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settle, however barren and unfavourable the country where 

 wealth is to be acquired by trade they wHl herd together, no 

 matter how pestilential the situation. But Chilo6 offers 

 nothing to avarice, and only a bare and comfertless subsistence 

 to industry. Perhaps the main part of the first settlers were 

 from ChiH, families who had escaped from the Araucanos, 

 who wanted means to remove themselves to Peru, or to subsist 

 if they had got there, and were glad therefore of any place 

 of rest and security. There is, I believe, no other colony in 

 the world to which Europeans have carried so few of their 

 arts and comforts ; nor indeed have they ever attempted to 

 colonize against so many natural disadvantages, except in two 

 instances, the project of Philip II. to fortify the straits of Ma- 

 galhaens, and the unaccountable settlements of the Norwe- 

 gians in Greenland. It frequently rains during a whole moon 

 without intermission, and this rain is accompanied by such 

 tremendous hurricanes, that the largest trees are torn up by 

 the roots, and the inhabitants do not feel safe in their houses. 

 Even in January, which is their midsummer, they have often- 

 times long and heavy rains. During the height of the storm, 

 if the clouds open to the south, however small may be this 

 opening, fine weather succeeds ; but first the wind comes sud- 

 denly from the south, with even greater violence than it had 

 blown before from the opposite quarter, and with a sound as 

 sudden and as loud as the discharge of cannon. Vessels are 

 never in more danger than during these tremendous changes ; 

 the storm passes with rapidity proportioned to its violence, 

 and then the weather clears. Thunder and lightning are 

 seldom perceived here. The islands suffered severely by an 

 earthquake in 1737, and a few days afterwards, it is said, 

 that an exhalation or cloud of fire, coming from the north, 

 passed over the w hole Archipelago, and set fire to the woods in 

 many of the islands of Guaitecas. It is said also, that those 

 islands were covered with ashes, and that vegetation did not 

 begin to appear upoH them again till the year 1750. 



