In That
Direction There Are A Few Small Villages, Where The Inhabitants,
Having More Water, Are Enabled To Irrigate A Little Land,
And Raise Hay, On Which The Mules And Asses, Employed In
Carrying The Saltpetre, Are Fed.
The nitrate of soda was now
selling at the ship's side at fourteen shillings per hundred
pounds:
The chief expense is its transport to the sea-coast.
The mine consists of a hard stratum, between two and three
feet thick, of the nitrate mingled with a little of the sulphate
of soda and a good deal of common salt. It lies close beneath
the surface, and follows for a length of one hundred and
fifty miles the margin of a grand basin or plain; this, from
its outline, manifestly must once have been a lake, or more
probably an inland arm of the sea, as may be inferred from
the presence of iodic salts in the saline stratum. The surface
of the plain is 3300 feet above the Pacific.
19th. - We anchored in the Bay of Callao, the seaport of
Lima, the capital of Peru. We stayed here six weeks but
from the troubled state of public affairs, I saw very little of
the country. During our whole visit the climate was far
from being so delightful, as it is generally represented. A
dull heavy bank of clouds constantly hung over the land, so
that during the first sixteen days I had only one view of the
Cordillera behind Lima. These mountains, seen in stages,
one above the other, through openings in the clouds, had a
very grand appearance.
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