1835.] SEA-WORN VALLEYS. 3.^ 



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

 the port is eighteen leagues, and the land carriage very expen- 

 sive. A fowl costs five or six shillings ; meat is nearly as dear 

 as in England; firewood, or rather sticks, are brought on don- 

 keys 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 26th. — 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 Cor- 

 dillera, 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 bot- 

 tom 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 ob- 

 served 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 Mater 

 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 retirement of the ocean, instead 

 of during the ebbing and flowing of the tides. If a shower of 



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