34^ y^^y^ig^ ^f i^^^ Novara. 



Swansea, partly from Pennsylvania, and is worth 12 to 15 

 dollars per ton of 2240 lbs. The rate of wages at Caldera 

 remains pretty steady at two to three dollars per diem, and 

 this is the reason why the enterprise is less remunerative than 

 would be the case if wages were lower. 



The total annual yield of the copper and silver mines of 

 the department of Copiapo is worth about 14,000,000 dollars, 

 and gives employment to from 6000 to 7000 labourers, or 

 one-third the entire population of the district. 



On 20tli May we anchored off Cobija, the sole harbour 

 possessed by Bolivia on the west coast, and with a popula- 

 tion of 1000. The state of affairs in Bolivia affords a marked 

 example of how closely the development of a country is con- 

 nected with the fact of its possessing more or less of sea-coast. 

 How great is the commerce, the prosperity, and the civiliza- 

 tion of Chile, a proportionally small strip of not over-fertile 

 soil, but the entire extent of which is sea-coast, compared 

 with the poverty and barbarism of the interior state of Bo- 

 livia^ so admirably fitted by nature for raising all man- 

 ner of valuable produce, but whose sole means of communi- 

 cation with the rest of the world is through one insignificant 

 harbour ! 



The same day we reached Iquique, the southernmost har- 

 bour of Peru, with a population of about 4000, and which 

 quite recently has increased greatly in importance, owing to 

 the trade in saltpetre, which is found in immense quantities 

 all along this rainless coast, and of which 1,000,000 hundi*ed- 



