26 DESCRIPTIVE GEOGRAPHY. 



through, an exceedingly narrow and deep defile between two ranges of mountains, whose general 

 direction is N. 28 W., and to which its course across the plain and through the central chain 

 is nearly perpendicular. The thirty miles next the sea are in a line inclined a few degrees to 

 the north of west. Its mouth is in latitude 33 39', longitude 71 41'. Estimating its length 

 at 150 miles, its mean fall is one foot in about seventy-three ; of which it descends 1 for 35 

 during thirty miles, 1 for 28 in the next 25, 1 for 174 through the following fifty, and 1 for 

 390 from thence to the sea. A bar extends across its mouth , which is nearly two miles from 

 the land and parallel with the coast. Three miles north is San Antonio cove, a small place 

 affording indifferent shelter to a few coasters and fishermen ; the former finding occasional 

 freights of produce from the estates on the lower part of the river. 



Its principal tributaries are the Colorado and Mapocho. The former, whose name is derived 

 from the reddish color of its always muddy waters, is alimented by snows from some of the 

 loftiest mountains in America, four of the summits that overshadow its basin ranging from 

 17,000 to 22,000 feet in height. Scarcely forty miles in length, its whole course is within the 

 Andes, along whose ro'cky defiles it rushes, urged by a momentum attained by falling one foot 

 in every twenty-four of its trajet. The Mapocho also falls into it on the north shore. This is 

 a clear stream, which proves the lower origin of most of its small affluents. It drains the 

 ravines to the northward of the Colorado, enters the plain just to the eastward of Santiago, 

 and crosses it in a nearly east and west line, as far as the Central Cordilleras, along which it 

 flows southwest until its junction with the Maypu. As its supply in very dry seasons is often 

 small, and additional fields brought under cultivation required an additional supply, a canal 

 cut from the Maypu along the very base of the Andes constantly pours a large stream into it 

 just above the city of Santiago. The whole plain to the westward can be irrigated at will 

 from this canal. Notwithstanding this addition to its volume, such is the nature of its bed, 

 the extraordinary dryness of the air, and consequent consumption by the porous soil of the 

 vicinity, that the small remaining rivulet not unfrequently disappears in the shingle a league 

 west from the capital. It again appears, however, where the harder sub-strata, a mile or two 

 nearer the Central Cordilleras, force it above the surface. Its length is about seventy miles, 

 and elevation of the headwaters above the junction with the Maypu, 12,000 feet. 



The headwaters of the Quillota, or Aconcagua, are to be found in the basin, nearly enclosed 

 between the Chacabuco ridge, which starts from Tupungato in a northwest direction, and the 

 Cumbre ridge, which unites two of the Andean giants Tupungato and Aconcagua. The 

 most commonly travelled road from Mendoza passes near the banks of the principal stream for 

 more than fifty miles, and travellers speak of it as a wild brook that is generally fordable early 

 in the morning, and until the sun is high enough to dissolve the snows rapidly. It has but 

 two tributaries of any note, the Colorado and Putaendo, both of which flow from the more 

 immediate vicinity of the peak of Aconcagua. Although all the water produced by the melt- 

 ing snow on the western side of the main chain, and its more immediate lateral ramifications 

 between the two great summits named, must pass into the valley of Aconcagua through one 

 of these channels, yet, in the vicinity of the capital of the province, the stream is very little 

 greater than the Mapocho, say fifty yards wide and two and a half feet deep in the centre. Its 

 course is most serpentine and irregular; but, originating at an elevation of 10,500 feet in 

 latitude 33 05', longitude 69 51', after winding 140 miles, it empties into the ocean in latitude 

 32 55', longitude 71 20'. From the fact that they are more extensively subdivided, the 

 valleys of Aconcagua and Quillota, watered by it, are the best cultivated and most productive in 

 Chile. Valparaiso looks almost wholly to the valley of Quillota for its supplies of vegetables 

 and fruits in their seasons. 



The Chuapa, the Limari, the Coquimbo, the Huasco, and the Copiapo, small streams of 

 melted snow-water that tumble through craggy defiles of the higher Andes with gradually 

 swelling volumes, until they reach an atmosphere so parched that evaporation almost equals 

 the supplies, are all mere brooks when they have descended to levels where man can render 



