Maria Callcott -- 23 december 1822

23d. — A few very slight shocks, felt as perceptibly on board as on shore. I went down to Quintero with my goods in the Lautaro's launch ; we were four hours and a half on the voyage. My arrival was a matter of some importance at Quintero. I had laughingly told my friends there, that 1 was determined we should have a plum- pudding on Christmas-day, and that I would return with sufficient materials, and in good time to make it. Accordingly, the first things thought of were raisins and sugar, spices and sweetmeats ; and I found that I had not been singular in remembering the promise, for I was greeted on my return with a gay little poem, by Mr. Jackson, on the subject; and to us, who never see a new book, or only by chance, when an American trader brings out the Philadelphia reprint of a new London or Edinburgh novel (the Pirate is the last we have seen), a new poem, even of a hundred or half a hundred lines, on any subject, is a literary treat, and is valued accordingly. At any rate, I am sure no birth-day ode, saving, perhaps, the celebrated probationary odes, ever gave the readers more pleasure than our pudding rhapsody ; and as the walls of Thebes arose to the sounds of Amphion's lyre, so my plums were picked and my pudding compounded to the rhymes of Mr. Jackson's verse. I can be delighted with every thing, now I am relieved from my anxiety and I have a prospect of seeing home once more.


Lady Maria Callcott (1785-1842) was een Engelse kinder en reisboekenschrijfster. Het bovenstaande fragment komt uit Journal of a residence in Chile, during the year 1822 : and a voyage from Chile to Brazil in 1823