Chapter XVI

Coast-road to Coquimbo—Great loads carried by the

miners—Coquimbo—Earthquake—Step-formed terraces—Absence of recent

deposits—Contemporaneousness of the Tertiary formations—Excursion up

the valley—Road to Guasco—Deserts—Valley of Copiapó—Rain and

Earthquakes—Hydrophobia—The Despoblado—Indian ruins—Probable change of

climate—River-bed arched by an earthquake—Cold gales of wind—Noises

from a hill—Iquique—Salt alluvium—Nitrate of soda—Lima—Unhealthy

country—Ruins of Callao, overthrown by an earthquake—Recent

subsidence—Elevated shells on San Lorenzo, their decomposition—Plain

with embedded shells and fragments of pottery—Antiquity of the Indian

Race.

NORTHERN CHILE AND PERU.

_April_ 27_th._—I set out on a journey to Coquimbo, and thence through

Guasco to Copiapó, where Captain Fitz Roy kindly offered to pick me up

in the _Beagle._ The distance in a straight line along the shore

northward is only 420 miles; but my mode of travelling made it a very

long journey. I bought

four horses and two mules, the latter carrying the luggage on alternate

days. The six animals together only cost the value of twenty-five

pounds sterling, and at Copiapó I sold them again for twenty-three. We

travelled in the same independent manner as before, cooking our own

meals, and sleeping in the open air. As we rode towards the Viño del

Mar, I took a farewell view of Valparaiso, and admired its picturesque

appearance. For geological purposes I made a detour from the high road

to the foot of the Bell of Quillota. We passed through an alluvial

district rich in gold, to the neighbourhood of Limache, where we slept.

Washing for gold supports the inhabitants of numerous hovels, scattered

along the sides of each little rivulet; but, like all those whose gains

are uncertain, they are unthrifty in their habits, and consequently

poor.

28_th._—In the afternoon we arrived at a cottage at the foot of the

Bell mountain. The inhabitants were freeholders, which is not very

usual in Chile. They supported themselves on the produce of a garden

and a little field, but were very poor. Capital is here so deficient

that the people are obliged to sell their green corn while standing in

the field, in order to buy necessaries for the ensuing year. Wheat in

consequence was dearer in the very district of its production than at

Valparaiso, where the contractors live. The next day we joined the main

road to Coquimbo. At night there was a very light shower of rain: this

was the first drop that had fallen since the heavy rain of September

11th and 12th, which detained me a prisoner at the Baths of Cauquenes.

The interval was seven and a half months; but the rain this year in

Chile was rather later than usual. The distant Andes were now covered

by a thick mass of snow, and were a glorious sight.

_May_ 2_nd._—The road continued to follow the coast at no great

distance from the sea. The few trees and bushes which are common in

central Chile decreased rapidly in numbers, and were replaced by a tall

plant, something like a yucca in appearance. The surface of the

country, on a small scale, was singularly broken and irregular; abrupt

little peaks of rock rising out of small plains or basins. The indented

coast and the bottom of the neighbouring sea, studded with breakers,

would, if converted into dry land, present similar forms; and

such a conversion without doubt has taken place in the part over which

we rode.

3_rd._—Quilimari to Conchalee. The country became more and more barren.

In the valleys there was scarcely sufficient water for any irrigation;

and the intermediate land was quite bare, not supporting even goats. In

the spring, after the winter showers, a thin pasture rapidly springs

up, and cattle are then driven down from the Cordillera to graze for a

short time. It is curious to observe how the seeds of the grass and

other plants seem to accommodate themselves, as if by an acquired

habit, to the quantity of rain which falls upon different parts of this

coast. One shower far northward at Copiapó produces as great an effect

on the vegetation, as two at Guasco, and three or four in this

district. At Valparaiso a winter so dry as greatly to injure the

pasture, would at Guasco produce the most unusual abundance. Proceeding

northward, the quantity of rain does not appear to decrease in strict

proportion to the latitude. At Conchalee, which is only 67 miles north

of Valparaiso, rain is not expected till the end of May; whereas at

Valparaiso some generally falls early in April: the annual quantity is

likewise small in proportion to the lateness of the season at which it

commences.

4_th._—Finding the coast-road devoid of interest of any kind, we turned

inland towards the mining district and valley of Illapel. This valley,

like every other in Chile, is level, broad, and very fertile: it is

bordered on each side, either by cliffs of stratified shingle, or by

bare rocky mountains. Above the straight line of the uppermost

irrigating ditch, all is brown as on a high-road; while all below is of

as bright a green as verdigris, from the beds of alfarfa, a kind of

clover. We proceeded to Los Hornos, another mining district, where the

principal hill was drilled with holes, like a great ants’-nest. The

Chilian miners are a peculiar race of men in their habits. Living for

weeks together in the most desolate spots, when they descend to the

villages on feast-days there is no excess of extravagance into which

they do not run. They sometimes gain a considerable sum, and then, like

sailors with prize-money, they try how soon they can contrive to

squander it. They drink excessively, buy quantities of clothes, and in

a few days return penniless to their miserable abodes, there to work

harder

than beasts of burden. This thoughtlessness, as with sailors, is

evidently the result of a similar manner of life. Their daily food is

found them, and they acquire no habits of carefulness; moreover,

temptation and the means of yielding to it are placed in their power at

the same time. On the other hand, in Cornwall, and some other parts of

England, where the system of selling part of the vein is followed, the

miners, from being obliged to act and think for themselves, are a

singularly intelligent and well-conducted set of men.

The dress of the Chilian miner is peculiar and rather picturesque. He

wears a very long shirt of some dark-coloured baize, with a leathern

apron; the whole being fastened round his waist by a bright-coloured

sash. His trousers are very broad, and his small cap of scarlet cloth

is made to fit the head closely. We met a party of these miners in full

costume, carrying the body of one of their companions to be buried.

They marched at a very quick trot, four men supporting the corpse. One

set having run as hard as they could for about two hundred yards, were

relieved by four others, who had previously dashed on ahead on

horseback. Thus they proceeded, encouraging each other by wild cries:

altogether the scene formed a most strange funeral.

We continued travelling northward in a zigzag line; sometimes stopping

a day to geologise. The country was so thinly inhabited, and the track

so obscure, that we often had difficulty in finding our way. On the

12th I stayed at some mines. The ore in this case was not considered

particularly good, but from being abundant it was supposed the mine

would sell for about thirty or forty thousand dollars (that is, 6000 or

8000 pounds sterling); yet it had been bought by one of the English

Associations for an ounce of gold (£3 : 8s). The ore is yellow pyrites,

which, as I have already remarked, before the arrival of the English

was not supposed to contain a particle of copper. On a scale of profits

nearly as great as in the above instance, piles of cinders, abounding

with minute globules of metallic copper, were purchased; yet with these

advantages, the mining associations, as is well known, contrived to

lose immense sums of money. The folly of the greater number of the

commissioners and shareholders amounted to infatuation;—a thousand

pounds per annum given in some

cases to entertain the Chilian authorities; libraries of well-bound

geological books; miners brought out for particular metals, as tin,

which are not found in Chile; contracts to supply the miners with milk,

in parts where there are no cows; machinery, where it could not

possibly be used; and a hundred similar arrangements, bore witness to

our absurdity, and to this day afford amusement to the natives. Yet

there can be no doubt, that the same capital well employed in these

mines would have yielded an immense return: a confidential man of

business, a practical miner and assayer, would have been all that was

required.

Captain Head has described the wonderful load which the “Apires,” truly

beasts of burden, carry up from the deepest mines. I confess I thought

the account exaggerated; so that I was glad to take an opportunity of

weighing one of the loads, which I picked out by hazard. It required

considerable exertion on my part, when standing directly over it, to

lift it from the ground. The load was considered under weight when

found to be 197 pounds. The apire had carried this up eighty

perpendicular yards,—part of the way by a steep passage, but the

greater part up notched poles, placed in a zigzag line up the shaft.

According to the general regulation, the apire is not allowed to halt

for breath, except the mine is six hundred feet deep. The average load

is considered as rather more than 200 pounds, and I have been assured

that one of 300 pounds (twenty-two stone and a half) by way of a trial

has been brought up from the deepest mine! At this time the apires were

bringing up the usual load twelve times in the day; that is 2400 pounds

from eighty yards deep; and they were employed in the intervals in

breaking and picking ore.

These men, excepting from accidents, are healthy, and appear cheerful.

