288 FORCED CONTRIBUTIONS—BIRDS. 1829. 
tax, to the government ; but forced contributions may be 
required, when the necessities of the state demand them. These 
contributions are sometimes unfairly levied in Chile ; for the 
subsidy is only taken from those who possess grain, or some 
equally tangible article which can easily be turned into money ; 
so that persons who are rich enough to live without culti- 
vating land, or trading for their support, contribute nothing 
towards the emergency of the State. How does this accord 
with republican principles ? or how can a republican govern- 
ment, so conducted, expect to become respectable among 
nations ? 
I am not aware that such contributions have yet been levied 
in Childe. From the character of General Aldunate, I do not 
for a moment think he would commit such an act of injustice ; 
but it is in the power of any Yntendente to call for them, and 
I afterwards witnessed an example of this, during my visit to 
Concepcion. A considerable quantity of wheat, purchased by 
a Russian vessel, for the use of their settlements on the coast 
of California, was brought down to the port, at a time when 
the government was much in want of money, and knew no just 
way of obtaining it. They therefore very unceremoniously seized 
the wheat, and applied its value in dollars to their own use, 
" giving only an uncertain, almost a nominal security to the owner 
for the recovery of his money. The only way of accounting for 
such an arbitrary proceeding is, that the country was distracted 
by civil war, and that the person who owned the property was 
opposed to that party, which at the time happened to have the 
upper hand, and which held, by main strength alone, the reins 
of government. 
Among the birds of Childe, the most remarkable are the 
‘Cagge,’ the ‘Cancania,’ or ‘Canqueia, and the ‘Barking bird.’* 
* Molina notices the ‘ Cagge,’ or ‘Chil6e duck,’ (Anas antarctica) 
vol. i. p. 268, and calls it Anus hybrida. M. Lesson, ‘in his ‘ Manuel 
d’ Ornithologie,’ ii. 409, has taken great pains to describe it, and remarks, 
with reason, that much obscurity exists in the specific descriptions of the 
goose kind in the Malouine (Falkland) Islands, and the extreme southern 
land of America. The male, Lesson says, is white, the feet and beak of 
a bright 
