340 NORTHERN CHILE. [CHAP. xvi. 



of ground, each house possessing a garden : but it is an uncom- 

 fortable place, and the dwellings are poorly furnished. Every ono 

 seems bent on the one object of making money, and then migrating 

 as quickly as possible. All the inhabitants are more or less 

 directly concerned \vith mines: and mines and ores are the solo 

 subjects of conversation. Necessaries of all sorts are extremely 

 dear; as the distance from the town to the port is eighteen leagues, 

 and the land carriage very expensive. A fowl costs five or six 

 shillings; meat is nearly as dear as in England; firewood, or 

 rather sticks, are brought on donkeys 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 wonder- 

 fully 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 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 Cordillera, 

 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 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 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 observed 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 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 trifling exception, 

 perfect, yet without any signs of action. Every ono must have 



