THE POZO STONE. 407 



felt. In the Atacama Desert, which lies to the south, and which 

 seems to have risen above the sea within a recent geological 

 period, less rain, it is maintained by observers, falls than formerly. 

 A good storm of rain, lasting for a few hours, only occurs at intervals 

 of 20 to 30 years. "In this desert the valleys (quebradas) are 

 pretty numerous, often 500 to 1,000 feet deep with almost perpen- 

 dicular walls, evidently formed by running water, similar to the 

 gorges adown which rivers flow on the eastern flanks of the Andes, 

 near Cuzco, so that it becomes impossible to account for their 

 formation except by supposing a greater rainfall than those regions 

 are now blessed with."* Another interesting proof of former 

 rainfall I gather from an observation made by Dr. Philippi, the 

 Curator of the Government Museum at Santiago, who says " That 

 in the Republic of Ecuador and in the northern parts of Peru there 

 grows several kinds of plants which are also found in Chile, further 

 south, but nowhere in the intervening zone, Berberis Darwini, 

 Gunnera Scaba, and the Desfontainea spinosa. And that the Cervus 

 Andisensis, a deer of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes, seems to be 

 identical with the Guemul or Cervus Chilensis, a sort of roebuck, 

 which begins to shew itself in central Chile ; they may differ may 

 these plants and animals, but not much, and if the wide, rainless, 

 and herbless desert of Atacama always existed in that state they 

 could not have passed across it." 



Mr. Harvey, writing on this point, gave me some most 

 interesting facts on the Tarapaca Desert, in which the stone was 

 found. " In seventeen years I saw rain three times. Within three 

 miles of where the stone was found, we have abundant proofs of 

 vegetation in the great submerged forest of the Tamarugal. We 

 find, some ten feet under the surface, large trunks of trees and 

 semi-fossilised branches. Nitrate of soda was formerly manufac- 

 tured by using this fuel only, and I have myself distilled water, for 

 the use of some 1,000 men of the Peruvian Army during the Chile- 

 Peruvian war, from the brackish water found near Lagunas, 

 evaporated by this fuel, which was dug up and brought in by the 

 soldiers. This shews the district could not have been always 

 rainless." 



* " Central, West Indies and South America." W. H. Bates, 3rd edition. 



