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 trom 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. 
