1834.4 FLOATING ISLANDS. 265 
cattle to his secret rendezvous. Pincheira was a capital horse- 
man, and he made all around him equally good, for he invariably 
shot any one who hesitated to follow him. It was against this 
man, and other wandering Indian tribes, that Rosas waged the 
war of extermination. 
September 13th.—We left the baths of Cauquenes, and rejoin- 
ing the main road slept at the Rio Claro. From this place we 
rode to the town of S, Fernando. Before arriving there, the last 
land-locked basin had. expanded into a great plain, which ex- 
tended so far to the south, that the snowy summits of the more 
distant Andes were seen as if above the horizon of the sea. S. 
Fernando is forty leagues from Santiago; and it was my farthest 
point southward ; for we here turned at right angles towards the 
coast. We slept at the gold-mines of Yaquil, which are worked 
by Mr. Nixon, an American gentleman, to whose kindness I was 
much indebted during the four days I stayed at his house. The 
next morning we rode to the mines, which are situated at the 
distance of some leagues, near the summit of a iofty hill. On 
the way we had a glimpse of the lake Tagua-tagua, celebrated 
for its floating islands, which have been described by M. Gay.* 
They are composed of the stalks of various dead plants inter- 
twined together, and on the surface of which other living ones 
take root. Their form is generally circular, and their thickness 
from four to six feet, of which the greater part is immersed in 
the water. As the wind blows, they pass from one side of the lake 
to the other, and often carry cattle and horses as passengers. 
When we arrived at the mine, I was struck by the pale ap- 
pearance of many of the men, and inquired from Mr. Nixon 
respecting their condition. The mine is 450 feet deep, and each 
man brings up about 200 pounds weight of stone. With this 
load they have to climb up the alternate notches eut in the 
trunks of trees, placed in a zigzag line up the shaft. Even beard- 
less young men, eighteen and twenty years old, with little mus- 
cular development of their bodies (they are quite naked excepting 
drawers) ascend with this great load from nearly the same depth. 
A strong man, who is not accustomed to this labour, perspires 
* Annales des Sciences Naturelles, March, 1833. M. Gay, a zealous and 
able naturalist, was then occupied in studying every branch of natural history 
throughout the kingdom of Chile. 
