Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle, Vol. 3 [of 3] · Charles Darwin
NORTHERN CHILE AND PERU.
APRIL 27TH.--I set out on a journey to Coquimbo, and thence through Guasco to Copiapó, where Captain FitzRoy kindly offered to pick me up in the Beagle. The distance in a straight line along the shore northward is only 420 miles; but my mode of travelling caused me to find it a very long journey. I bought four horses and two mules, the latter carrying the cargo on alternate days. The six animals together only cost the value of twenty-five pounds sterling, and at Copiapó I sold them again for twenty-three. We travelled in the same independent manner as before, cooking our own meals, and sleeping in the open air. As we rode towards the Vino del Mar, I took a farewell view of Valparaiso, and admired its picturesque appearance. For geological purposes I made a detour from the high road to the foot of the Bell mountain. We passed through a highly auriferous district to the neighbourhood of Limache, where we slept. The country is covered with much alluvium, and by the side of each little rivulet it has been washed for gold. This employment supports the inhabitants of numerous scattered hovels; but, like all those who gain by chance, they are unthrifty in their habits.
28TH.--In the afternoon we arrived at a cottage at the foot of the Bell mountain. The inhabitants were freeholders, which is not very usual in Chile. They supported themselves on the produce of a garden and a little field, but were very poor. Capital is so deficient in this part, that the people are obliged to sell their green corn while it is standing in the field, in order to buy necessaries for the ensuing year. Wheat in consequence was dearer in the very district of its production, than at Valparaiso, where the contractors live. The next day we joined the main road to Coquimbo. At night there was a very light shower of rain: this was the first drop that had fallen since the heavy rain of September 11th and 12th, which detained me a prisoner at the baths of Cauquenes. The interval was seven and a half months; but the rain this year in Chile was rather later than usual. The Andes were now covered by a thick mass of snow; and they presented, in the distance, a very glorious sight. MAY 2D.--The road continued to follow the coast, at no great distance from the sea. The few trees and bushes which are common in central Chile, decreased rapidly in numbers, and were replaced by a tall plant, something like a yucca in appearance. The surface of the country, on a small scale, was singularly broken and irregular; abrupt little peaks of rock rising out of small plains or basins. The indented coast, and the bottom of the neighbouring sea, studded with breakers, would if converted into dry land, present similar forms; and such a conversion without doubt has taken place in the part over which we rode.
3D.--Quilimari to Conchalee. The country became more and more barren. In the valleys there was scarcely sufficient water for any irrigation; and the intermediate land was quite bare, not supporting even goats. In the spring, after the winter showers, a thin pasture rapidly springs up, and cattle are then driven down from the Cordillera to graze for a short time. It is curious to observe how the seeds of the grass seem to know, as if by an acquired instinct, what quantity of rain to expect. One shower far northward at Copiapó produces as great an effect on the vegetation, as two at Guasco, and as three or four in this district. At Valparaiso a winter so dry as to injure most seriously the pasture, would at Guasco produce the most unusual abundance. Travelling northward the quantity of rain does not appear to decrease in strict proportion to the distance. At Conchalee, which is only halfway between Valparaiso and Coquimbo (being 67 miles north of the former) rain is not expected till the end of May; whereas, at Valparaiso some generally falls early in April. The annual quantity is likewise small in proportion to the lateness of the season at which it commences. MAY 4TH.--Finding the coast-road devoid of interest of every kind, we turned inland towards the mining district of Illapel. The town of that name is very regular and pretty. Its flourishing condition depends on numerous mines, chiefly of copper, which occur in its immediate vicinity. This valley, like every other in Chile, is level, broad, and very fertile: it is bordered on each side, either by cliffs of stratified shingle, or by bare rocky mountains. Above the straight line of the uppermost irrigating ditch, all is brown as on a high road; while all below, is of as bright a green as verdigris, from the beds of alfalfa, a kind of clover.
We proceeded to Los Hornos, another mining district, where the principal hill was drilled with holes, like a great ants’ nest. The Chilian miners are in their habits a peculiar race of men. Living for weeks together in the most desolate spots, when they descend to the villages on feast-days, there is no excess or extravagance into which they do not run. They sometimes gain a considerable sum, and then, like sailors with prize-money, they try how soon they can contrive to squander it. They drink excessively, buy quantities of clothes, and in a few days return penniless to their miserable abodes, there to work harder than beasts of burden. This thoughtlessness, as with sailors, is evidently the result of a similar manner of life. Their daily food is found them, and they acquire no habitual care as to the means of subsistence: moreover, at the same moment that temptation is offered, the means of enjoying it is placed in their power. On the other hand, in Cornwall, and some other parts of England, where the system of selling part of the vein is followed, the miners, from being obliged to act for themselves, and to judge with clearness, are a singularly intelligent and well-conducted set of men.