Their bodies are not very muscular. They rarely eat meat once a week,

and never oftener, and then only the hard dry charqui. Although with a

knowledge that the labour was voluntary, it was nevertheless quite

revolting to see the state in which they reached the mouth of the mine;

their bodies bent forward, leaning with their arms on the steps, their

legs bowed, their muscles quivering, the perspiration streaming from

their faces over their breasts, their nostrils distended, the corners

of their mouth forcibly drawn back, and the expulsion of their

breath most laborious. Each time they draw their breath they utter an

articulate cry of “ay-ay,” which ends in a sound rising from deep in

the chest, but shrill like the note of a fife. After staggering to the

pile of ore, they emptied the “carpacho;” in two or three seconds

recovering their breath, they wiped the sweat from their brows, and

apparently quite fresh descended the mine again at a quick pace. This

appears to me a wonderful instance of the amount of labour which habit,

for it can be nothing else, will enable a man to endure.

In the evening, talking with the _mayor-domo_ of these mines about the

number of foreigners now scattered over the whole country, he told me

that, though quite a young man, he remembers when he was a boy at

school at Coquimbo, a holiday being given to see the captain of an

English ship, who was brought to the city to speak to the governor. He

believes that nothing would have induced any boy in the school, himself

included, to have gone close to the Englishman; so deeply had they been

impressed with an idea of the heresy, contamination, and evil to be

derived from contact with such a person. To this day they relate the

atrocious actions of the bucaniers; and especially of one man, who took

away the figure of the Virgin Mary, and returned the year after for

that of St. Joseph, saying it was a pity the lady should not have a

husband. I heard also of an old lady who, at a dinner at Coquimbo,

remarked how wonderfully strange it was that she should have lived to

dine in the same room with an Englishman; for she remembered as a girl,

that twice, at the mere cry of “Los Ingleses,” every soul, carrying

what valuables they could, had taken to the mountains.

14_th._—We reached Coquimbo, where we stayed a few days. The town is

remarkable for nothing but its extreme quietness. It is said to contain

from 6000 to 8000 inhabitants. On the morning of the 17th it rained

lightly, the first time this year, for about five hours. The farmers,

who plant corn near the sea-coast where the atmosphere is more humid,

taking advantage of this shower, would break up the ground; after a

second they would put the seed in; and if a third shower should fall,

they would reap a good harvest in the spring. It was interesting to

watch the effect of this trifling amount of moisture. Twelve hours

afterwards the ground appeared as dry as ever; yet after an interval of

ten days all the hills were faintly tinged with green

patches; the grass being sparingly scattered in hair-like fibres a full

inch in length. Before this shower every part of the surface was bare

as on a high-road.

Coquimbo, Chile

In the evening, Captain Fitz Roy and myself were dining with Mr.

Edwards, an English resident well known for his hospitality by all who

have visited Coquimbo, when a sharp earthquake happened. I heard the

forecoming rumble, but from the screams of the ladies, the running of

the servants, and the rush of several of the gentlemen to the doorway,

I could not distinguish the motion. Some of the women afterwards were

crying with terror, and one gentleman said he should not be able to

sleep all night, or if he did, it would only be to dream of falling

houses. The father of this person had lately lost all his property at

Talcahuano, and he himself had only just escaped a falling roof at

Valparaiso in 1822. He mentioned a curious coincidence which then

happened: he was playing at cards, when a German, one of the party, got

up, and said he would never sit in a room in these countries with the

door shut, as, owing to his having done so, he had nearly lost his life

at Copiapó.

Accordingly he opened the door; and no sooner had he done this, than he

cried out, “Here it comes again!” and the famous shock commenced. The

whole party escaped. The danger in an earthquake is not from the time

lost in opening the door, but from the chance of its becoming jammed by

the movement of the walls.

It is impossible to be much surprised at the fear which natives and old

residents, though some of them known to be men of great command of

mind, so generally experience during earthquakes. I think, however,

this excess of panic may be partly attributed to a want of habit in

governing their fear, as it is not a feeling they are ashamed of.

Indeed, the natives do not like to see a person indifferent. I heard of

two Englishmen who, sleeping in the open air during a smart shock,

knowing that there was no danger, did not rise. The natives cried out

indignantly, “Look at those heretics, they do not even get out of their

beds!”

I spent some days in examining the step-formed terraces of shingle,

first noticed by Captain B. Hall, and believed by Mr. Lyell to have

been formed by the sea during the gradual rising of the land. This

certainly is the true explanation, for I found numerous shells of

existing species on these terraces. Five narrow, gently sloping,

fringe-like terraces rise one behind the other, and where best

developed are formed of shingle: they front the bay, and sweep up both

sides of the valley. At Guasco, north of Coquimbo, the phenomenon is

displayed on a much grander scale, so as to strike with surprise even

some of the inhabitants. The terraces are there much broader, and may

be called plains, in some parts there are six of them, but generally

only five; they run up the valley for thirty-seven miles from the

coast. These step-formed terraces or fringes closely resemble those in

the valley of S. Cruz, and, except in being on a smaller scale, those

great ones along the whole coast-line of Patagonia. They have

undoubtedly been formed by the denuding power of the sea, during long

periods of rest in the gradual elevation of the continent.

Shells of many existing species not only lie on the surface of the

terraces at Coquimbo (to a height of 250 feet), but are embedded in a

friable calcareous rock, which in some places is

as much as between twenty and thirty feet in thickness, but is of

little extent. These modern beds rest on an ancient tertiary formation

containing shells, apparently all extinct. Although I examined so many

hundred miles of coast on the Pacific, as well as Atlantic side of the

continent, I found no regular strata containing sea-shells of recent

species, excepting at this place, and at a few points northward on the

road to Guasco. This fact appears to me highly remarkable; for the

explanation generally given by geologists, of the absence in any

district of stratified fossiliferous deposits of a given period,

namely, that the surface then existed as dry land, is not here

applicable; for we know from the shells strewed on the surface and

embedded in loose sand or mould, that the land for thousands of miles

along both coasts has lately been submerged. The explanation, no doubt,

must be sought in the fact, that the whole southern part of the

continent has been for a long time slowly rising; and therefore that

all matter deposited along shore in shallow water must have been soon

brought up and slowly exposed to the wearing action of the sea-beach;

and it is only in comparatively shallow water that the greater number

of marine organic beings can flourish, and in such water it is

obviously impossible that strata of any great thickness can accumulate.

To show the vast power of the wearing action of sea-beaches, we need

only appeal to the great cliffs along the present coast of Patagonia,

and to the escarpments or ancient sea-cliffs at different levels, one

above another, on that same line of coast.

The old underlying tertiary formation at Coquimbo appears to be of

about the same age with several deposits on the coast of Chile (of

which that of Navedad is the principal one), and with the great

formation of Patagonia. Both at Navedad and in Patagonia there is

evidence, that since the shells (a list of which has been seen by

Professor E. Forbes) there intombed were living, there has been a

subsidence of several hundred feet, as well as an ensuing elevation. It

may naturally be asked how it comes that although no extensive

fossiliferous deposits of the recent period, nor of any period

intermediate between it and the ancient tertiary epoch, have been

preserved on either side of the continent, yet that at this ancient

tertiary epoch, sedimentary matter containing fossil remains should

have been deposited and preserved at different points in north and

south

lines, over a space of 1100 miles on the shores of the Pacific, and of

at least 1350 miles on the shores of the Atlantic, and in an east and

west line of 700 miles across the widest part of the continent? I

believe the explanation is not difficult, and that it is perhaps

applicable to nearly analogous facts observed in other quarters of the

world. Considering the enormous power of denudation which the sea

possesses, as shown by numberless facts, it is not probable that a

sedimentary deposit, when being upraised, could pass through the ordeal

of the beach, so as to be preserved in sufficient masses to last to a

distant period, without it were originally of wide extent and of

considerable thickness: now it is impossible on a moderately shallow

bottom, which alone is favourable to most living creatures, that a

thick and widely extended covering of sediment could be spread out,

without the bottom sank down to receive the successive layers. This

seems to have actually taken place at about the same period in southern

Patagonia and Chile, though these places are a thousand miles apart.

Hence, if prolonged movements of approximately contemporaneous

subsidence are generally widely extensive, as I am strongly inclined to

believe from my examination of the Coral Reefs of the great oceans—or

if, confining our view to South America, the subsiding movements have

been coextensive with those of elevation, by which, within the same

period of existing shells, the shores of Peru, Chile, Tierra del Fuego,

Patagonia, and La Plata have been upraised—then we can see that at the

same time, at far distant points, circumstances would have been

favourable to the formation of fossiliferous deposits, of wide extent

and of considerable thickness; and such deposits, consequently, would

have a good chance of resisting the wear and tear of successive

beach-lines, and of lasting to a future epoch.

