230 JOURNAL. 



furnaces for boiling the lees, which they put into the wine to hasten 

 the fermentation ; and beyond, a still of the simplest kind for making 

 brandy. From sixteen to twenty labouring families live on the 

 estate, and twice or thrice that number of hired peons are employed 

 at different seasons, when there is a press of work. The wages of 

 these are high, not from the high price of food, but from the want of 

 hands. 



The low population of Chile, notwithstanding the natural fruit- 

 fulness of the soil, and a climate favourable to human life, is not 

 wonderful. The grants of land to the first Spanish settlers still re- 

 main, for the greater part, unrevoked. These are so extensive, that 

 between Santiago and Valparaiso three superior lords, or mayorasgos, 

 possess the soil. Now the original proprietors, intent only on the 

 procuring of the precious metals, the only thing then looked for in 

 this country, cultivated no more of the land than was sufficient for 

 the supplying their household with necessaries : this cultivation, 

 scanty as it was, was performed by encomiendas, or duty-work, done 

 by the Indians ; and this was a species of slavery highly unfavourable 

 to the advance of population. In the first year of the revolution, 

 duty-work and slavery were utterly abolished. Servants are now 

 paid, and they are beginning to have houses of their own, with little 

 gardens. Yet still much duty-work is done, in fact, by the peons 

 and half Indians on every estate, although it may not be strictly 

 legal : but what are the poor to do ? They must take their shelter 

 and their food from some employer, and the employer will often 

 exact from his servant labours beyond the law. Government has it 

 now in contemplation to empower mayorasgos to sell small portions 

 of their lands, and to grant either long or perpetual leases, by which 

 means the soil will fall into the hands of those who have a personal in- 

 terest in it, and population will grow with the means of supporting it. 



On our return from the farm-yard we found an excellent breakfast 

 awaiting us, and our horses brought in from the clover (lucern) field 

 to be saddled while we ate ; and then returned to Santiago, which we 

 reached about one o'clock. 