The dress of the Chilian miner is peculiar and rather picturesque. He wears a very long shirt, of some dark-coloured baize, with a leathern apron; the whole being fastened round his waist by a brightly-coloured sash. His trousers are very broad, and his small cap of scarlet cloth is made to fit the head closely. We met a party of these miners in full costume, carrying the body of one of their companions to be buried. They marched at a very quick trot, four men supporting the corpse. One set having run as hard as they could for about two hundred yards, were relieved by four others, who had previously dashed on ahead on horseback. Thus they proceeded, encouraging each other by wild cries: altogether the scene formed a most strange funeral.
We continued travelling northward, in a zigzag line; sometimes stopping a day to geologise. The country was so thinly inhabited, and the track so obscure, that we often had difficulty in finding our way. On the 12th I stayed at some mines. The ore in this case was not considered particularly good, but from being abundant it was supposed the mine would sell for about thirty or forty thousand dollars (that is 6000 or 8000 pounds sterling); yet it was bought by one of the English Associations for an ounce of gold (3_l._ 8_s._). The ore is yellow pyrites, which as I have already remarked, before the arrival of the English, was not supposed to contain a particle of copper. On a scale of profits, nearly as great as in the above instance, piles of scoriæ abounding with minute globules of metallic copper were purchased; yet with these advantages, the mining associations, as is well known, contrived to lose immense sums of money. The folly of the greater number of commissioners and shareholders, amounted to infatuation:--a thousand pounds per annum given in some cases to entertain the authorities; libraries of well-bound geological books; bringing out miners for particular metals (as tin) which were soon found not to exist in the country; contracts to supply the miners with milk, in parts where there were no cows; machinery, where such could not possibly be used; and a hundred similar arrangements, bore witness to our absurdity, and to this day afford amusement to the natives. Yet there can be no doubt, that the same capital well employed in these mines would have yielded an immense return: a confidential man of business, a practical miner and assayer, would have been all that was required.
Captain Head has described the wonderful load which the “Apires,” truly beasts of burden, carry up from deep mines. I confess I thought the account exaggerated; so that I was glad to take the opportunity of weighing one of the loads, which I picked out by hazard. It required considerable exertion on my part, when standing directly over it, to lift it from the ground. The load was considered under weight when found to be 197 pounds. The apire had carried this up eighty perpendicular yards,--part of the way by a steep passage, but the greater part up notched poles, placed in a zigzag line in the shaft. According to the general regulation, the apire is not allowed to halt for breath, except the mine is six hundred feet deep. The average load is considered as rather more than 200 pounds, and I have been assured that one of 300 pounds (twenty-two stone and a half) by way of a trial has been brought up from the deepest mine! At this time the apires were bringing up the usual load twelve times in the day; that is, 2400 pounds from eighty yards deep; and they were employed in the intervals in breaking and picking ore.
These men, excepting from accidents, are healthy, and appear cheerful. Their bodies are not very muscular. They rarely eat meat once a week, and never oftener, and then only the hard dry charqui. Although with a knowledge that the labour is voluntary, it was nevertheless quite revolting to see the state in which they reached the mouth of the mine; their bodies bent forward, leaning with their arms on the steps, their legs bowed, the muscles quivering, the perspiration streaming from their faces over their breasts, their nostrils distended, the corners of their mouth forcibly drawn back, and the expulsion of their breath most laborious. Each time, from habit, they utter an articulate cry of “ay-ay,” which ends in a sound rising from deep in the chest, but shrill like the note of a fife. After staggering to the pile of ores, they emptied the “carpacho;” in two or three seconds recovering their breath, they wiped the sweat from their brows, and apparently quite fresh descended the mine again at a quick pace. This appears to me a wonderful instance of the amount of labour which habit (for it can be nothing else), will enable a man to endure.
In the evening, talking with the _mayor-domo_ of these mines, about the number of foreigners now scattered over the whole country, he told me that, though quite a young man, he remembers when a boy at school at Coquimbo, a holiday being given, to see the captain of an English ship, who was brought to the city to speak to the governor. He believes that nothing would have induced any boy in the school, himself included, to have gone close to the Englishman; so deeply had they been impressed with an idea of the heresy, contamination, and evil to be derived from contact with such a person. To this day they relate the atrocious actions of the bucaniers; and especially of one man, who took away the figure of the Virgin Mary, and returned the year after for that of St. Joseph, saying it was a pity the lady should not have a husband. I heard also of an old lady who, at a dinner in Coquimbo, remarked how wonderfully strange it was that she should have lived to dine in the same room with an Englishman; for she remembered as a girl, that twice, at the mere cry of “Los Ingleses,” every soul, carrying what valuables they could, had taken to the mountains.
