SEA-WORN VALLEYS. 115 



brought on donkeys from a distance of two or three 

 days' journey within the Cordillera ; and pasturage 

 for animals is a shilling a day : all this, for South 

 America, is wonderfully exorbitant. 



June 26M.— 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 des- 

 ert, 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 Cordil- 

 lera, yet it is completely dry, excepting, perhaps, 

 for a few days during some very rainy winter. The 

 sides of the cruinbling mountains were furi'owed 

 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 fonxied. 1 feel 

 little doubt that this valley, as well as those men- 

 tioned by travellers in Peru, were left in the state 

 we now see them by the waves of the sea, as the 

 land slowly rose. 1 observed in one place, where 

 the Despoblado was joined by a ravine (which in 

 almost any other chain Avould have been called a 

 gi-and valley), that its bed, though composed mere- 

 ly of sand and gravel, was higher than that of its trib- 

 utary. 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 



