In The Great
Mining Provinces Of Coquimbo And Copiapo, Firewood Is Very
Scarce, And Men Search For It Over Every Hill And Dale; And
By This Means Nearly All The Richest Mines Have There Been
Discovered.
Chanuncillo, from which silver to the value of
many hundred thousand pounds has been raised in the course
of
A few years, was discovered by a man who threw a stone
at his loaded donkey, and thinking that it was very heavy, he
picked it up, and found it full of pure silver: the vein
occurred at no great distance, standing up like a wedge of
metal. The miners, also, taking a crowbar with them, often
wander on Sundays over the mountains. In this south part
of Chile, the men who drive cattle into the Cordillera, and
who frequent every ravine where there is a little pasture, are
the usual discoverers.
20th. - As we ascended the valley, the vegetation, with
the exception of a few pretty alpine flowers, became exceedingly
scanty, and of quadrupeds, birds, or insects, scarcely
one could be seen. The lofty mountains, their summits
marked with a few patches of snow, stood well separated
from each other, the valleys being filled up with an immense
thickness of stratified alluvium. The features in the scenery
of the Andes which struck me most, as contrasted with the
other mountain chains with which I am acquainted, were, -
the flat fringes sometimes expanding into narrow plains on
each side of the valleys, - the bright colours, chiefly red and
purple, of the utterly bare and precipitous hills of porphyry,
the grand and continuous wall-like dykes, - the plainly-
divided strata which, where nearly vertical, formed the
picturesque and wild central pinnacles, but where less inclined,
composed the great massive mountains on the outskirts of the
range, - and lastly, the smooth conical piles of fine and
brightly coloured detritus, which sloped up at a high angle
from the base of the mountains, sometimes to a height of
more than 2000 feet.
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