194 WHAT MR. DARWIN SAW. 



CHILE. 



interval of ten days all the hills were faintly tinged with 

 green patches, the grass being sparingly scattered in hair-like 

 fibres a full inch in length. Before this shower every part 

 of the surface was bare as on a high-road. The epithets " bar- 

 ren" and "sterile" are certainly applicable to northern Chile, 

 yet even here there are not many spaces of two hundred 

 yards square where some little bush, cactus, or lichen may 

 not be discovered by careful examination ; and in the soil 

 seeds lie dormant, ready to spring up during the first rainy 

 winter. 



In the valley of Copiapo the small quantity of cultivated 

 land does not so much depend on inequalities of level and 

 consequent unfitness for inigation, as on the small supply 

 of water. The river this year was remarkably full : high 

 up in the valley it reached to the horses' bellies, and was 

 about fifteen yards wide, and rapid ; lower down it becomes 

 smaller and smaller, and is generally quite lost, as happened 

 during one period of thirty years, so that not a drop entered 

 the sea. The inhabitants watch a storm over the Cordillera 

 with great interest, as one good fall of snow provides them 

 with water for the ensuing year. This is of infinitely more 

 consequence than rain in the lower country. Eain, as often 

 as it falls which is about once in every two or three years- 

 is a great advantage, because the cattle and mules can for 

 some time afterward find a little pasture on the mountains. 

 But without snow on the Andes, desolation extends through- 

 out the valley. It is on record that three times nearly all 

 the inhabitants have been obliged to emigrate to the south. 

 This year there was plenty of water, and every man irrigated 



