Ch. i. south AMERICA. 305 



operations it undergoes, affords employment for such 

 multitudes of people. Some farmers make it their 

 sole business to breed cows, principally for the ad- 

 vantages they derive from their milk in making 

 cheese and butter. In other farm-houses you see va- 

 rious occupations carried on at the same time, name- 

 ly, the breeding of cattle, agriculture, and manufac- 

 tures, particularly of cloth, bays, and serges. 



From what has been said, it is evident that nei- 

 ther this, nor the preceding jurisdiction, has any ge- 

 neral temperature, the degree of cold and heat de- 

 pending on the situation ; and that to this difference 

 is owing the delightful, and even profitable varieiy of 

 all kinds of fruits and grains, each finding here a 

 temperature agreeable to its nature. Accordingly, in 

 travelling only half a day, you pass from a climate 

 where the heat sufficiently indicates that you are in 

 the torrid-zone, to another whereyou feel all the hor- 

 rors of winter. And what is still more singular, and 

 may be esteemed an advantage, no change occurs 

 during the whole year ; the temperate parts never 

 feeling the vicissitudes of cold and heat. This, how- 

 ever, must be allowed not to hold precisely with re- 

 gard to the mountainous parts, the coldness of which 

 is increased by the violence of the winds, orachange 

 of weather, called tiempo de paramos, when the clouds 

 involve the greatest part of these mountains, and pre- 

 cipitate themselves in a sleet ; at which time the cold 

 becomes intolerable: and, on the other hand, when 

 those frigorific clouds are dispersed, and the wind al- 

 layed, so that tbe rays of the sun reach the earth, they 

 feel the comfortable heat of his cheering beams. 



Most of these villages are built with very little re- 

 gularity. The principal part of them is the church 

 and parsonage, which they call the convent, from the 

 priests being all formerly religious. These structures 

 have some appearance of decency : but the other parts 

 of the village consist of a number of buts with mud- 



VoL. I. X walls. 



