68 POLITICAL DIVISIONS AND 



Maule and Concepcion. Its northern boundary is the Perquilaoquen, its eastern the Andes, 

 and its southern and western the river Itata and the central range of the Cordilleras, as far 

 as the point where the last are met by the stream first named. Five eighths of its superficial 

 extent, or about 1,550 square miles, is occupied by the greater chains of mountains and their 

 elevated ramifications. It has two departments San Carlos and Chilian, which are divided 

 into 20 sub-delegations, and these into 105 districts. 



The city of San Carlos, founded in 1801, is very well situated on Nabotavo creek, eight or 

 ten miles to the north of the river Nuble, from which a canal supplies all the water needed for 

 irrigation and domestic purposes. Including ranches, there are some 300 houses built on seven 

 longitudinal and an equal number of cross-streets, a plaza at their centre, one church, one public 

 and two private schools attended by 92 male and 18 female pupils, and an alameda. In 1843, 

 its population was 4,250. 



Old Chilian, near a river of the same name, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1751 ; and, 

 as it had often been subject to inundations, it was finally built in its present position five 

 miles to the south of the Nuble. But, as late as 1850, the new town was near being totally 

 destroyed by a flood that occurred in July ; and numbers of its people were rescued on horse- 

 back from the river, then rushing through its streets. Since then, a canal has been dug to 

 carry in another direction the waters of the creek from which so much injury is received ; and 

 for further security a strong dike has been built above the city. Although the Indians of the 

 southern and mountainous districts harassed its citizens to a very late period, and revolting 

 troops have more than once been billeted on them, it has grown with much rapidity, and the 

 number of taxable houses entitles it to rank fourth among the cities of the republic. In 1848, 

 these amounted to 650. More recently, it was occupied by belligerents for many weeks first 

 by the revolutionary and next by government troops, each of which consumed and carried off 

 all accessible provisions. Yet such is the fertility of the surrounding country that no calamity 

 seems great enough to drive people away from the location ; and " los dos Chillanes," as they 

 are called, now contain from ten to twelve thousand inhabitants. The Jesuits made this the 

 seat of one of their missions, and established a college here for the education of Indian youths; 

 since their departure neither Indians nor Creoles have had much time so devoted to them, 

 though of late years it has been rather from indisposition on the part of the people than from 

 negligence by government to provide schools. Of the entire population of the province, amount- 

 ing to 89,955 in 1843, there were not 400 attending school, and only one school for each 1,200 

 of the children under fifteen years of age. At the same time the number of boys attending 

 school in the department of San Carlos was one out of each 32, and of girls one from each 

 148! Only one in'ten were able to read and write. Two schools for gratuitous instruction to 

 women were opened at Chilian in 1850 ; and so many pupils offered themselves,, that govern- 

 ment found it necessary to aid the municipal fund by establishing a second at the old town. 



The other towns are Bulnes, ten miles S.S.W. of, and nearly as populous as Chilian the 

 provincial capital Remuco, and Pueblo de las Minas ; the last, as its name imports, a mining 

 village, in whose rude houses some four or five thousand people are assembled. It lies ten 

 leagues east of Chilian, within the first hills at the base of the Andes, and was commenced 

 'about fifteen years ago. That which gives it a character perhaps different from every other 

 settlement in the world, is the rare fact that mines of gold have never before been discovered 

 in lands suitable for cultivation, where neither the riches of the first are sufficient to excite the 

 avarice of man and cause him to despise agriculture, nor the fertility of the last so great as 

 to stifle desires for mining. Here, in the midst of excavations and ravines, where groups are 

 washing gold, and surrounded by heaps of attle, one may find wheat stubble, piles of recently 

 harvested and unthreshed grain, yokes of oxen, and habitations totally unlike the ranches of 

 miners. In all directions the population is in a state of ferment. Loud shouts on the threshing 

 fields are responded to by deadened subterranean blasts ; the cry of the herdsmen on the neigh- 

 boring mountains, by the clamors of clusters of gamesters. The tradesman only, ever calcu- 



