1833.] A DESOLATE PLAIN. 173 



watering-places mentioned in an old Spanish chart. We 

 found one creek, at the head of which there was a trickling 

 rill (the first we had seen) of brackish water. Here the tide 

 compelled us to wait several hours ; and in the interval I 

 walked some miles into the interior. The plain as usual 

 consisted of gravel, mingled with soil resembling chalk in 

 appearance, but very different from it in nature. From the 

 softness of these materials it was worn into many gulleys. 

 There was not a tree, and, excepting the guanaco, which 

 stood on the hilltop a watchful sentinel over its herd, scarcely 

 an animal or a bird. All was stillness and desolation. Yet 

 in passing over these scenes, without one bright object near, 

 an ill-defined but strong sense of pleasure is vividly excited. 

 One asked how many ages the plain had thus lasted, and 

 how many more it was doomed thus to continue. 



* None can reply — all seems eternal now. 

 The wilderness has a mysterious tongue, 

 Which teaches awful doubt." * 



In the evening we sailed a few miles further up, and then 

 pitched the tents for the night. By the middle of the next 

 day the yawl was aground, and from the shoalness of the 

 water could not proceed any higher. The water being 

 found partly fresh, M*-. Chaffers took the dingey and went 

 up two or three miles further, where she also grounded, but 

 in a fresh-water river. The water was muddy, and though 

 the stream was most insignificant in size, it would be 

 difficult to account for its origin, except from the melting 

 snow on the Cordillera. At the spot where we bivouacked, 

 we were surrounded by bold cliffs and steep pinnacles of 

 porphyry. I do not think I ever saw a spot which appeared 

 more secluded from the rest of the world, than this rocky 

 crevice in the wide plain. 



The second day after our return to the anchorage, a party 

 of officers and myself went to ransack an old Indian grave, 

 which I had found on the summit of a neighbouring hill. 

 Two immense stones, each probably weighing at least a 

 couple of tons, had been placed in front of a ledge of rock 

 about six feet high. At the bottom of the grave on the hard 

 rock there was a layer of earth about a foot deep, which 

 must have been brought up from the plain below. Above it 

 a pavement of flat stones was placed, on which others weir 



• Shelley, lincH on Mont Blanc. 



