370 



CHARLES DARWIN 



them to the plains of Patagonia, which can boast of spiny 

 bushes and some tufts of grass ; and this is absolute fertility, 

 as compared with northern Chile. Here again, there are not 

 many spaces of two hundred yards square, where some little 

 bush, cactus or lichen, may not be discovered by careful 

 examination; and in the soil seeds lie dormant ready to 

 spring up during the first rainy winter. In Peru real deserts 

 occur over wide tracts of country. In the evening we 

 arrived at a valley, in which the bed of the streamlet was 

 damp: following it up, we came to tolerably good water. 

 During the night, the stream, from not being evaporated 

 and absorbed so quickly, flows a league lower down than 

 during the day. Sticks were plentiful for firewood, so that 

 it was a good place to bivouac for us ; but for the poor ani- 

 mals there was not a mouthful to eat. 



June nth. — We rode without stopping for twelve hours, 

 till we reached an old smelting-furnace, where there was 

 water and firewood ; but our horses again had nothing to eat, 

 being shut up in an old courtyard. The line of road was 

 hilly, and the distant views interesting, from the varied 

 colours of the bare mountains. It was almost a pity to see 

 the sun shining constantly over so useless a country; such 

 splendid weather ought to have brightened fields and pretty 

 gardens. The next day we reached the valley of Copiapo. 

 I was heartily glad of it; for the whole journey was a con- 

 tinued source of anxiety; it was most disagreeable to hear, 

 whilst eating our own suppers, our horses gnawing the posts 

 to which they were tied, and to have no means of relieving 

 their hunger. To all appearance, however, the animals 

 were quite fresh ; and no one could have told that they had 

 eaten nothing for the last fifty-five hours. 



I had a letter of introduction to Mr. Bingley, who received 

 me very kindly at the Hacienda of Potrero Seco. This 

 estate is between twenty and thirty miles long, but very nar- 

 row, being generally only two fields wide, one on each side 

 the river. In some parts the estate is of no width, that is 

 to say, the land cannot be irrigated, and therefore is value- 

 less, like the surrounding rocky desert. The small quantity 

 of cultivated land in the whole line of valley, does not so 

 much depend on inequalities of level, and consequent unfit- 



