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 narrow,
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
valueless, 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 unfitness
for irrigation, as on the small supply of water. The
river this year was remarkably full: here, high up the valley,
it reached to the horse's belly, and was about fifteen yards
wide, and rapid; lower down it becomes smaller and smaller,
and is generally quite lost, as happened during one period
of thirty years, so that not a drop entered the sea. The
inhabitants watch a storm over the Cordillera with great
interest; as one good fall of snow provides them with water
for the ensuing year. This is of infinitely more consequence
than rain in the lower country. Rain, as often as it falls,
which is about once in every two or three years, is a great
advantage, because the cattle and mules can for some time
afterwards find a little pasture in the mountains. But without
snow on the Andes, desolation extends throughout the
valley. It is on record that three times nearly all the
inhabitants have been obliged to emigrate to the south. This
year there was plenty of water, and every man irrigated his
ground as much as he chose; but it has frequently been
necessary to post soldiers at the sluices, to see that each
estate took only its proper allowance during so many hours
in the week. The valley is said to contain 12,000 souls, but
its produce is sufficient only for three months in the year;
the rest of the supply being drawn from Valparaiso and the
south. Before the discovery of the famous silver-mines of
Chanuncillo, Copiapo was in a rapid state of decay; but now
it is in a very thriving condition; and the town, which was
completely overthrown by an earthquake, has been rebuilt.
The valley of Copiapo, forming a mere ribbon of green
in a desert, runs in a very southerly direction; so that it is
of considerable length to its source in the Cordillera. The
valleys of Guasco and Copiapo may both be considered as
long narrow islands, separated from the rest of Chile by
deserts of rock instead of by salt water. Northward of
these, there is one other very miserable valley, called Paposo,
which contains about two hundred souls; and then there
extends the real desert of Atacama - a barrier far worse
than the most turbulent ocean. After staying a few days at
Potrero Seco, I proceeded up the valley to the house of Don
Benito Cruz, to whom I had a letter of introduction. I found
him most hospitable; indeed it is impossible to bear too
strong testimony to the kindness with which travellers are
received in almost every part of South America. The next
day I hired some mules to take me by the ravine of Jolquera
into the central Cordillera. On the second night the
weather seemed to foretell a storm of snow or rain, and whilst
lying in our beds we felt a trifling shock of an earthquake.
The connection between earthquakes and the weather has
been often disputed: it appears to me to be a point of great
interest, which is little understood. Humboldt has remarked
in one part of the Personal Narrative, [1] that it would be
difficult for any person who had long resided in New Andalusia,
or in Lower Peru, to deny that there exists some connection
between these phenomena: in another part, however
he seems to think the connection fanciful. At Guayaquil
it is said that a heavy shower in the dry season is invariably
followed by an earthquake. In Northern Chile, from the
extreme infrequency of rain, or even of weather foreboding
rain, the probability of accidental coincidences becomes very
small; yet the inhabitants are here most firmly convinced of
some connection between the state of the atmosphere and of
the trembling of the ground: I was much struck by this
when mentioning to some people at Copiapo that there had
been a sharp shock at Coquimbo: they immediately cried out,
"How fortunate! there will be plenty of pasture there this
year." To their minds an earthquake foretold rain as surely
as rain foretold abundant pasture. Certainly it did so happen
that on the very day of the earthquake, that shower of
rain fell, which I have described as in ten days' time producing
a thin sprinkling of grass. At other times rain has
followed earthquakes at a period of the year when it is a
far greater prodigy than the earthquake itself: this happened
after the shock of November, 1822, and again in 1829, at
Valparaiso; also after that of September, 1833, at Tacna.
A person must be somewhat habituated to the climate of
these countries to perceive the extreme improbability of rain
falling at such seasons, except as a consequence of some law
quite unconnected with the ordinary course of the weather.
In the cases of great volcanic eruptions, as that of Coseguina,
where torrents of rain fell at a time of the year most
unusual for it, and "almost unprecedented in Central
America," it is not difficult to understand that the volumes
of vapour and clouds of ashes might have disturbed the
atmospheric equilibrium. Humboldt extends this view to
the case of earthquakes unaccompanied by eruptions; but I
can hardly conceive it possible, that the small quantity of
aeriform fluids which then escape from the fissured ground,
can produce such remarkable effects. There appears much
probability in the view first proposed by Mr. P. Scrope, that
when the barometer is low, and when rain might naturally
be expected to fall, the diminished pressure of the atmosphere
over a wide extent of country, might well determine
the precise day on which the earth, already stretched to the
utmost by the subterranean forces, should yield, crack, and
consequently tremble.
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