HEALTH REMEDIES — CLIMATE. 293 



crowding round the doors, that the Chilotes had any necessity 

 for such food. 



If one may judge from the few applications made to our 

 medical men for advice, the climate is either very healthy, or 

 the natives prefer their own mode of cure. They have very 

 few medical advisers, and those few are not held in much 

 estimation, being people of little or no education. A prejudice 

 against medical men has been, even in late years, extended to 

 foreign practitioners, and carried to great lengths. This illiberal 

 feeling is, however, fast wearing away ; but, among the lower 

 orders, the application of herbs and other simples is yet wholly 

 resorted to for the removal of their complaints. One day, when 

 I was employed in making some astronomical observations, at 

 Sandy Point, a woman passed me, and forcing her way through 

 a thicket of thorny plants, began to gafelier branches of a spe- 

 cies of arbutus (A. rigida.)^ a small shrubby plant, which is 

 every where abundant, especially to the south, and in the Strait 

 of Magalhaens. My curiosity prompted me to inquire her rea- 

 son for collecting it with such apparent anxiety. She replied, 

 with a desponding air, " It is chaura^" for a poor, sick child. 

 These branches,"" she said, " are to be put into the fire, and, 

 being green, will produce a thick smoke, and yield a very strong 

 aromatic smell. The child, who is only five months old, is to 

 be held over it, which, as they say, is a good remedy ; but,'** 

 she added, with an air of doubt, " I know not (dicen que es 

 bueno, pero yo no se)." " Who says so.^^'' I asked. " Los que 

 saben (those who know)," replied the half-credulous mother, 

 with a deep sigh, partly doubting the efficacy of the remedy, but 

 unwilling to lose the advantages of whatever virtue it might 

 ^ possess, for the benefit of her sick infant. 



The climate of Childe is considered, by those who live in 

 other parts of Chile, to be " rigorous, cold, and damp." Cer- 

 tainly there is much reason for such an opinion, particularly 

 in the winter months, when it almost always rains, and the 

 wind, with little cessation, blows hard, from N. to N.W., and, 



* Chaura. Una murta que no se come. Febres, Diet, of the Chileno 

 language. It is, however, edible, ^nd has rather a pleasant flavour. 



