OP ATACAMA AND COQUIMBO. 



road, l>y reducing tho cost of transportation to one half, will bring coal to a price which will 

 permit its use at tho capital, or the ores be conveyed to the port at a fair profit, and thus force 

 theM mines into operation, I have not tho least doulit. Huasco in this respect is much b 

 I'.eate.l. Its mines are in many cases quite near, coal comes from England in ballast, and 

 lifteen furnaces tiinl ei.nstunt employment. At the city of Copiapo there are but five furnaces, 

 and their fires are supplied witli wood of a very indifferent kind. 



We returned to Copiapo on the morning of the 8th, having passed the preceding night at 

 T.'turallillo, and with pretty much the same fate as on the journey up; so that it was no trifling 

 pleasure to enter again the commodious establishment of my hospitable host. To speak only of 

 the hospitality of the Copiapinos would be to do great injustice to other traits of character not 

 less appreciable, and I should violate my own impulses not to express gratitude for the unre- 

 mitting kindness and civility of those whom it was my good fortune to meet. In their agree- 

 able conversation, in offers of service, whether to aid in observations, to accompany me to inter- 

 esting localities, or in presenting rare specimens of silver ores, they seemed never to tire in the 

 four remaining days of the visit. 



From circum-meridian observations of the sun and stars on opposite sides of the zenith, the 

 latitude of the plaza is 27 22' 23" south ; and on the assumption that the chronometer had a 

 uniform rate from the time of leaving Valparaiso until my return to it, its longitude is 4A. 41m. 

 52*. 5 W. If a mean of all the barometric observations (27) be adopted as the true pressure, 

 the elevation above the sea is 1,286 feet. The extreme fluctuation during the seven days through" 

 which the latter observations extend was 0.172 inch, or from 28.528 to 28.700 inches. The 

 temperature at 3 P.M. of the same days was 69. 6, and at midnight 51. 3 ; the wet thermo- 

 meter showing at the same hours, respectively, 55. 3 and 46. 5. A westerly wind commences 

 early in the morning, and blows up the valley with increasing freshness until towards 3 P. M., 

 when it gradually subsides ; and the nights are almost always calm. There were only three 

 occasions when the wind blew from any other direction, and I was assured that variable winds 

 were quite as rare during other seasons of the year. At twenty of the twenty- seven observa- 

 tions there was a perfectly clear sky, an atmospheric condition existing for at least ten months 

 of the twelve. On tlie 9th of July, at noon, the temperature of the water in a well of Don 

 Diego Carvallo, near the plaza, was 67. 7 ; that of the air at the same time 74. 2. The 

 depth of the well is fourteen feet. On the llth, at 5A. 15m. A. M., there was quite a severe 

 earthquake. As near as it was possible to estimate the direction of the wave, it moved from 

 north to south, and was unusually long. Some ten minutes later a second shock, of much less 

 violence, followed. The latter was preceded through a long interval by a sound not unlike the 

 rushing of wind through a forest, and was totally unlike any sound I had previously heard 

 attending this phenomenon. The first shock was almost without noise. A third shock was 

 felt at twenty-three minutes after noon of the same day, the oscillation continuing only a second 

 or two. Neither of them was noticed at the cities to the southward. 



Leaving the city at ten o'clock of July 13, in a carriage well cumbered with boxes of instru- 

 ments, the end of the railroad was not reached until two hours after the time calculated upon ; 

 a delay which came near proving very serious to me. As the day train had gone down to 

 Caldera, the engineers very promptly and courteously placed at my disposition a hand-car, with 

 two peons to work it, cautioning me, at starting, that two trains were coming up with parts of their 

 encampment, then in progress of transferment to a new station. As we had daylight, and they 

 came slowly, it was an easy matter to see them in time for the removal of our little vehicle ; but 

 night closed in as we were descending the last steep grade some nine miles from the port, and 

 just at the only spot on the road where there are cuttings of any extent. The peons having 

 given the car an extra impetus to carry us down the plane without farther labor, and seated 

 themselves in the bottom so as to offer the least possible resistance to the air, we were rattling 

 down the grade at the rate of ten to twelve miles the hour, when suddenly I perceived a dark 

 object in a curve of the road ahead. No intimation had been given me by the engineers of 