_May_ 21_st._—I set out in company with Don Jose Edwards to the

silver-mine of Arqueros, and thence up the valley of Coquimbo. Passing

through a mountainous country, we reached by nightfall the mines

belonging to Mr. Edwards. I enjoyed my night’s rest here from a reason

which will not be fully appreciated in England, namely, the absence of

fleas! The rooms in Coquimbo swarm with them; but they will not

live here at the height of only three or four thousand feet: it can

scarcely be the trifling diminution of temperature, but some other

cause which destroys these troublesome insects at this place. The mines

are now in a bad state, though they formerly yielded about 2000 pounds

in weight of silver a year. It has been said that “a person with a

copper-mine will gain; with silver he may gain; but with gold he is

sure to lose.” This is not true: all the large Chilian fortunes have

been made by mines of the more precious metals. A short time since an

English physician returned to England from Copiapó, taking with him the

profits of one share in a silver-mine, which amounted to about 24,000

pounds sterling. No doubt a copper-mine with care is a sure game,

whereas the other is gambling, or rather taking a ticket in a lottery.

The owners lose great quantities of rich ores; for no precautions can

prevent robberies. I heard of a gentleman laying a bet with another,

that one of his men should rob him before his face. The ore when

brought out of the mine is broken into pieces, and the useless stone

thrown on one side. A couple of the miners who were thus employed,

pitched, as if by accident, two fragments away at the same moment, and

then cried out for a joke “Let us see which rolls furthest.” The owner,

who was standing by, bet a cigar with his friend on the race. The miner

by this means watched the very point amongst the rubbish where the

stone lay. In the evening he picked it up and carried it to his master,

showing him a rich mass of silver-ore, and saying, “This was the stone

on which you won a cigar by its rolling so far.”

_May_ 23_rd._—We descended into the fertile valley of Coquimbo, and

followed it till we reached an Hacienda belonging to a relation of Don

Jose, where we stayed the next day. I then rode one day’s journey

farther, to see what were declared to be some petrified shells and

beans, which latter turned out to be small quartz pebbles. We passed

through several small villages; and the valley was beautifully

cultivated, and the whole scenery very grand. We were here near the

main Cordillera, and the surrounding hills were lofty. In all parts of

Northern Chile fruit trees produce much more abundantly at a

considerable height near the Andes than in the lower country. The figs

and grapes of this district are

famous for their excellence, and are cultivated to a great extent. This

valley is, perhaps, the most productive one north of Quillota. I

believe it contains, including Coquimbo, 25,000 inhabitants. The next

day I returned to the Hacienda, and thence, together with Don Jose, to

Coquimbo.

_June_ 2_nd._—We set out for the valley of Guasco, following the

coast-road, which was considered rather less desert than the other. Our

first day’s ride was to a solitary house, called Yerba Buena, where

there was pasture for our horses. The shower mentioned as having fallen

a fortnight ago, only reached about half-way to Guasco; we had,

therefore, in the first part of our journey a most faint tinge of

green, which soon faded quite away. Even where brightest, it was

scarcely sufficient to remind one of the fresh turf and budding flowers

of the spring of other countries. While travelling through these

deserts one feels like a prisoner shut up in a gloomy court, who longs

to see something green and to smell a moist atmosphere.

_June_ 3_rd._—Yerba Buena to Carizal. During the first part of the day

we crossed a mountainous rocky desert, and afterwards a long deep sandy

plain, strewed with broken sea-shells. There was very little water, and

that little saline: the whole country, from the coast to the

Cordillera, is an uninhabited desert. I saw traces only of one living

animal in abundance, namely, the shells of a Bulimus, which were

collected together in extraordinary numbers on the driest spots. In the

spring one humble little plant sends out a few leaves, and on these the

snails feed. As they are seen only very early in the morning, when the

ground is slightly damp with dew, the Guasos believe that they are bred

from it. I have observed in other places that extremely dry and sterile

districts, where the soil is calcareous, are extraordinarily favourable

to land-shells. At Carizal there were a few cottages, some brackish

water, and a trace of cultivation: but it was with difficulty that we

purchased a little corn and straw for our horses.

4_th._—Carizal to Sauce. We continued to ride over desert plains,

tenanted by large herds of guanaco. We crossed also the valley of

Chañeral; which, although the most fertile one between Guasco and

Coquimbo, is very narrow, and produces so little pasture that we could

not purchase any for our horses. At Sauce we found a very civil old

gentleman, superintending

a copper-smelting furnace. As an especial favour, he allowed me to

purchase at a high price an armful of dirty straw, which was all the

poor horses had for supper after their long day’s journey. Few

smelting-furnaces are now at work in any part of Chile; it is found

more profitable, on account of the extreme scarcity of firewood, and

from the Chilian method of reduction being so unskilful, to ship the

ore for Swansea. The next day we crossed some mountains to Freyrina, in

the valley of Guasco. During each day’s ride farther northward, the

vegetation became more and more scanty; even the great chandelier-like

cactus was here replaced by a different and much smaller species.

During the winter months, both in Northern Chile and in Peru, a uniform

bank of clouds hangs, at no great height, over the Pacific. From the

mountains we had a very striking view of this white and brilliant

aërial field, which sent arms up the valleys, leaving islands and

promontories in the same manner as the sea does in the Chonos

archipelago and in Tierra del Fuego.

We stayed two days at Freyrina. In the valley of Guasco there are four

small towns. At the mouth there is the port, a spot entirely desert,

and without any water in the immediate neighbourhood. Five leagues

higher up stands Freyrina, a long straggling village, with decent

whitewashed houses. Again, ten leagues further up Ballenar is situated,

and above this Guasco Alto, a horticultural village, famous for its

dried fruit. On a clear day the view up the valley is very fine; the

straight opening terminates in the far-distant snowy Cordillera; on

each side an infinity of crossing lines are blended together in a

beautiful haze. The foreground is singular from the number of parallel

and step-formed terraces; and the included strip of green valley, with

its willow-bushes, is contrasted on both hands with the naked hills.

That the surrounding country was most barren will be readily believed,

when it is known that a shower of rain had not fallen during the last

thirteen months. The inhabitants heard with the greatest envy of the

rain at Coquimbo; from the appearance of the sky they had hopes of

equally good fortune, which, a fortnight afterwards, were realised. I

was at Copiapó at the time; and there the people, with equal envy,

talked of the abundant rain at Guasco. After two or three very dry

years, perhaps with not more than one shower during the

whole time, a rainy year generally follows; and this does more harm

than even the drought. The rivers swell, and cover with gravel and sand

the narrow strips of ground which alone are fit for cultivation. The

floods also injure the irrigating ditches. Great devastation had thus

been caused three years ago.

_June_ 8_th._—We rode on to Ballenar, which takes its name from

Ballenagh in Ireland, the birthplace of the family of O’Higgins, who,

under the Spanish government, were presidents and generals in Chile. As

the rocky mountains on each hand were concealed by clouds, the

terrace-like plains gave to the valley an appearance like that of Santa

Cruz in Patagonia. After spending one day at Ballenar I set out, on the

10th, for the upper part of the valley of Copiapó. We rode all day over

an uninteresting country. I am tired of repeating the epithets barren

and sterile. These words, however, as commonly used, are comparative; I

have always applied them to the plains of Patagonia, which can boast of

spiny bushes and some tufts of grass; and this is absolute fertility,

as compared with Northern Chile. Here again, there are not many spaces

of two hundred yards square, where some little bush, cactus or lichen,

may not be discovered by careful examination; and in the soil seeds lie

dormant ready to spring up during the first rainy winter. In Peru real

deserts occur over wide tracts of country. In the evening we arrived at

a valley in which the bed of the streamlet was damp: following it up,

we came to tolerably good water. During the night the stream, from not

being evaporated and absorbed so quickly, flows a league lower down

than during the day. Sticks were plentiful for firewood, so that it was

a good place of bivouac for us; but for the poor animals there was not

a mouthful to eat.

_June_ 11_th._—We rode without stopping for twelve hours till we

reached an old smelting-furnace, where there was water and firewood;

but our horses again had nothing to eat, being shut up in an old

courtyard. The line of road was hilly, and the distant views

interesting from the varied colours of the bare mountains. It was

almost a pity to see the sun shining constantly over so useless a

country; such splendid weather ought to have brightened fields and

pretty gardens. The next day we reached the valley of Copiapó. I was

heartily glad of it; for the whole journey was a continued source of

anxiety;

it was most disagreeable to hear, whilst eating our own suppers, our

horses gnawing the posts to which they were tied, and to have no means

of relieving their hunger. To all appearance, however, the animals were

quite fresh; and no one could have told that they had eaten nothing for

the last fifty-five hours.

