122 JOURNAL. 



axletree, carriage, all are fastened together without a single nail or 

 piece of iron. The wheels have a double wooden felly, placed so 

 as that the joints in the one are covered by the entire parts of the 

 other, and these are fastened together by strong wooden pins ; the 

 rest is all of strong wooden frame-work bound with hide, which 

 being put on green, contracts and hardens as it dries, and makes the 

 most secure of all bands. The flooring of both cart and coach con- 

 sists of hide ; the cart is tilted with canes and straw neatly wattled ; 

 the coach is commonly of painted canvass, nailed over a slight frame 

 with seats on the sides, and the entrance behind. The coach is 

 commonly drawn by a mule, though oxen are often used for the pur- 

 pose ; and always for the carts, yoked as for the plough. Oxen will 

 travel hence to Santiago, upwards of ninety miles, with a loaded 

 waggon in three days. These animals are as fine here, as I ever saw 

 them in any part of the world ; and the mules particularly good. 

 It is needless to say anything of the horses, whose beauty, temper, 

 and spirit, are unrivalled, notwithstanding their small size. 



11th May. — This morning, tempted by the exceeding fineness of 

 the weather, and the sweet feeling of the air, I set out to follow the 

 little water-course that irrigates my garden, towards its source. 

 After skirting the hill for about a furlong, always looking down on 

 a fertile valley, and now and then gaining a peep at the bay and 

 shipping between the fruit trees, I heard the sound of falling water, 

 and on turning sharp round the corner of a rock, I found myself in 

 a quebrada, or ravine, full of great blocks of granite, from which 

 a bright plentiful stream had washed the red clay as it leaped down 

 from ledge to ledge, and fell into a little bed of sand glistening with 

 particles of mica that looked like fairy gold. Just at this spot, where 

 myrtle bushes nearly choaked the approach, a wooden trough detained 

 part of the rivulet in its fall, and led it to the course cut in the hill 

 for the benefit of the cultivated lands on this side ; the rest of the 

 stream runs to the Santiago road, where meeting several smaller 

 rills, it waters the opposite side of the valley, and finds its way to the 



