458 NORtHERN CHILE. [CHA?. xVI. 



Copiap6. The lower part of the valley is broad, forming a fine plain 

 like that of Quillota. The town covers a considerable space of ground, 

 each house possessing a garden ; but it is an uncomfortable place, and 

 the dwellings are poorly furnished. Every one seems bent on the one 

 object of making money, and then migrating as quickly as possible. All 

 the inhabitants are more or less directly concerned with mines ; and 

 mines and ores are the sole subjects of conversation. Necessaries of 

 all sorts are extremely dear ; as the distance from the town to the port 

 is eighteen leagues, and the land carriage very expensive. A fowl costs 

 five or six shillings ; meat is nearly as dear as in England ; firewood, 

 or rather sticks, are brought on donkeys from a distance of two and 

 three days' journey within the Cordillera ; and pasturage for animals is 

 a shilling a day : all this for South America is wonderfully exorbitant. 



June 26//z. I hired a guide and eight mules to take me into the 

 Cordillera by a different line from my last excursion. As the country 

 was utterly desert, we took a cargo and a half of barley mixed with 

 chopped straw. About two leagues above the town, a broad valley 

 called the " Despoblado," or uninhabited, branches off from that one by 

 which we had arrived. Although a valley of the grandest dimensions, 

 and leading to a pass across the Cordillera, yet it is completely dry, 

 excepting perhaps for a few days during some very rainy winter. The 

 sides of the crumbling mountains were furrowed by scarcely any ravines ; 

 and the bottom of the main valley, filled with shingle, was smooth and 

 nearly level. No considerable torrent could ever have flowed down 

 this bed of shingle ; for if it had, a great cliff-bounded channel, as in all 

 the southern valleys, would assuredly have been formed. I feel little 

 doubt that this valley, as well as those mentioned by travellers in Peru, 

 were left in the state we now see them by the waves of the sea, as the 

 land slowly rose. I observed in one place, where the Despoblado was 

 joined by a ravine (which in almost any other chain would have been 

 called a grand valley), that its bed, though composed merely of sand 

 and gravel, was higher than that of its tributary. A mere rivulet of 

 water, in the course of an hour, would have cut a channel for itself ; 

 but it was evident that ages had passed away, and no such rivulet 

 had drained this great tributary. It was curious to behold the machinery 

 if such a term may be used, for the drainage, all, with the last trifling 

 exception, perfect, yet without any signs of action. Every one must 

 have remarked how mud-banks, left by the retiring tide, imitate in 

 miniature a country with hill and dale ; and here we have the original 

 model in rock, formed as the continent rose during the secular retire- 

 ment of the ocean, instead of during the ebbing and flowing of the tides. 

 If a shower of rain falls on the mud-bank, when left dry, it deepens the 

 already-formed shallow lines of excavation ; and so it is with the rain 

 of successive centuries on the bank of rock and soil, which we call a 

 continent. 



We rode on after it was dark, till we reached a side ravine with a 

 small well, called " Agua amarga." The water deserved its name, for 

 besides being saline it was most offensively putrid an^ bitter ; so that 



