156 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



try people in their bright dresses, the men in ponchos, 

 the women in gay shawls worn like a kind of mantle. 

 Oh, if I could only make effective sketches, what 

 pretty ones I could bring home ! 



At ten o'clock they served us an excellent break- 

 fast (I forgot, by the way, to say that early in the 

 morning Monsieur Morro arrived and expressed the 

 greatest cordiality, regretting only that he had not 

 been there to receive us the day before); breakfast 

 over we started again, crossing the river on a raft, a 

 lancha as they call them here. Our ride today was 

 only of four or five hours to the town of Chilian, quite 

 a large old Spanish town. Our road lay through the 

 valley of Chilian, a broad flat plain bordered by the 

 Cordillera of the Andes to the East. Again the same 

 fascinating scenes along the roadside. I never failed, 

 when we stopped to change horses, to get down from 

 the coach and go into some of the wayside huts. In 

 one porch I found an old woman sitting in the sun 

 and spinning wool, but after a laborious primitive 

 fashion. She had no wheel, only a rough spindle on 

 which she threaded out the wool to the necessary fine- 

 ness by the hand, stretching it and smoothing out the 

 inequalities till she had filled the spindle, then begin- 

 ning it again and thinning it out more and more. She 

 showed me the cloth that was made from it. In an- 

 other, the family was sitting around their dinner on 

 the mud floor. Here were many grapes hanging up 

 in the thatch, of which they offered us a number of 

 bunches, declining pay, but not refusing a little pres- 

 ent of money. 



