After leaving Buenos Ayres the steamer proceeds southward; and passing through the Strait of Magellan,⑤ or weathering Cape Horn,⑥ makes for Valparaiso, the chief port of Chili. Four hundred miles westward, in the midst of the Pacific, is the island of Juan Fernandez, Alexander Selkirk"s solitary residence on which for four years suggested to Defoe his well- known story, "Robinson Crusoe." From Valparaiso, the steamer proceeds to Callao, the port of Lima, which is six miles inland, and with which it is connected by rail. Lima, the city founded by Pizarro⑦ to be the Spanish capital of his conquests, has the reputation of being the handsomest city in South America-its cathedral and numerous churches, with their domes and spires, giving it a magnificent appearance. We have now crossed the line of the West Indian and Panama route already described, of which the traveller may, for variety"s sake, avail himself on his homeward journey.
NOTES
① "Still vexed Bermoothes."-The ever-stormy Bermudas. See The Tempest , Act i., Scene 2. Shakespeare is supposed to have taken his idea from an account of the shipwreck of Sir George Somners on the Bermudas in 1609.
② The isthmus of Panama.-It had long been proposed to cut a ship canal throughthe isthmus: and in 1881 a French company obtained a concession from the Republic of Colombia, and Ferdinand de Leeseps, the maker of the Suez Canal, was placed in charge of the work. The attempt was a failure, and the rights of the French company were acquired by the American Government, under whom the canal was completed and opened to shipping in 1914. Panama became an independent republic in 1903.
③ Brazilian Republic.-On the outbreak of the Peninsular War, the royal family ofPortugal fled to Brazil, which had been a Portuguese dependency since the sixteenth century. They formed it into a tributary kingdom in 1815, and into an independent empire in 1822. In 1889 Brazil became a republic.