{"id":"01KG6YH9NFFE31CVPA4T7XBVNY","cid":"bafkreieud2bwml3kzybtqhgf4d3fkdlnfgz57rq2n5mecjolcje542vb6u","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7397,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 7","source_file":"01KG6YDDF6PTWG4P7JTS5THSTD","start_line":7333,"text":"supply, she started with us. Nor did ever any wife of the most famous\r\nadmiral, in her husband’s barge, receive more silent reverence of\r\nrespect than poor Hunilla from this boat’s crew.\r\n\r\nRounding many a vitreous cape and bluff, in two hours’ time we shot\r\ninside the fatal reef; wound into a secret cove, looked up along a\r\ngreen many-gabled lava wall, and saw the island’s solitary dwelling.\r\n\r\nIt hung upon an impending cliff, sheltered on two sides by tangled\r\nthickets, and half-screened from view in front by juttings of the rude\r\nstairway, which climbed the precipice from the sea. Built of canes, it\r\nwas thatched with long, mildewed grass. It seemed an abandoned\r\nhay-rick, whose haymakers were now no more. The roof inclined but one\r\nway; the eaves coming to within two feet of the ground. And here was a\r\nsimple apparatus to collect the dews, or rather doubly-distilled and\r\nfinest winnowed rains, which, in mercy or in mockery, the night-skies\r\nsometimes drop upon these blighted Encantadas. All along beneath the\r\neaves, a spotted sheet, quite weather-stained, was spread, pinned to\r\nshort, upright stakes, set in the shallow sand. A small clinker, thrown\r\ninto the cloth, weighed its middle down, thereby straining all moisture\r\ninto a calabash placed below. This vessel supplied each drop of water\r\never drunk upon the isle by the Cholos. Hunilla told us the calabash,\r\nwould sometimes, but not often, be half filled overnight. It held six\r\nquarts, perhaps. “But,” said she, “we were used to thirst. At sandy\r\nPayta, where I live, no shower from heaven ever fell; all the water\r\nthere is brought on mules from the inland vales.”\r\n\r\nTied among the thickets were some twenty moaning tortoises, supplying\r\nHunilla’s lonely larder; while hundreds of vast tableted black\r\nbucklers, like displaced, shattered tomb-stones of dark slate, were\r\nalso scattered round. These were the skeleton backs of those great\r\ntortoises from which Felipe and Truxill had made their precious oil.\r\nSeveral large calabashes and two goodly kegs were filled with it. In a\r\npot near by were the caked crusts of a quantity which had been\r\npermitted to evaporate. “They meant to have strained it off next day,”\r\nsaid Hunilla, as she turned aside.\r\n\r\nI forgot to mention the most singular sight of all, though the first\r\nthat greeted us after landing.\r\n\r\nSome ten small, soft-haired, ringleted dogs, of a beautiful breed,\r\npeculiar to Peru, set up a concert of glad welcomings when we gained\r\nthe beach, which was responded to by Hunilla. Some of these dogs had,\r\nsince her widowhood, been born upon the isle, the progeny of the two\r\nbrought from Payta. Owing to the jagged steeps and pitfalls, tortuous\r\nthickets, sunken clefts and perilous intricacies of all sorts in the\r\ninterior, Hunilla, admonished by the loss of one favorite among them,\r\nnever allowed these delicate creatures to follow her in her occasional\r\nbirds’-nests climbs and other wanderings; so that, through long\r\nhabituation, they offered not to follow, when that morning she crossed\r\nthe land, and her own soul was then too full of other things to heed\r\ntheir lingering behind. Yet, all along she had so clung to them, that,\r\nbesides what moisture they lapped up at early daybreak from the small\r\nscoop-holes among the adjacent rocks, she had shared the dew of her\r\ncalabash among them; never laying by any considerable store against\r\nthose prolonged and utter droughts which, in some disastrous seasons,\r\nwarp these isles.\r\n\r\nHaving pointed out, at our desire, what few things she would like\r\ntransported to the ship—her chest, the oil, not omitting the live\r\ntortoises which she intended for a grateful present to our Captain—we\r\nimmediately set to work, carrying them to the boat down the long,\r\nsloping stair of deeply-shadowed rock. While my comrades were thus\r\nemployed, I looked and Hunilla had disappeared.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 7"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6YGBWB5CFKRR9ZHSC2Z95T","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6YDDF6PTWG4P7JTS5THSTD","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG6YCG626JN4FCG8QK17CQCF","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6YH9NFTTP8DCZAKVB9DSYX","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6YH9NFAAC388YT2XYQ0MFA","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:56.783Z","ts":"2026-01-30T07:58:07.288Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}