I had a letter of introduction to Mr. Bingley, who received me very

kindly at the Hacienda of Potrero Seco. This estate is between twenty

and thirty miles long, but very narrow, being generally only two fields

wide, one on each side the river. In some parts the estate is of no

width, that is to say, the land cannot be irrigated, and therefore is

valueless, like the surrounding rocky desert. The small quantity of

cultivated land in the whole line of valley does not so much depend on

inequalities of level, and consequent unfitness for irrigation, as on

the small supply of water. The river this year was remarkably full:

here, high up the valley, it reached to the horse’s belly, and was

about fifteen yards wide, and rapid; lower down it becomes smaller and

smaller, and is generally quite lost, as happened during one period of

thirty years, so that not a drop entered the sea. The inhabitants watch

a storm over the Cordillera with great interest; as one good fall of

snow provides them with water for the ensuing year. This is of

infinitely more consequence than rain in the lower country. Rain, as

often as it falls, which is about once in every two or three years, is

a great advantage, because the cattle and mules can for some time

afterwards find a little pasture in the mountains. But without snow on

the Andes, desolation extends throughout the valley. It is on record

that three times nearly all the inhabitants have been obliged to

emigrate to the south. This year there was plenty of water, and every

man irrigated his ground as much as he chose; but it has frequently

been necessary to post soldiers at the sluices, to see that each estate

took only its proper allowance during so many hours in the week. The

valley is said to contain 12,000 souls, but its produce is sufficient

only for three months in the year; the rest of the supply being drawn

from Valparaiso and the south. Before the discovery of the famous

silver-mines of Chanuncillo, Copiapó was in a rapid state of decay; but

now it is in a very thriving condition; and the town, which was

completely overthrown by an earthquake, has been rebuilt.

The valley of Copiapó, forming a mere ribbon of green in a desert, runs

in a very southerly direction; so that it is of considerable length to

its source in the Cordillera. The valleys of Guasco and Copiapó may

both be considered as long narrow islands, separated from the rest of

Chile by deserts of rock instead of by salt water. Northward of these,

there is one other very miserable valley, called Paposo, which contains

about two hundred souls; and then there extends the real desert of

Atacama—a barrier far worse than the most turbulent ocean. After

staying a few days at Potrero Seco, I proceeded up the valley to the

house of Don Benito Cruz, to whom I had a letter of introduction. I

found him most hospitable; indeed it is impossible to bear too strong

testimony to the kindness with which travellers are received in almost

every part of South America. The next day I hired some mules to take me

by the ravine of Jolquera into the central Cordillera. On the second

night the weather seemed to foretell a storm of snow or rain, and

whilst lying in our beds we felt a trifling shock of an earthquake.

The connexion between earthquakes and the weather has been often

disputed: it appears to me to be a point of great interest, which is

little understood. Humboldt has remarked in one part of the _ Personal

Narrative,_[1] that it would be difficult for any person who had long

resided in New Andalusia, or in Lower Peru, to deny that there exists

some connection between these phenomena: in another part, however, he

seems to think the connexion fanciful. At Guayaquil it is said that a

heavy shower in the dry season is invariably followed by an earthquake.

In Northern Chile, from the extreme infrequency of rain, or even of

weather foreboding rain, the probability of accidental coincidences

becomes very small; yet the inhabitants are here most firmly convinced

of some connexion between the state of the atmosphere and of the

trembling of the ground: I was much struck by this when mentioning to

some people at Copiapó that there had been a sharp shock at Coquimbo:

they

immediately cried out, “How fortunate! there will be plenty of pasture

there this year.” To their minds an earthquake foretold rain as surely

as rain foretold abundant pasture. Certainly it did so happen that on

the very day of the earthquake that shower of rain fell which I have

described as in ten days’ time producing a thin sprinkling of grass. At

other times rain has followed earthquakes at a period of the year when

it is a far greater prodigy than the earthquake itself: this happened

after the shock of November 1822, and again in 1829 at Valparaiso; also

after that of September 1833, at Tacna. A person must be somewhat

habituated to the climate of these countries to perceive the extreme

improbability of rain falling at such seasons, except as a consequence

of some law quite unconnected with the ordinary course of the weather.

In the cases of great volcanic eruptions, as that of Coseguina, where

torrents of rain fell at a time of the year most unusual for it, and

“almost unprecedented in Central America,” it is not difficult to

understand that the volumes of vapour and clouds of ashes might have

disturbed the atmospheric equilibrium. Humboldt extends this view to

the case of earthquakes unaccompanied by eruptions; but I can hardly

conceive it possible that the small quantity of aëriform fluids which

then escape from the fissured ground can produce such remarkable

effects. There appears much probability in the view first proposed by

Mr. P. Scrope, that when the barometer is low, and when rain might

naturally be expected to fall, the diminished pressure of the

atmosphere over a wide extent of country might well determine the

precise day on which the earth, already stretched to the utmost by the

subterranean forces, should yield, crack, and consequently tremble. It

is, however, doubtful how far this idea will explain the circumstance

of torrents of rain falling in the dry season during several days,

after an earthquake unaccompanied by an eruption; such cases seem to

bespeak some more intimate connexion between the atmospheric and

subterranean regions.

[1] Vol. iv, p. 11 and vol. ii, p. 217. For the remarks on Guayaquil

see Silliman’s _Journ._ vol. xxiv, p. 384. For those on Tacna by Mr.

Hamilton see _Trans. of British Association,_ 1840. For those on

Coseguina see Mr. Caldcleugh in _Phil. Trans._ 1835. In the former

edition I collected several references on the coincidences between

sudden falls in the barometer and earthquakes; and between earthquakes

and meteors.

Finding little of interest in this part of the ravine, we retraced our

steps to the house of Don Benito, where I stayed two days collecting

fossil shells and wood. Great prostrate silicified trunks of trees,

embedded in a conglomerate, were

extraordinarily numerous. I measured one which was fifteen feet in

circumference: how surprising it is that every atom of the woody matter

in this great cylinder should have been removed and replaced by silex

so perfectly that each vessel and pore is preserved! These trees

flourished at about the period of our lower chalk; they all belonged to

the fir-tribe. It was amusing to hear the inhabitants discussing the

nature of the fossil shells which I collected, almost in the same terms

as were used a century ago in Europe,—namely, whether or not they had

been thus “born by nature.” My geological examination of the country

generally created a good deal of surprise amongst the Chilenos: it was

long before they could be convinced that I was not hunting for mines.

This was sometimes troublesome: I found the most ready way of

explaining my employment was to ask them how it was that they

themselves were not curious concerning earthquakes and volcanos?—why

some springs were hot and others cold?—why there were mountains in

Chile, and not a hill in La Plata? These bare questions at once

satisfied and silenced the greater number; some, however (like a few in

England who are a century behindhand), thought that all such inquiries

were useless and impious; and that it was quite sufficient that God had

thus made the mountains.

An order had recently been issued that all stray dogs should be killed,

and we saw many lying dead on the road. A great number had lately gone

mad, and several men had been bitten and had died in consequence. On

several occasions hydrophobia has prevailed in this valley. It is

remarkable thus to find so strange and dreadful a disease appearing

time after time in the same isolated spot. It has been remarked that

certain villages in England are in like manner much more subject to

this visitation than others. Dr. Unanùe states that hydrophobia was

first known in South America in 1803: this statement is corroborated by

Azara and Ulloa having never heard of it in their time. Dr. Unanùe says

that it broke out in Central America, and slowly travelled southward.

It reached Arequipa in 1807; and it is said that some men there, who

had not been bitten, were affected, as were some negroes, who had eaten

a bullock which had died of hydrophobia. At Ica forty-two people thus

miserably perished.

The disease came on between twelve and ninety days after the bite; and

in those cases where it did come on, death ensued invariably within

five days. After 1808 a long interval ensued without any cases. On

inquiry, I did not hear of hydrophobia in Van Diemen’s Land, or in

Australia; and Burchell says that during the five years he was at the

Cape of Good Hope, he never heard of an instance of it. Webster asserts

that at the Azores hydrophobia has never occurred; and the same

assertion has been made with respect to Mauritius and St. Helena.[2] In

so strange a disease some information might possibly be gained by

considering the circumstances under which it originates in distant

climates; for it is improbable that a dog already bitten should have

been brought to these distant countries.

[2] _Observa. sobre el clima de Lima,_ p. 67.—Azara’s _Travels,_ vol.

i, p. 381.—Ulloa’s _ Voyage,_ vol. ii, p. 28.—Burchell’s _Travels,_

vol. ii, p. 524.—Webster’s _Description of the Azores,_ p.

124.—_Voyage à l’Isle de France par un Officier du Roi,_ tome i, p.

248.—_Description of St. Helena,_ p. 123.

