Their Countries
Likewise Differ Entirely; As Instead Of The Sterile Sands Which Are
Everywhere Interspersed Over The Plain, The Mountain
Is covered through
its whole extent with verdure, and is everywhere furnished with rivulets
and springs of fine water, which
Unite to form the torrents and rivers
which descend so impetuously into the plain country. The fields are
everywhere full of flowers and plants of infinite varieties, among which
are many species like the plants which grow in Spain; such as cresses,
lettuce, succory, sorrel, vervain, and others; and vast quantities of wild
mulberries, and other fruit-bearing shrubs are found everywhere. There is
one particular plant with yellow flowers, having leaves like those of
celery, of most admirable virtues. If applied to the most putrid sore, it
makes it quite clean and sweet in a short time; but if laid upon a sound
place it soon eats to the very bone. There are many fruit-trees in this
country of various kinds, carrying abundant crops of fruit as good as
those of Spain without having the smallest care taken of them.
There are great numbers of sheep in the mountainous region, part of which
are domesticated by the Indians, but vast numbers of them are wild;
likewise abundance of deer and roes, many foxes and other smaller animals.
The natives often have public hunts of these animals, which they call
_chaco_, in which they take great delight. Four or five thousand natives,
more or less according to the population of the district, assemble
together, and enclose two or three leagues of country by forming a circle,
in which at first they are at considerable distances from each other, and
by gradually contracting their circle, beating the bushes, and singing
certain songs appropriated to the occasion, they drive all the animals of
every kind before them to an appointed place in the centre.
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