillings, three sheep and a large bunch of onions were procured.
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