186 JOURNAL. 
is coming up in the valleys, and the best breed of sheep is beginning 
to people the hills. All the digging of ditches, &c. is still done with 
a wooden spade. I did indeed once see a man labouring in his gar- 
den with the blade-bone of a sheep tied to a stick by way of a spade; 
and I have read that the ancient people of Chile ploughed their land 
with the horns of goats and the bones of oxen.* 
From Viiia a la Mar the country improves in picturesque beauty ; 
and at length the lovely valley formed by the river opens at once, 
bounded at either end only by the ocean and the Andes. 
I found my friends Mrs. and Miss Miers, whom I was going to see, 
busy on one of the hills digging for bulbous roots, which abound here. 
I immediately joined them, and proceeded on foot towards their 
house, which is near the river; not too near, however, because the 
winter floods often encroach largely on the neighbouring plain. 
Mr. Miers came to Chile with a large apparatus for rolling cop- 
per, with dies for stamping metal, and other machinery, which 
are adapted only for a country in a much higher state of advance. 
He has, however, converted some of his apparatus into excellent 
flour mills, and has likewise set up some circular saws for the pur- 
pose of sawing barrel-staves, there being abundance of wood fit for 
the purpose in the neighbourhood. But the whole of Mr. Miers’s 
establishment is at least one hundred years too much civilised for 
Chile. However, the very sight of saw mills and turning lathes, to 
say nothing of the more complicated machinery, will do good in time: 
I may regret that they are little likely soon to repay the spirited 
individuals who brought them first here,— but they will do good. 
After a very pleasant day spent in seeing things fit and unfit for 
the present state of things in the country, and in admiring the various 
sites and habits of many plants I have never before seen, Mr. and 
Mrs. Miers rode with me to Quintero on the morning of the 
13th of August. — After fording the rapid river of Aconcagua in 
three branches, the road for three leagues lies along a wild and deso- 
Jate tract of sea-beach. On one hand are great sand hills, where no 
* But there were no oxen in Chile before the Spaniards. 
