Chap, xxi,] AN E(^UESTRIAN BARBER. 475 



left me to proceed with a Chilian rustic guide. As a substitute 

 a travelling barber joined us, and to my great amusement 

 attached himself to me. It was curious to meet with an 

 equestrian hair-cutter. He had his scissors slung to his saddle. 

 He was a most useful man to me, for, true to his trade, he 

 persisted in talking to me and telling me long stories, riding 

 beside me all day, until at last I really began to understand 

 part of what he said, and made rapid progress in Spanish. His 

 great wish was that we should reach the new house which he 

 was building, that I might see it. At last he led me off the 

 road in a turn of the valley which was excessively barren- 

 looking, like the rest of the landscape at this altitude, 7,000 or 

 8,000 feet. I could see no house, but he led me to a large 

 square block of fallen rock. Here, against the rock on one 

 side, was a sort of pen enclosed on three sides by a wall of 

 roughly piled stones about a yard high and by the rock on the 

 other. 



There was no roof of any kind, but this was the " casa." It 

 measured about six feet square. A hole excavated under the 

 rock at the back was the store-room. My friend motioned me 

 with most elaborate politeness to enter, and offered refreshment. 

 He pressed especially coffee, so I agreed to that, whereupon 

 his servant or assistant, a lad whom we found at the " new 

 house," produced, after a long delay, some hot water slightly 

 tinged brown by about half a dozen coffee beans. 



The hair-cutter had turned a rill from the river over the dry 

 and dusty soil near by, and grass was beginning to spring. He 

 insisted on riding farther with me to an inn at the bottom of 

 the final steep climb to the summit of the Pass, and having 

 slept a night and waited at the inn till my return from the 

 summit, accompanied me back to his house. He ceased not 

 to talk to me all the time, and though I was becoming com- 

 paratively proficient in the language, I got tired of him at last, 

 and treacherously gave him the slip whilst he rode off into a 

 side valley to find some wonderful plant for me of which he 

 alone knew the locality. 



It pleased me very much to find amongst the Alpine vege- 

 tation, at 7,500 feet elevation, a plant of the genus Azorella 

 (A. trifoliaia), a genus with which I had become so familiar in 

 the far-off Kerguelen's Land.* A plant, Chevreulia Thouarsii, 

 which occurs in the isolated and distant Tristan da Cunha, is 

 common all over Chile ; the species found on the continent 

 being identical with that of the island. 



Near the summit of the Pass the slopes are almost abso- 

 lutely barren, 



* See p. 144. 



