150 NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



bears the same name as the famous mountain from 

 whose snows it draws a constant supply even in the 

 dry season. Some sixty miles further south, the 

 Maipo, draining a larger portion of the Andean range, 

 flows to the coast by the town of Melipilla. The 

 valley of the Maipo offers a much easier, though a 

 circuitous, railway route to Santiago than that chosen 

 by the Chilian engineers, which for a considerable 

 distance keeps to the valley of the Aconcagua. The 

 stream is reached near to Quillota, a place which has 

 given its name to this part of the valley. 



Travelling at this season, I was not much struck by 

 the boasted luxuriance of the vegetation of the vale 

 of Quillota ; but I could easily understand that the 

 eye of the stranger, accustomed to the arid regions 

 of Peru and Northern Chili, must welcome the com- 

 parative freshness of the landscape, in which orchards 

 of orange and peach trees alternate with squares of 

 arable land. Of the few plants that I could make out 

 from the railway car what most attracted my attention 

 was the frequent recurrence of oval masses of dark 

 leaves, much in the form of a giant hedgehog three or 

 four feet in length and half that height, remarkably 

 uniform in size and appearance. The interest was 

 not diminished when I was able, at a wayside station, 

 to ascertain that the plant was a bramble, on which I 

 failed to find flower or fruit, but which from the leaves 

 can be nothing else than a variety of the common 

 bramble, or blackberry, introduced from Europe. 



At the station of Llaillai (pronounced Yaijai) we 

 met the train from Santiago, and were allowed a 



