DESM;i!"i!VK GEOGUAl'HY. 27 



them useful. Over the tract they cross, between latitude- 27 and 31 J, the scanty products of 



the noil grown under tln-ir inlliii-ntv arc of value almost j.roj.oi tionate to the seemingly inex- 

 liau.Ntilile Miim-rul w.-altli Imrird within the rocks of that district, as though nature would 

 i\. iii equilibrium man's reward for the sweat of his brow. Higher and higher within 

 the oirilillrras. \\h. ! -vi-r a plateau can be found with a ribband of water over it, there the 

 hii-l-amlman creeps, and we may liml him cultivating figs. peaches, and melons, nearly 4,000 

 t'ert ahuvr the Dcvan, ami wlieat some 3,500 feet higher. At 10,800 feet in these parallel*, the 

 water is found frozen every morning at sunrise; and though it never rains at that altitude, 

 snow-storms commence before the close of autumn. There, only a few herbac>*fQs plants are 

 found. 



The region crossed by these streams varies greatly from the country further south in its 

 topographical features. It is far more broken and rugged, the quebradas are deeper and 

 numerous, isolated and groups of hills more frequent; even the candelabra-like Cereus has 

 ceased ; and though there do exist plains, often of many square leagues in extent, the surfaces of 

 the streams are usually so far below their levels as to keep them hopelessly barren. One such 

 plain, more than a hundred miles long and ten miles wide, exists between Vallenar and Copiapo, 

 at a distance of seven or eight leagues from the sea. Across the southern extremity the Huasoo 

 river flows; but the level of its water is nearly fifty yards below the plain, and the rivulet can 

 only be used in irrigating a plateau some 250 yards wide on each side of it. No doubt exists 

 that the plateau was once the bed of a noble river. Now, water can only be obtained at two 

 places on the whole plain; and so small is the quantity, that a traveller with a dozen animals 

 will not leave a drop for those who may come after him on the same day. As it rarely rains 

 more than once in two or three years, vegetation lies dormant, and then pasturage is not to be 

 found ; the animals that pass over it being from fifty to sixty hours without other food than 

 nibblings from the posts to which they are tied at night. If the volume of the Copiapo, the 

 Huasco, or the Coquimbo, could be augmented to equal even that of the Mapocho, the mining 

 proprietors would cheerfully pay a million dollars. 



For the geographical position, courses, and lengths of the several streams north of latitude 

 32, reference is given to the map ; though it must not be inferred either that they are laid 

 down with great accuracy, or that tbeir volumes are proportionate to the space on the map 

 occupied by the lines indicating them. Not a drop of water reaches the ocean through the old 

 bed of the Copiapo, and no one would suppose that the brooklet he steps across at Huasco is 

 the river of that name on the map. None but professional mine-hunters have ever explored 

 them all, and their chorography is not always very reliable. Prof. Domeyko made journeys 

 to the sources of the Copiapo and Coquimbo, and from his MS. map the relative courses and 

 distances have been laid down, after locating the mouths in the latitudes given in the Appendix 

 to the second volume of the " Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle." 



BAYS AND HARBORS. 



Were the eastern coast of the Pacific subject to such storms as constantly sweep over the 

 corresponding shores of the Atlantic, if not actually diminished to a large extent, its present 

 limited foreign trade would certainly be restricted to a smaller number of ports. Its proverbial 

 tranquillity, however, authorizes vessels to anchor in roadsteads that are wholly open to the 

 almost unvarying swell rolling across its broad expanse. Between the equator and Chiloe, 

 anchorages entirely protected from the sea or gales are very rarely to be found ; nor were the 

 most secure of the few which nature has afforded always chosen by the settlers of the country 

 as ports to the capitals and other cities they founded. They looked upon the sea only as a 

 highway over which they must necessarily transport luxuries desired from home, or convey 

 treasures they intended to amass in America ; nor could they consider a harbor of any other 

 utility than as a place where ships sometimes came for these purposes, or to land them succors. 

 Whether five or five hundred miles from the sea, cities could only be founded where most ot 

 their treasures were to be the most speedily garnered, or the exigencies of conquest and control 