MAY 14TH.--We reached Coquimbo, where we staid a few days. The town is remarkable for nothing but its extreme quietness. It is said to contain from 6000 to 8000 inhabitants. On the morning of the 17th it rained lightly (the first time this year) for about five hours. With this shower, the farmers, who plant corn near the sea-coast where the atmosphere is more humid, would break up the ground; with a second, put the seed in: and if a third should fall, they would reap in the spring a good harvest. It was interesting to watch the effect of this trifling amount of moisture. Twelve hours afterwards the ground appeared as dry as ever; yet after an interval of ten days, all the hills were faintly tinged with green patches; the grass being sparingly scattered in hair-like fibres a full inch in length. Before this shower every part of the surface was bare as on a high road.
In the evening, Captain FitzRoy and myself were dining with Mr. Edwards, an English resident well known for his hospitality by all who have visited Coquimbo, when a sharp earthquake happened. I heard the forecoming rumble, but from the screams of the ladies, the running of servants, and the rush of several of the gentlemen to the doorway, I could not distinguish the motion. Some of the women afterwards were crying with terror, and one person said he should not be able to sleep all night, or if he did, it would only be to dream of falling houses. The father of this gentleman had lately lost all his property at Talcahuano, and he himself only just escaped a falling roof at Valparaiso, in 1822. He mentioned a curious coincidence which then happened: he was playing at cards, when a German, one of the party, got up, and said he would never sit in a room in these countries with the door shut, since, owing to his having done so, he had nearly lost his life at Copiapó. Accordingly he opened the door; and no sooner had he done this, than he cried out, “Here it comes again!” and the famous shock commenced. The whole party escaped. The danger in an earthquake is not from the time lost in opening a door, but from the chance of its becoming jammed by the movement of the walls.
It is impossible to be much surprised at the fear which natives and old residents, though some of them known to be men of great command of mind, so generally experience during earthquakes. I think, however, this excess of panic may be partly attributed to a want of habit in governing their fears; the usual restraint of shame being here absent. Indeed, the natives do not like to see a person indifferent. I heard of two Englishmen who, sleeping in the open air, during a smart shock, knowing there was no danger, did not rise. The natives cried out indignantly, “Look at those heretics, they will not even get out of their beds!” I spent two or three days in examining the step-formed terraces of shingle first described by Captain Basil Hall, in his work, so full of spirited descriptions, on the west coast of America. Mr. Lyell concluded from the account, that they must have been formed by the sea during the gradual rising of the land. Such is the case: on some of the steps which sweep round from within the valley, so as to front the coast, shells of existing species both lie on the surface, and are embedded in a soft calcareous stone. This bed of the most modern tertiary epoch passes downward into another, containing some living species associated with others now lost. Amongst the latter may be mentioned shells of an enormous perna and an oyster, and the teeth of a gigantic shark, closely allied to, or identical with the _Carcharias Megalodon_ of ancient Europe; the bones of which, or of some cetaceous animal, are also present, in a silicified state, in great numbers. At Guasco, the phenomenon of the parallel terraces is very strikingly seen: no less than seven perfectly level, but unequally broad plains, ascending by steps, occur on one or both sides the valley.
So remarkable is the contrast of the successive horizontal lines, corresponding on each side, with the irregular outline of the surrounding mountains, that it attracts the attention of even those who feel no interest regarding the causes, which have modelled the surface of the land. The origin of the terraces of Coquimbo is precisely the same, according to my view, with that of the plains of Patagonia; the only difference is that the plains are rather broader than the terraces, and that they front the Atlantic ocean instead of a valley,--which valley, however, was formerly occupied by an arm of the sea, but now by a fresh-water river. In every case it must be remembered, that the successive cliffs do not mark so many distinct elevations, but on the contrary, periods of comparative repose during the gradual and perhaps scarcely sensible rise of the land. In the valley of Guasco we have the record of seven such nights of rest, in the action of the subterranean powers.
MAY 21ST.--I set out in company with Don Jose Edwards to the silver-mine of Arqueros, and thence up the valley of Elque or Coquimbo. Passing through a mountainous country, we reached by nightfall the mines belonging to Mr. Edwards. I enjoyed my night’s rest here from a cause which will not be fully understood in England, namely, the absence of fleas! The rooms in Coquimbo swarm with them; but they will not live at the elevation of three or four thousand feet, even if brought there, as is constantly occurring at these mines. It can scarcely be the trifling diminution of temperature, but some other cause which is here destructive to these troublesome insects. I spent the greater part of the ensuing day in examining the mines. The veins occur abundantly scattered over several miles of hilly country; yet it is only a few years since that they were discovered by a wood-cutter. The mines are now in a bad state, though they formerly yielded about 2000 pounds in weight of silver a year. It has been said “a person with a copper-mine will gain; with silver he may gain; but with gold he is sure to lose.” This is not true: all the large Chilian fortunes have been made by mines of the more precious metals. A short time since an English physician returned to England from Copiapó, taking with him the profits of one share in a silver-mine, which amounted to about 24,000 pounds sterling. No doubt a copper-mine with care is a sure game, whereas the other is gambling, or rather taking a ticket in a lottery.
