XXXII 



INTRODUCTION. 



ral level of the belts of the basin they bound, they afford a supply to multitudes of channels 

 filled with the life-current ; and now, from the Angostura de Payne at the south, to Colina 

 creek at the north, almost every foot of the ground is rendered useful to man, and millions of 

 poplars in stately rows have been propagated from the still existing original branch. 



CHANGE OF CLIMATE. 



Had meteorological registers been regularly kept during the intervening period, we should 

 be able to verify whether the progress of cultivation has sensibly modified the climate, as all 

 believe, and as is asserted by many of the older and more intelligent residents. They say that 

 rain, except in the last of the autumn and all three of the winter months, (of the southern hemi- 

 sphere^ was an extraordinary phenomenon at Santiago ; that thunder-storms over the plain were 

 never known ; and that cloudy weather in summer was a departure from the normal condition of 

 the sky, causing noted comment. One of them, more observant than the rest, preserved a record 

 of the days and number of hours during which rain fell in every month from 1824 to 1850, inclu- 

 sive, publishing the results in the " Anales de la Universidad" for 1851. During those twenty- 

 seven years there were nine days on which some rain fell in December, two of them being in 

 1850 ; twelve days when it fell in November, four of them in 1850 ; fifty days when there were 

 showers in October, two of which were in 1850 ; and sixty days when there were rains in Sep- 

 tember, five of which were in 1850. Or, of the one hundred and thirty-one departures from a 

 normal atmospheric state, one-tenth of the number were during the last year of his experience, 

 and the first of ours. Our journal shows some rain in almost every month from November, 

 1849, to September, 1852, the exceptions being January, 1851, and February and March of 

 1852 ; four violent thunder-storms brought their testimony in favor of the supposed changing 

 climate, and the frequency of clouds during the second summer of our stay was strangely at 

 variance with the reputed atmosphere of the capital. The following table, compiled from the 

 paper in the " Anales," will show the distribution of rains through the year more satisfactorily 

 as to time, but affords no indications of the amount of the aqueous deposite. 



TABLE III. 

 Hours of rain at Santiago de Chile. 



