14 



after the li linger wliich they had Endured in 

 their imprudent march through the desarfs bor- 

 dering upon Peru. 



Subsistence, the source of population, being 

 thus secured, the country, as before remarked, 

 became rapidly peopled under the influence of 

 so mild a climate ; whence it appears, that the 

 first writers who treated of Chili cannot have 

 greatly exaggerated in saying that the Spaniards 

 found it filled with inhabitants. It is a fact 

 that there was but one language spoken through- 

 out the country ; a proof that these tribes were 

 in the habit of intercourse with each other, and 

 were not isolated, or separated by vast desarts, 

 or by immense lakes or forests, which is the case 

 in many other parts of America, but which were 

 at that time in Chili, as they are now, of incon- 

 siderable extent. 



It would seem that agriculture must have 

 made no inconsiderable progress among a people 

 who possessed, as did the Chilians, a great variety 

 l^of the above-mentioned alimentary plants, all 

 distinguished by their peculiar names, a circum- 

 stance that could not have occurred except in a 

 state of extensive and varied cultivation. They 

 had also in many parts of the country aqueducts 

 for watering their fields, which were constructed 

 with much skill. Among these, the canal, which 

 for the space of many miles borders the rough 

 skirts of the mountains in the vicinity of the ca- 



