390 A VISIT TO THE SOUTHWARD. 



round the spot ; and yet there were numbers at loftier elevations, evidently seeking the object 

 to which their powers of scent (vision?) directed them, though the faculty of vision (scent?) 

 had not yet enabled them to detect the precise spot where lay the prey. Some could not have 

 measured less than twelve feet from tip to tip of the wings, and there were more full grown, old 

 birds than I had ever seen collected together. 



The posada was reached in four hours from Talca ; and as the rate of travel had not exceeded 

 an average of five and a half miles per hour, the distance is about twenty-two miles. By a mean 

 of three barometrical measurements on two days, the elevation of the table-land on which it is 

 built is 1,030 feet above the sea, or a rise of nearly nineteen feet per mile. Thence northward, 

 as far as the banks of the Claro, the impression of absolute sterility, formed when passing over 

 the ground before, is not wholly true. As it is to the southward, here also are small tracts 

 sown in wheat, similarly dependent on natural irrigation ; but, as has been said, the surface 

 of the greater portion is indurated sand, resting on tufa, and destitute of herbage. Between 

 the posada and the ford of the Claro two or three ravines cross the plain, perhaps thirty feet 

 deep below the general level. Minute ribands of water flow westward through these; but 

 where the road traverses them, the only habitations are ranches of the most wretched description, 

 that have very limited amounts of cultivated land in their immediate vicinity. To the Claro 

 ford the distance is fourteen miles. After so much barren country, the approach to it is 

 rendered more notable from a line of poplars extending more than a mile from east to west, 

 while to the eastward there is a spot at the angle of a glen, formed by two spurs from the chain 

 of the Andes, wonderfully resembling a distant city. From the Claro to Quechereguas, five 

 miles, there being a superabundance of water from the Lontue, a perfect garden spot might be 

 made. It is tolerably well cultivated ; and a part of its fields, between which lies the highway, 

 are bounded by rows of immense poplars from the northern entrance of Villa Molina to the 

 Rio Seco, an arm of the Lontue, nearly a league distant. From these autumn had already 

 stripped more than half the foliage. Three barometrical observations at the inn here on two 

 days, give the height of the plain as 1,170 feet. 



As it is by far the best found south of Rancagua, one word about the posada of Quechere- 

 guas, for the benefit of some future traveller. Its proprietor, an old, wheezy, and asthmatic 

 Spaniard, though very courteous and civil, leaves most of the talking to his more attentive and 

 energetic wife. In addition to the never-failing casuela, one may really obtain most of the 

 wants of life a cup of good tea, a bottle of sound wine, and no doubt a bed, if desired. The 

 servants, too, have been well trained, and are kept in good discipline by the old lady, who 

 nightly assembles all hands at prayers, of which, if the quality be not edifying, the quantity 

 is sufficient, as I can vouch. 



April 12. Nicolas had packed the mule before sunrise, and at the first peep of the god of day 

 over the Andes we rode out of the posada. A more delicious morning is rarely seen ; its clear 

 fresh air, loaded with the balmy odor of wild mint flowers that literally covered a part of the 

 plain. The black outlines of the mountains had lost none of their sharpness of definition, as 

 they do at a later hour of the day under the heat of the sun ; while the Descabezado, now a little 

 to the south of east, and the ragged peaks of Cauquenes, northward of San Fernando, all rose 

 grandly against the sky. Away to the N.W., where the Mataquito passes through the Western 

 cordilleras, clouds were pouring into the valley in a thin sheet, so purely white in the reflected 

 light that it was difficult to believe unexpected winter had not enveloped them to the plain in 

 a mantle of snow. As the sun gained power, the dew evaporated, settling in strata of filmy 

 vapor against the mountain sides on either hand ; and the volume from the coast, meeting the 

 heated rays, broke into cumuli tinged with almost every color. 



There are five streams forming the Lontue where the road passes it. Of these the first and 

 smallest is within a league of Quechereguas ; the other four all within two miles of the first. 

 Each discharges a considerable volume of water. The third, or central, is the deepest and 

 most rapid, and is so rarely fordable that a suspension bridge has been thrown across it. I was 



