140 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



there is some excuse if they soaked in a milder liquid 

 than brandy. 



The Nitrate Desert is an immense plain about seventy- 

 five miles wide and extending from Pisagua, the north- 

 ern limit, to the northern part of Chile. It is connected 

 to the coast by one of their breakneck railroads, 'which 

 is so steep that they hardly manage to do any business, 

 the locomotive being fully occupied in taking itself up 

 and down again. As the Pampa is already some 3700 

 feet above the level of the sea, it is quite cool in the 

 evening, but very hot and dry during the day while the 

 sun is out. From one of the small hills, which we as- 

 cended on horseback, you have a very fine panorama of 

 the Cordilleras, with its deep gorges extending into the 

 Pampas and forming innumerable canons, old river-beds 

 now completely dry, or through which a mere apology 

 of a creek shows itself here and there and in which you 

 find their so-called farms, where they raise a little clover 

 and, by irrigating, a few vegetables, as long as the water 

 lasts. 



I picked up quite a lot of fossils in one of the valleys 

 at what must once have been the beach. For to my great 

 astonishment I found several species of recent corals 

 attached to the rocks, at a height of more than 2900 

 feet above the level of the sea. What a rise of the land 

 there must have been, and that in a comparatively recent 

 period, for this to be possible. The more I see of South 

 America, the more I feel inclined to look upon natural 

 causes acting slowly as fully capable of producing all 

 the changes necessary for any necessary combination on 

 the earth's surface ; and when you see the constant strug- 

 gle of animals and plants to maintain themselves, and 

 the remarkable manner in which they often adapt them- 