At night a stranger arrived at the house of Don Benito and asked

permission to sleep there. He said he had been wandering about the

mountains for seventeen days, having lost his way. He started from

Guasco, and being accustomed to travelling in the Cordillera, did not

expect any difficulty in following the track to Copiapó; but he soon

became involved in a labyrinth of mountains whence he could not escape.

Some of his mules had fallen over precipices and he had been in great

distress. His chief difficulty arose from not knowing where to find

water in the lower country, so that he was obliged to keep bordering

the central ranges.

We returned down the valley, and on the 22nd reached the town of

Copiapó. The lower part of the valley is broad, forming a fine plain

like that of Quillota. The town covers a considerable space of ground,

each house possessing a garden: but it is an uncomfortable place, and

the dwellings are poorly furnished. Every one seems bent on the one

object of making money, and then migrating as quickly as possible. All

the inhabitants are more or less directly concerned with mines; and

mines and ores are the sole subjects of conversation. Necessaries of

all sorts are extremely dear; as the distance from the town to the port

is eighteen leagues, and the land

carriage very expensive. A fowl costs five or six shillings; meat is

nearly as dear as in England; firewood, or rather sticks, are brought

on donkeys from a distance of two and three days’ journey within the

Cordillera; and pasturage for animals is a shilling a day: all this for

South America is wonderfully exorbitant.

_June_ 26_th._—I hired a guide and eight mules to take me into the

Cordillera by a different line from my last excursion. As the country

was utterly desert, we took a cargo and a half of barley mixed with

chopped straw. About two leagues above the town a broad valley called

the “Despoblado,” or uninhabited, branches off from that one by which

we had arrived. Although a valley of the grandest dimensions, and

leading to a pass across the Cordillera, yet it is completely dry,

excepting perhaps for a few days during some very rainy winter. The

sides of the crumbling mountains were furrowed by scarcely any ravines;

and the bottom of the main valley, filled with shingle, was smooth and

nearly level. No considerable torrent could ever have flowed down this

bed of shingle; for if it had, a great cliff-bounded channel, as in all

the southern valleys, would assuredly have been formed. I feel little

doubt that this valley, as well as those mentioned by travellers in

Peru, were left in the state we now see them by the waves of the sea,

as the land slowly rose. I observed in one place where the Despoblado

was joined by a ravine (which in almost any other chain would have been

called a grand valley), that its bed, though composed merely of sand

and gravel, was higher than that of its tributary. A mere rivulet of

water, in the course of an hour, would have cut a channel for itself;

but it was evident that ages had passed away, and no such rivulet had

drained this great tributary. It was curious to behold the machinery,

if such a term may be used, for the drainage, all, with the last

trifling exception, perfect, yet without any signs of action. Every one

must have remarked how mud-banks, left by the retiring tide, imitate in

miniature a country with hill and dale; and here we have the original

model in rock, formed as the continent rose during the secular

retirement of the ocean, instead of during the ebbing and flowing of

the tides. If a shower of rain falls on the

mud-bank, when left dry, it deepens the already-formed shallow lines of

excavation; and so it is with the rain of successive centuries on the

bank of rock and soil, which we call a continent.

We rode on after it was dark, till we reached a side ravine with a

small well, called “Agua amarga.” The water deserved its name, for

besides being saline it was most offensively putrid and bitter; so that

we could not force ourselves to drink either tea or maté. I suppose the

distance from the river of Copiapó to this spot was at least

twenty-five or thirty English miles; in the whole space there was not a

single drop of water, the country deserving the name of desert in the

strictest sense. Yet about half-way we passed some old Indian ruins

near Punta Gorda: I noticed also in front of some of the valleys which

branch off from the Despoblado, two piles of stones placed a little way

apart, and directed so as to point up the mouths of these small

valleys. My companions knew nothing about them, and only answered my

queries by their imperturbable “quien sabe?”

I observed Indian ruins in several parts of the Cordillera: the most

perfect which I saw were the Ruinas de Tambillos in the Uspallata Pass.

Small square rooms were there huddled together in separate groups: some

of the doorways were yet standing; they were formed by a cross slab of

stone only about three feet high. Ulloa has remarked on the lowness of

the doors in the ancient Peruvian dwellings. These houses, when

perfect, must have been capable of containing a considerable number of

persons. Tradition says that they were used as halting-places for the

Incas, when they crossed the mountains. Traces of Indian habitations

have been discovered in many other parts, where it does not appear

probable that they were used as mere resting-places, but yet where the

land is as utterly unfit for any kind of cultivation as it is near the

Tambillos or at the Incas Bridge, or in the Portillo Pass, at all which

places I saw ruins. In the ravine of Jajuel, near Aconcagua, where

there is no pass, I heard of remains of houses situated at a great

height, where it is extremely cold and sterile. At first I imagined

that these buildings had been places of refuge, built by the Indians on

the first arrival of the Spaniards; but I have since been inclined to

speculate on the probability of a small change of climate.

In this northern part of Chile, within the Cordillera, old Indian

houses are said to be especially numerous: by digging amongst the

ruins, bits of woollen articles, instruments of precious metals, and

heads of Indian corn, are not unfrequently discovered: an arrow-head

made of agate, and of precisely the same form with those now used in

Tierra del Fuego, was given me. I am aware that the Peruvian Indians

now frequently inhabit most lofty and bleak situations; but at Copiapó

I was assured by men who had spent their lives in travelling through

the Andes, that there were very many (_muchisimas_) buildings at

heights so great as almost to border on the perpetual snow, and in

parts where there exist no passes, and where the land produces

absolutely nothing, and what is still more extraordinary, where there

is no water. Nevertheless it is the opinion of the people of the

country (although they are much puzzled by the circumstance), that,

from the appearance of the houses, the Indians must have used them as

places of residence. In this valley, at Punta Gorda, the remains

consisted of seven or eight square little rooms, which were of a

similar form with those at Tambillos, but built chiefly of mud, which

the present inhabitants cannot, either here or, according to Ulloa, in

Peru, imitate in durability. They were situated in the most conspicuous

and defenceless position, at the bottom of the flat broad valley. There

was no water nearer than three or four leagues, and that only in very

small quantity, and bad: the soil was absolutely sterile; I looked in

vain even for a lichen adhering to the rocks. At the present day, with

the advantage of beasts of burden, a mine, unless it were very rich,

could scarcely be worked here with profit. Yet the Indians formerly

chose it as a place of residence! If at the present time two or three

showers of rain were to fall annually, instead of one, as now is the

case, during as many years, a small rill of water would probably be

formed in this great valley; and then, by irrigation (which was

formerly so well understood by the Indians), the soil would easily be

rendered sufficiently productive to support a few families.

I have convincing proofs that this part of the continent of South

America has been elevated near the coast at least from 400 to 500, and

in some parts from 1000 to 1300 feet, since the epoch of existing

shells; and farther inland the rise possibly

may have been greater. As the peculiarly arid character of the climate

is evidently a consequence of the height of the Cordillera, we may feel

almost sure that before the later elevations, the atmosphere could not

have been so completely drained of its moisture as it now is; and as

the rise has been gradual, so would have been the change in climate. On

this notion of a change of climate since the buildings were inhabited,

the ruins must be of extreme antiquity, but I do not think their

preservation under the Chilian climate any great difficulty. We must

also admit on this notion (and this perhaps is a greater difficulty)

that man has inhabited South America for an immensely long period,

inasmuch as any change of climate effected by the elevation of the land

must have been extremely gradual. At Valparaiso, within the last 220

years, the rise has been somewhat less than 19 feet: at Lima a

sea-beach has certainly been upheaved from 80 to 90 feet, within the

Indio-human period: but such small elevations could have had little

power in deflecting the moisture-bringing atmospheric currents. Dr.

Lund, however, found human skeletons in the caves of Brazil, the

appearance of which induced him to believe that the Indian race has

existed during a vast lapse of time in South America.

When at Lima, I conversed on these subjects[3] with Mr. Gill, a civil

engineer, who had seen much of the interior country. He told me that a

conjecture of a change of climate had sometimes crossed his mind; but

that he thought that the greater portion of land, now incapable of

cultivation, but covered with Indian ruins, had been reduced to this

state by the water-conduits, which the Indians formerly constructed on

so wonderful a scale, having been injured by neglect and by

subterranean movements. I may here mention that the Peruvians actually

carried their irrigating streams in tunnels through hills of solid

rock. Mr. Gill told me he had been employed professionally to examine

one: he found the passage low, narrow, crooked, and not of uniform

breadth, but of very considerable length. Is it not most wonderful that

men should

have attempted such operations, without the use of iron or gunpowder?

