466 EXPERIENCES CONTINUED. 



As usual, the river banks were crowded with spectators ; vijilantes moving everywhere among 

 them to prevent the collection of too many at any one spot. The accident of the preceding flood 

 rendered them unnecessarily cautious, for they even dispersed gatherings along the walls erected 

 to prevent overflows. Perhaps there were other operating causes than fear of accidents by 

 water ; and the approach of the presidential election may have had influence here, as well as in 

 the regulations then recently adopted for the prevention of meetings at night. Yet it was well 

 to have the police among the rabble, even had they no other occupation than laughter at the 

 unsuccessful efforts of those who endeavored with their lassoes to rescue logs and brushwood from 

 the wild stream. True, so accurately did they throw, this did not often occur ; but there were 

 occasions when the tumultuous waters snatched away the prizes after they were fairly within 

 the noose, and then the mirth was more vociferous. 



About this period a belief was current that we were at least cognizant of what was to take 

 place in the atmosphere, and had given timely notice to the government if we had not actually 

 been instrumental in producing so unusual a quantity of rain during the winter. Nor was 

 it among the lower classes only that such belief was prevalent. Our friends heard it in every 

 circle, and in turn questioned us as to its credibility. That the uneducated should be amazed 

 at the wonders our instruments unfolded, and believe us possessed of the faculty to see into the 

 future, if not directly to exercise some controlling influence over events, is not a matter of great 

 surprise ; but that any with pretensions to intelligence should for a moment suppose another 

 capable of foretelling atmospheric changes for weeks and months in advance, betrayed an 

 amount of credulity scarcely consistent with absolute knowledge. Nevertheless, so thoroughly 

 grounded was the opinion, that if not " the clerk of the weather" himself, his mantle at least 

 had been temporarily thrown over my shoulders, that I almost determined to combat the im- 

 pression no longer. 



August 6. An excursion in search of specimens of natural history afforded an opportunity to 

 observe five or six leagues of the plain lying to the southward of the city, of whose increasing 

 fertility with the distance in that direction so much had been told to us. We found a gradual 

 depression, and also a slight declination from east to west, as we receded from Santiago, though 

 the inclinations were not notable until after several miles of travel. These slopes render irri- 

 gation practicable throughout the valley. Streams that originate in the melted snows far up 

 the mountain sides, increasing as they descend, bring down an immense amount of soil formed 

 by the disintegration of surface-rocks and the attrition of others hurried along by the torrent. 

 This the irrigating canals spread over the valley to the thickness of nearly half an inch per 

 year. Composed, to a depth of many feet, almost wholly of pebble-stones, whose interstices 

 are filled with loose sand and soil, only a few years since a large portion of this basin was 

 considered unfit for cultivation ; but since its proprietors have begun to flood it with water 

 from the Maypu, the annual deposits of mineral silt have rendered it valuable, and now there 

 is scarcely an acre, on which water can be introduced, that is not highly productive. Except 

 that dropped by herds temporarily there, the use of manures on lands is wholly unknown. The 

 products of the stables in town are daily collected by offal carts and emptied into the river, so 

 that nature is everywhere left to renovate herself. Yet there is scarcely a better soil in the 

 world ; and its productiveness, even under the wretched system of cultivation practised, is greater 

 than that of the majority of the best lands in the United States. 



On some fields the wheat was already an inch or two- high. On others, they were just at 

 work scratching the surface with their primitively constructed ploughs. Plough it, in our 

 acceptation of the word, they certainly do not, because the furrows are not as deep as harrows 

 will make in a light soil, and they rarely exceed one or two inches. But improved implements 

 of husbandry meet with no favor among Chilean peons; those bought by enterprising 

 farmers have been thrown aside after a single trial, and are again resorted to only when the 

 master stands by to watch them. Broad fields, extending almost as far as the eye could reach, 

 without a dividing fence, were being traversed by more than a hundred yokes of oxen ; and 



