374 CHARLES DARWIN 



mines. This was sometimes troublesome: I found the most 

 ready way of explaining my employment, was to ask them 

 how it was that they themselves were not curious concerning 

 earthquakes and volcanos? why some springs were hot and 

 others cold? why there were mountains in Chile, and not 

 a hill in La Plata? These bare questions at once satisfied 

 and silenced the greater number; some, however (like a few 

 in England who are a century behindhand), thought that all 

 such inquiries were useless and impious; and that it was 

 quite sufficient that God had thus made the mountains. 



An order had recently been issued that all stray dogs 

 should be killed, and we saw many lying dead on the road. A 

 great number had lately gone mad, and several men had been 

 bitten and had died in consequence. On several occasions 

 hydrophobia has prevailed in this valley. It is remarkable 

 thus to find so strange and dreadful a disease, appearing 

 time after time in the same isolated spot. It has been 

 remarked that certain villages in England are in like manner 

 much more subject to this visitation than others. Dr. Una- 

 nue states that hydrophobia was first known in South 

 America in 1803: this statement is corroborated by Azara 

 and Ulloa having never heard of it in their time. Dr. Una- 

 nue says that it broke out in Central America, and slowly 

 travelled southward. It reached Arequipa in 1807; and it is 

 said that some men there, who had not been bitten, were 

 affected, as were some negroes, who had eaten a bullock 

 which had died of hydrophobia. At lea forty-two people thus 

 miserably perished. The disease came on between twelve 

 and ninety days after the bite; and in those cases where it 

 did come on, death ensued invariably within five days. After 

 1808, a long interval ensued without any cases. On inquiry, 

 I did not hear of hydrophobia in Van Diemen's Land, or in 

 Australia ; and Burchell says, that during the five years he 

 was at the Cape of Good Hope, he never heard of an instance 

 of it. Webster asserts that at the Azores hydrophobia has 

 never occurred ; and the same assertion has been made with 

 respect to Mauritius and St. Helena.* In so strange a disease 



2 Observa. sobre el Clima de Lima, p. 67. Azara's Travels, vol. i. p. 381. 

 Ulloa's Voyage, vol. ii. p. 28. Burchell's Travels, vol. ii. p. 524. Web- 

 ster's Description of the Azores, p. 124. Voyage a 1'Isle de r ranee par un 

 Officier du Roi, torn. i. p. 248. Description of St. Helena, p. 123. 