Mr. Gill also mentioned to me a most interesting, and, as far as I am

aware, quite unparalleled case, of a subterranean disturbance having

changed the drainage of a country. Travelling from Casma to Huaraz (not

very far distant from Lima), he found a plain covered with ruins and

marks of ancient cultivation but now quite barren. Near it was the dry

course of a considerable river, whence the water for irrigation had

formerly been conducted. There was nothing in the appearance of the

watercourse to indicate that the river had not flowed there a few years

previously; in some parts, beds of sand and gravel were spread out; in

others, the solid rock had been worn into a broad channel, which in one

spot was about 40 yards in breadth and 8 feet deep. It is self-evident

that a person following up the course of a stream will always ascend at

a greater or less inclination: Mr. Gill, therefore, was much

astonished, when walking up the bed of this ancient river, to find

himself suddenly going down hill. He imagined that the downward slope

had a fall of about 40 or 50 feet perpendicular. We here have

unequivocal evidence that a ridge had been uplifted right across the

old bed of a stream. From the moment the river-course was thus arched,

the water must necessarily have been thrown back, and a new channel

formed. From that moment, also, the neighbouring plain must have lost

its fertilising stream, and become a desert.

[3] Temple, in his travels through Upper Peru, or Bolivia, in going

from Potosi to Oruro, says “I saw many Indian villages or dwellings in

ruins, up even to the very tops of the mountains, attesting a former

population where now all is desolate.” He makes similar remarks in

another place; but I cannot tell whether this desolation has been

caused by a want of population, or by an altered condition of the

land.

_June_ 27_th._—We set out early in the morning, and by mid-day reached

the ravine of Paypote, where there is a tiny rill of water, with a

little vegetation, and even a few algarroba trees, a kind of mimosa.

From having firewood, a smelting-furnace had formerly been built here:

we found a solitary man in charge of it, whose sole employment was

hunting guanacos. At night it froze sharply; but having plenty of wood

for our fire, we kept ourselves warm.

_June_ 28_th._—We continued gradually ascending, and the valley now

changed into a ravine. During the day we saw several guanacos, and the

track of the closely-allied species, the Vicuña: this latter animal is

pre-eminently alpine in its habits; it seldom descends much below the

limit of perpetual snow, and therefore haunts even a more lofty and

sterile situation than the guanaco.

The only other animal which we saw in any number was a small fox: I

suppose this animal preys on the mice and other small rodents which, as

long as there is the least vegetation, subsist in considerable numbers

in very desert places. In Patagonia, even on the borders of the

salinas, where a drop of fresh water can never be found, excepting dew,

these little animals swarm. Next to lizards, mice appear to be able to

support existence on the smallest and driest portions of the earth—even

on islets in the midst of great oceans.

The scene on all sides showed desolation, brightened and made palpable

by a clear, unclouded sky. For a time such scenery is sublime, but this

feeling cannot last, and then it becomes uninteresting. We bivouacked

at the foot of the “primera linea,” or the first line of the partition

of the waters. The streams, however, on the east side do not flow to

the Atlantic, but into an elevated district, in the middle of which

there is a large salina, or salt lake;—thus forming a little Caspian

Sea at the height, perhaps, of ten thousand feet. Where we slept, there

were some considerable patches of snow, but they do not remain

throughout the year. The winds in these lofty regions obey very regular

laws; every day a fresh breeze blows up the valley, and at night, an

hour or two after sunset, the air from the cold regions above descends

as through a funnel. This night it blew a gale of wind, and the

temperature must have been considerably below the freezing-point, for

water in a vessel soon became a block of ice. No clothes seemed to

oppose any obstacle to the air; I suffered very much from the cold, so

that I could not sleep, and in the morning rose with my body quite dull

and benumbed.

In the Cordillera farther southward people lose their lives from

snow-storms; here, it sometimes happens from another cause. My guide,

when a boy of fourteen years old, was passing the Cordillera with a

party in the month of May; and while in the central parts, a furious

gale of wind arose, so that the men could hardly cling on their mules,

and stones were flying along the ground. The day was cloudless, and not

a speck of snow fell, but the temperature was low. It is probable that

the thermometer would not have stood very many degrees below the

freezing-point, but the effect on their bodies, ill protected by

clothing, must have been in proportion to the rapidity of the current

of cold air. The gale lasted for more than a day; the

men began to lose their strength, and the mules would not move onwards.

My guide’s brother tried to return, but he perished, and his body was

found two years afterwards, lying by the side of his mule near the

road, with the bridle still in his hand. Two other men in the party

lost their fingers and toes; and out of two hundred mules and thirty

cows, only fourteen mules escaped alive. Many years ago the whole of a

large party are supposed to have perished from a similar cause, but

their bodies to this day have never been discovered. The union of a

cloudless sky, low temperature, and a furious gale of wind, must be, I

should think, in all parts of the world an unusual occurrence.

_June_ 29_th._—We gladly travelled down the valley to our former

night’s lodging, and thence to near the Agua amarga. On July 1st we

reached the valley of Copiapó. The smell of the fresh clover was quite

delightful, after the scentless air of the dry sterile Despoblado.

Whilst staying in the town I heard an account from several of the

inhabitants, of a hill in the neighbourhood which they called “El

Bramador,”—the roarer or bellower. I did not at the time pay sufficient

attention to the account; but, as far as I understood, the hill was

covered by sand, and the noise was produced only when people, by

ascending it, put the sand in motion. The same circumstances are

described in detail on the authority of Seetzen and Ehrenberg,[4] as

the cause of the sounds which have been heard by many travellers on

Mount Sinai near the Red Sea. One person with whom I conversed had

himself heard the noise: he described it as very surprising; and he

distinctly stated that, although he could not understand how it was

caused, yet it was necessary to set the sand rolling down the

acclivity. A horse walking over dry and coarse sand causes a peculiar

chirping noise from the friction of the particles; a circumstance which

I several times noticed on the coast of Brazil.

[4] _Edinburgh Phil. Journ._ Jan. 1830, p. 74; and April 1830, p 258.

Also Daubeny on Volcanoes, p. 438; and _ Bengal Journ._ vol. vii, p.

324.

Three days afterwards I heard of the _Beagle’s_ arrival at the Port,

distant eighteen leagues from the town. There is very little land

cultivated down the valley; its wide expanse supports a wretched wiry

grass, which even the donkeys can hardly eat.

This poorness of the vegetation is owing to the quantity of saline

matter with which the soil is impregnated. The Port consists of an

assemblage of miserable little hovels, situated at the foot of a

sterile plain. At present, as the river contains water enough to reach

the sea, the inhabitants enjoy the advantage of having fresh water

within a mile and a half. On the beach there were large piles of

merchandise, and the little place had an air of activity. In the

evening I gave my adios, with a hearty good-will, to my companion

Mariano Gonzales, with whom I had ridden so many leagues in Chile. The

next morning the _Beagle_ sailed for Iquique.

_July_ 12_th._—We anchored in the port of Iquique, in latitude 20° 12′,

on the coast of Peru. The town contains about a thousand inhabitants,

and stands on a little plain of sand at the foot of a great wall of

rock, 2000 feet in height, here forming the coast. The whole is utterly

desert. A light shower of rain falls only once in very many years; and

the ravines consequently are filled with detritus, and the

mountainsides covered by piles of fine white sand, even to a height of

a thousand feet. During this season of the year a heavy bank of clouds,

stretched over the ocean, seldom rises above the wall of rocks on the

coast. The aspect of the place was most gloomy; the little port, with

its few vessels, and small group of wretched houses, seemed overwhelmed

and out of all proportion with the rest of the scene.

The inhabitants live like persons on board a ship: every necessary

comes from a distance: water is brought in boats from Pisagua, about

forty miles northward, and is sold at the rate of nine reals (4s. 6d.)

an eighteen-gallon cask: I bought a wine-bottle full for threepence. In

like manner firewood, and of course every article of food, is imported.

Very few animals can be maintained in such a place: on the ensuing

morning I hired with difficulty, at the price of four pounds sterling,

two mules and a guide to take me to the nitrate of soda works. These

are at present the support of Iquique. This salt was first exported in

1830: in one year an amount in value of one hundred thousand pounds

sterling was sent to France and England. It is principally used as a

manure and in the manufacture of nitric acid: owing to its deliquescent

property

it will not serve for gunpowder. Formerly there were two exceedingly

rich silver-mines in this neighbourhood, but their produce is now very

small.

