CENTRAL CHILE. [CHAP. xn. 



place between them. Renous speaks Spanish so well, that the 

 old lawyer mistook him for a Chilian. Renous, alluding to me, 

 asked him what he thought of the King of England sending out 

 a collector to their country, to pick up lizards and beetles, and to 

 break stones ? The old gentleman thought seriously for some 

 time, and then said, " It is not well, hay un gato encerrado 

 aqui (there is a cat shut up here). No man is so rich as to send 

 out people to pick up such rubbish. I do not like it : if one of 

 us were to go and do such things in England, do not you think 

 the King of England would very soon send us out of his coun- 

 try ?" And this old gentleman, from his profession, belongs to 

 the better informed and more intelligent classes ! Renous him- 

 self, two or three years before, left in a house at S. Fernando 

 some caterpillars, under charge of a girl to feed, that they might 

 turn into butterflies. This was rumoured through the town, and 

 at last the Padres and Governor consulted together, and agreed 

 it must be some heresy. Accordingly, when Renous returned, 

 he was arrested. 



September 19th. We left Yaquil, and followed the flat valley, 

 formed like that of Quillota, in which the Rio Tinderidica flows. 

 Even at these few miles south of Santiago the climate is much 

 damper ; in consequence there were fine tracts of pasturage, 

 which were not irrigated. (20th.) "We followed this valley till it 

 expanded into a great plain, which reaches from the sea to the 

 mountains west of Rancagua. We shortly lost all trees and even 

 bushes ; so that the inhabitants are nearly as badly off for firewood 

 as those in the Pampas. Never having heard of these plains, I 

 was much surprised at meeting with such scenery in Chile. The 

 plains belong to more than one series of different elevations, and 

 they are traversed by broad flat-bottomed valleys ; both of which 

 circumstances, as in Patagonia, bespeak the action of the sea on 

 gently rising land. In the steep cliffs bordering these valleys, 

 there are some large caves, which no doubt were originally 

 formed by the waves : one of these is celebrated under the name 

 of Cueva del Obispo ; having formerly been consecrated. Dur- 

 ing the day I felt very unwell, and from that time till the end oi 

 October did not recover. 



September 22nd. We continued to pass over green plains 

 without a tree. The next day we arrived at a house near Nave- 