The owners lose great quantities of rich ores; for no precautions can prevent robbery. I heard of a man laying a bet with another that one of his men should rob him before his face. The ore when brought out of the mine is broken into pieces, and the useless stone thrown on one side. A couple of the miners who were thus employed, pitched, as if by accident, two fragments away at the same moment, and then cried out for a joke, “Let us see which rolls furthest.” The owner, who was standing by, bet a cigar with his friend on the race. The miner by this means watched the very point amongst the rubbish where the stone lay. In the evening he picked it up and carried it to his master, showing him a rich mass of silver ore, and saying, “This was the stone on which you won a cigar by its rolling so far.”
MAY 23D.--We followed up the fertile valley, till we reached an Hacienda, belonging to a relation of Don Jose, where we stayed the ensuing day. I then rode one day’s journey further, to see what were declared to be some petrified shells and beans. The former turned out to be so; the latter were small quartz pebbles. We passed through several small villages; and the valley was beautifully cultivated, and the whole scenery very grand. We were here near the main Cordillera; and the surrounding hills were very lofty. In all parts of northern Chile, fruit-trees produce much more abundantly at a considerable elevation near the Andes than in the lower country. The figs and grapes of this part are famous for their superiority, and are cultivated to a great extent. This valley is, perhaps, the most productive one north of Quillota: I believe it contains, including Coquimbo, 25,000 inhabitants. The next day I returned to the Hacienda, and thence, together with Don Jose, to Coquimbo. JUNE 2D.--We set out for the valley of Guasco, following the coast-road, which was considered rather less desert than the other. Our first day’s ride was to a solitary house, called Yerba Buena, where there was pasture for our horses. The shower mentioned as having fallen a fortnight ago, only reached about halfway to Guasco; we had, therefore, in the first part of our journey a most faint tinge of green, which soon faded away. Even where brightest, it was scarcely sufficient to remind one, of the fresh turf and budding flowers during the spring of other countries. While travelling through these deserts one feels like a prisoner shut up in a gloomy courtyard, longing to see something green and to smell a moist atmosphere.
JUNE 3D.--Yerba Buena to Carizal. During the first part of the day we crossed a mountainous rocky desert; and afterwards a long deep sandy plain, scattered over with broken marine shells. There was very little water, and that little saline; hence the few streamlets were bordered on each side by white incrustations, amongst which succulent salt-loving plants grew. The whole country, from the coast to the Cordillera, is desert and uninhabited. I saw traces only of one living animal in abundance: this was a Bulimus, the shells of which were collected together in extraordinary numbers on the driest spots. In the spring, one humble little plant sends out a few leaves, and on these the snails feed. As they are seen only very early in the morning, when the ground is slightly damp from the dew, the Guasos believe they are born from it. I have observed in other places, that extremely dry and sterile districts, where the soil is calcareous, are most favourable to an extraordinary increase of land-shells. At Carizal there were a few cottages, some brackish water, and a trace of cultivation: but it was with difficulty that we purchased a little corn and straw for our horses.
4TH.--Carizal to Sauce. We continued to ride over desert plains, tenanted by large herds of guanaco. We crossed also the valley of Chaneral; which, although the most fertile one between Guasco and Coquimbo, is very narrow, and produces so little pasture, that we could not purchase any for our horses. At Sauce we found a very civil old gentleman superintending a copper-smelting furnace. As an especial favour, he allowed me to purchase at a high price, an armful of dirty straw, which was all the poor horses had for supper after their long day’s journey. Very few smelting furnaces are now at work in any part of Chile; it is found more profitable, on account of the extreme scarcity of firewood, and of the loss from the clumsy Chilian method of reduction, to ship the ore for Swansea. The next day, we crossed some mountains to Freyrina in the valley of Guasco. During each day’s ride further northward, the vegetation became more scanty; even the great candlestick cactus was here replaced by a different and much smaller species. During the winter months, both in northern Chile and in Peru, a uniform stratum of clouds hangs (at no great height) over the Pacific. From these mountains we had a very striking view of the great white and brilliant field, which sent arms up the valleys; leaving islands and promontories in the same manner, as the sea now intersects the Chonos archipelago, or the west coast of Tierra del Fuego.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.