Our arrival in the offing caused some little apprehension. Peru was in

a state of anarchy; and each party having demanded a contribution, the

poor town of Iquique was in tribulation, thinking the evil hour was

come. The people had also their domestic troubles; a short time before,

three French carpenters had broken open, during the same night, the two

churches, and stolen all the plate: one of the robbers, however,

subsequently confessed, and the plate was recovered. The convicts were

sent to Arequipa, which, though the capital of this province, is two

hundred leagues distant; the government there thought it a pity to

punish such useful workmen who could make all sorts of furniture; and

accordingly liberated them. Things being in this state, the churches

were again broken open, but this time the plate was not recovered. The

inhabitants became dreadfully enraged, and declaring that none but

heretics would thus “eat God Almighty,” proceeded to torture some

Englishmen, with the intention of afterwards shooting them. At last the

authorities interfered, and peace was established.

13_th._—In the morning I started for the saltpetre-works, a distance of

fourteen leagues. Having ascended the steep coast-mountains by a zigzag

sandy track, we soon came in view of the mines of Guantajaya and St.

Rosa. These two small villages are placed at the very mouths of the

mines; and being perched up on hills, they had a still more unnatural

and desolate appearance than the town of Iquique. We did not reach the

saltpetre works till after sunset, having ridden all day across an

undulating country, a complete and utter desert. The road was strewed

with the bones and dried skins of many beasts of burden which had

perished on it from fatigue. Excepting the Vultur aura, which preys on

the carcasses, I saw neither bird, quadruped, reptile, nor insect. On

the coast-mountains, at the height of about 2000 feet, where during

this season the clouds generally hang, a very few cacti were growing in

the clefts of rock; and the loose sand was strewed over with a lichen,

which lies on the surface quite unattached. This plant belongs to the

genus Cladonia, and somewhat resembles the

reindeer lichen. In some parts it was in sufficient quantity to tinge

the sand, as seen from a distance, of a pale yellowish colour. Farther

inland, during the whole ride of fourteen leagues, I saw only one other

vegetable production, and that was a most minute yellow lichen, growing

on the bones of the dead mules. This was the first true desert which I

had seen: the effect on me was not impressive; but I believe this was

owing to my having become gradually accustomed to such scenes, as I

rode northward from Valparaiso, through Coquimbo, to Copiapó. The

appearance of the country was remarkable, from being covered by a thick

crust of common salt, and of a stratified saliferous alluvium, which

seems to have been deposited as the land slowly rose above the level of

the sea. The salt is white, very hard, and compact: it occurs in

water-worn nodules projecting from the agglutinated sand, and is

associated with much gypsum. The appearance of this superficial mass

very closely resembled that of a country after snow, before the last

dirty patches are thawed. The existence of this crust of a soluble

substance over the whole face of the country shows how extraordinarily

dry the climate must have been for a long period.

At night I slept at the house of the owner of one of the saltpetre

mines. The country is here as unproductive as near the coast; but

water, having rather a bitter and brackish taste, can be procured by

digging wells. The well at this house was thirty-six yards deep: as

scarcely any rain falls, it is evident the water is not thus derived;

indeed if it were, it could not fail to be as salt as brine, for the

whole surrounding country is incrusted with various saline substances.

We must therefore conclude that it percolates under ground from the

Cordillera, though distant many leagues. In that direction there are a

few small villages, where the inhabitants, having more water, are

enabled to irrigate a little land, and raise hay, on which the mules

and asses, employed in carrying the saltpetre, are fed. The nitrate of

soda was now selling at the ship’s side at fourteen shillings per

hundred pounds: the chief expense is its transport to the sea-coast.

The mine consists of a hard stratum, between two and three feet thick,

of the nitrate mingled with a little of the sulphate of soda and a good

deal of common salt. It lies close beneath the surface, and follows for

a length of

one hundred and fifty miles the margin of a grand basin or plain; this,

from its outline, manifestly must once have been a lake, or more

probably an inland arm of the sea, as may be inferred from the presence

of iodic salts in the saline stratum. The surface of the plain is 3300

feet above the Pacific.

19_th._—We anchored in the Bay of Callao, the seaport of Lima, the

capital of Peru. We stayed here six weeks, but from the troubled state

of public affairs I saw very little of the country. During our whole

visit the climate was far from being so delightful as it is generally

represented. A dull heavy bank of clouds constantly hung over the land,

so that during the first sixteen days I had only one view of the

Cordillera behind Lima. These mountains, seen in stages, one above the

other, through openings in the clouds, had a very grand appearance. It

is almost become a proverb, that rain never falls in the lower part of

Peru. Yet this can hardly be considered correct; for during almost

every day of our visit there was a thick drizzling mist, which was

sufficient to make the streets muddy and one’s clothes damp: this the

people are pleased to call Peruvian dew. That much rain does not fall

is very certain, for the houses are covered only with flat roofs made

of hardened mud; and on the mole ship-loads of wheat were piled up,

being thus left for weeks together without any shelter.

I cannot say I liked the very little I saw of Peru: in summer, however,

it is said that the climate is much pleasanter. In all seasons, both

inhabitants and foreigners suffer from severe attacks of ague. This

disease is common on the whole coast of Peru, but is unknown in the

interior. The attacks of illness which arise from miasma never fail to

appear most mysterious. So difficult is it to judge from the aspect of

a country, whether or not it is healthy, that if a person had been told

to choose within the tropics a situation appearing favourable for

health, very probably he would have named this coast. The plain round

the outskirts of Callao is sparingly covered with a coarse grass, and

in some parts there are a few stagnant, though very small, pools of

water. The miasma, in all probability, arises from these: for the town

of Arica was similarly circumstanced, and its healthiness was much

improved

by the drainage of some little pools. Miasma is not always produced by

a luxuriant vegetation with an ardent climate; for many parts of

Brazil, even where there are marshes and a rank vegetation, are much

more healthy than this sterile coast of Peru. The densest forests in a

temperate climate, as in Chiloe, do not seem in the slightest degree to

affect the healthy condition of the atmosphere.

The island of St. Jago, at the Cape de Verds, offers another

strongly-marked instance of a country, which any one would have

expected to find most healthy, being very much the contrary. I have

described the bare and open plains as supporting, during a few weeks

after the rainy season, a thin vegetation, which directly withers away

and dries up: at this period the air appears to become quite poisonous;

both natives and foreigners often being affected with violent fevers.

On the other hand, the Galapagos Archipelago, in the Pacific, with a

similar soil, and periodically subject to the same process of

vegetation, is perfectly healthy. Humboldt has observed that “under the

torrid zone, the smallest marshes are the most dangerous, being

surrounded, as at Vera Cruz and Carthagena, with an arid and sandy

soil, which raises the temperature of the ambient air.”[5] On the coast

of Peru, however, the temperature is not hot to any excessive degree;

and perhaps in consequence the intermittent fevers are not of the most

malignant order. In all unhealthy countries the greatest risk is run by

sleeping on shore. Is this owing to the state of the body during sleep,

or to a greater abundance of miasma at such times? It appears certain

that those who stay on board a vessel, though anchored at only a short

distance from the coast, generally suffer less than those actually on

shore. On the other hand, I have heard of one remarkable case where a

fever broke out among the crew of a man-of-war some hundred miles off

the coast of Africa, and at the same time one of those fearful

periods[6] of death commenced at Sierra Leone.

[5] _Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain,_ vol. iv, p. 199.

[6] A similar interesting case is recorded in the _Madras Medical

Quart. Journ._ 1839, p. 340. Dr. Ferguson in his admirable Paper (see

9th vol. of _Edinburgh Royal Trans._), shows clearly that the poison

is generated in the drying process; and hence that dry hot countries

are often the most unhealthy.

No state in South America, since the declaration of

independence, has suffered more from anarchy than Peru. At the time of

our visit there were four chiefs in arms contending for supremacy in

the government: if one succeeded in becoming for a time very powerful,

the others coalesced against him; but no sooner were they victorious

than they were again hostile to each other. The other day, at the

Anniversary of the Independence, high mass was performed, the President

partaking of the sacrament: during the _Te Deum laudamus,_ instead of

each regiment displaying the Peruvian flag, a black one with death’s

head was unfurled. Imagine a government under which such a scene could

be ordered, on such an occasion, to be typical of their determination

of fighting to death! This state of affairs happened at a time very

unfortunately for me, as I was precluded from taking any excursions

much beyond the limits of the town. The barren island of San Lorenzo,

which forms the harbour, was nearly the only place where one could walk

securely. The upper part, which is upwards of 1000 feet in height,

during this season of the year (winter), comes within the lower limit

of the clouds; and in consequence an abundant cryptogamic vegetation

and a few flowers cover the summit. On the hills near Lima, at a height

but little greater, the ground is carpeted with moss, and beds of

beautiful yellow lilies, called Amancaes. This indicates a very much

greater degree of humidity than at a corresponding height at Iquique.

Proceeding northward of Lima, the climate becomes damper, till on the

banks of the Guayaquil, nearly under the equator, we find the most

luxuriant forests. The change, however, from the sterile coast of Peru

to that fertile land is described as taking place rather abruptly in

the latitude of Cape Blanco, two degrees south of Guayaquil.

Callao is a filthy, ill-built, small seaport. The inhabitants, both

here and at Lima, present every imaginable shade of mixture, between

European, Negro, and Indian blood. They appear a depraved, drunken set

of people. The atmosphere is loaded with foul smells, and that peculiar

one, which may be perceived in almost every town within the tropics,

was here very strong. The fortress, which withstood Lord Cochrane’s

long siege, has an imposing appearance. But the President, during our

stay, sold the brass guns, and proceeded to dismantle parts of it. The

reason assigned was, that he had not an

officer to whom he could trust so important a charge. He himself had

good reason for thinking so, as he had obtained the presidentship by

rebelling while in charge of this same fortress. After we left South

America, he paid the penalty in the usual manner, by being conquered,

taken prisoner, and shot.

Lima stands on a plain in a valley, formed during the gradual retreat

of the sea. It is seven miles from Callao, and is elevated 500 feet

above it; but from the slope being very gradual, the road appears

absolutely level; so that when at Lima it is difficult to believe one

has ascended even one hundred feet: Humboldt has remarked on this

singularly deceptive case. Steep barren hills rise like islands from

the plain, which is divided, by straight mud-walls, into large green

fields. In these scarcely a tree grows excepting a few willows, and an

occasional clump of bananas and of oranges. The city of Lima is now in

a wretched state of decay: the streets are nearly unpaved; and heaps of

filth are piled up in all directions, where the black gallinazos, tame

as poultry, pick up bits of carrion. The houses have generally an upper

story, built, on account of the earthquakes, of plastered woodwork; but

some of the old ones, which are now used by several families, are

immensely large, and would rival in suites of apartments the most

magnificent in any place. Lima, the City of the Kings, must formerly

have been a splendid town. The extraordinary number of churches gives

it, even at the present day, a peculiar and striking character,

especially when viewed from a short distance.

One day I went out with some merchants to hunt in the immediate

vicinity of the city. Our sport was very poor; but I had an opportunity

of seeing the ruins of one of the ancient Indian villages, with its

mound like a natural hill in the centre. The remains of houses,

enclosures, irrigating streams, and burial mounds, scattered over this

plain, cannot fail to give one a high idea of the condition and number

of the ancient population. When their earthenware, woollen clothes,

utensils of elegant forms cut out of the hardest rocks, tools of

copper, ornaments of precious stones, palaces, and hydraulic works, are

considered, it is impossible not to respect the considerable advance

made by them in the arts of civilisation. The burial

mounds, called Huacas, are really stupendous; although in some places

they appear to be natural hills encased and modelled.

There is also another and very different class of ruins which possesses

some interest, namely, those of old Callao, overwhelmed by the great

earthquake of 1746, and its accompanying wave. The destruction must

have been more complete even than at Talcahuano. Quantities of shingle

almost conceal the foundations of the walls, and vast masses of

brickwork appear to have been whirled about like pebbles by the

retiring waves. It has been stated that the land subsided during this

memorable shock: I could not discover any proof of this; yet it seems

far from improbable, for the form of the coast must certainly have

undergone some change since the foundation of the old town; as no

people in their senses would willingly have chosen for their building

place the narrow spit of shingle on which the ruins now stand. Since

our voyage, M. Tschudi has come to the conclusion, by the comparison of

old and modern maps, that the coast both north and south of Lima has

certainly subsided.

On the island of San Lorenzo there are very satisfactory proofs of

elevation within the recent period; this of course is not opposed to

the belief of a small sinking of the ground having subsequently taken

place. The side of this island fronting the Bay of Callao is worn into

three obscure terraces, the lower one of which is covered by a bed a

mile in length, almost wholly composed of shells of eighteen species,

now living in the adjoining sea. The height of this bed is eighty-five

feet. Many of the shells are deeply corroded, and have a much older and

more decayed appearance than those at the height of 500 or 600 feet on

the coast of Chile. These shells are associated with much common salt,

a little sulphate of lime (both probably left by the evaporation of the

spray, as the land slowly rose), together with sulphate of soda and

muriate of lime. They rest on fragments of the underlying sandstone,

and are covered by a few inches thick of detritus. The shells higher up

on this terrace could be traced scaling off in flakes, and falling into

an impalpable powder; and on an upper terrace, at the height of 170

feet, and likewise at some considerably higher points, I found a layer

of saline powder of

exactly similar appearance, and lying in the same relative position. I

have no doubt that this upper layer originally existed as a bed of

shells, like that on the eighty-five-feet ledge; but it does not now

contain even a trace of organic structure. The powder has been analysed

for me by Mr. T. Reeks; it consists of sulphates and muriates both of

lime and soda, with very little carbonate of lime. It is known that

common salt and carbonate of lime left in a mass for some time together

partly decompose each other; though this does not happen with small

quantities in solution. As the half-decomposed shells in the lower

parts are associated with much common salt, together with some of the

saline substances composing the upper saline layer, and as these shells

are corroded and decayed in a remarkable manner, I strongly suspect

that this double decomposition has here taken place. The resultant

salts, however, ought to be carbonate of soda and muriate of lime, the

latter is present, but not the carbonate of soda. Hence I am led to

imagine that by some unexplained means the carbonate of soda becomes

changed into the sulphate. It is obvious that the saline layer could

not have been preserved in any country in which abundant rain

occasionally fell: on the other hand this very circumstance, which at

first sight appears so highly favourable to the long preservation of

exposed shells, has probably been the indirect means, through the

common salt not having been washed away, of their decomposition and

early decay.

I was much interested by finding on the terrace, at the height of

eighty-five feet, _embedded_ amidst the shells and much sea-drifted

rubbish, some bits of cotton thread, plaited rush, and the head of a

stalk of Indian corn: I compared these relics with similar ones taken

out of the Huacas, or old Peruvian tombs, and found them identical in

appearance. On the mainland in front of San Lorenzo, near Bellavista,

there is an extensive and level plain about a hundred feet high, of

which the lower part is formed of alternating layers of sand and impure

clay, together with some gravel, and the surface, to the depth of from

three to six feet, of a reddish loam, containing a few scattered

sea-shells and numerous small fragments of coarse red earthenware, more

abundant at certain spots than at others. At first I was inclined to

believe that this superficial

bed, from its wide extent and smoothness, must have been deposited

beneath the sea; but I afterwards found in one spot that it lay on an

artificial floor of round stones. It seems, therefore, most probable

that at a period when the land stood at a lower level there was a plain

very similar to that now surrounding Callao, which, being protected by

a shingle beach, is raised but very little above the level of the sea.

On this plain, with its underlying red-clay beds, I imagine that the

Indians manufactured their earthen vessels; and that, during some

violent earthquake, the sea broke over the beach, and converted the

plain into a temporary lake, as happened round Callao in 1713 and 1746.

The water would then have deposited mud containing fragments of pottery

from the kilns, more abundant at some spots than at others, and shells

from the sea. This bed with fossil earthenware stands at about the same

height with the shells on the lower terrace of San Lorenzo, in which

the cotton-thread and other relics were embedded. Hence we may safely

conclude that within the Indo-human period there has been an elevation,

as before alluded to, of more than eighty-five feet; for some little

elevation must have been lost by the coast having subsided since the

old maps were engraved. At Valparaiso, although in the 220 years before

our visit the elevation cannot have exceeded nineteen feet, yet

subsequently to 1817 there has been a rise, partly insensible and

partly by a start during the shock of 1822, of ten or eleven feet. The

antiquity of the Indo-human race here, judging by the eighty-five feet

rise of the land since the relics were embedded, is the more

remarkable, as on the coast of Patagonia, when the land stood about the

same number of feet lower, the Macrauchenia was a living beast; but as

the Patagonian coast is some way distant from the Cordillera, the

rising there may have been slower than here. At Bahia Blanca the

elevation has been only a few feet since the numerous gigantic

quadrupeds were there entombed; and, according to the generally

received opinion, when these extinct animals were living man did not

exist. But the rising of that part of the coast of Patagonia is perhaps

no way connected with the Cordillera, but rather with a line of old

volcanic rocks in Banda Oriental, so that it may have been infinitely

slower than on the shores of Peru. All these

speculations, however, must be vague; for who will pretend to say that

there may not have been several periods of subsidence, intercalated

between the movements of elevation? for we know that along the whole

coast of Patagonia there have certainly been many and long pauses in

the upward action of the elevatory forces.

[Illustration: Huacas, Peruvian pottery]

[Illustration: Testudo Abingdonii, Galapagos Islands]