It Was Curious To Behold The Machinery, If Such A
Term May Be Used, For The Drainage, All, With The Last Trifling
Exception, Perfect, Yet Without Any Signs Of Action.
Every one
must have remarked how mud-banks, left by the retiring tide,
imitate in miniature a country with
Hill and dale; and here
we have the original model in rock, formed as the continent
rose during the secular retirement of the ocean, instead of
during the ebbing and flowing of the tides. If a shower of
rain falls on the mud-bank, when left dry, it deepens the
already-formed shallow lines of excavation; and so it is with
the rain of successive centuries on the bank of rock and soil,
which we call a continent.
We rode on after it was dark, till we reached a side ravine
with a small well, called "Agua amarga." The water
deserved its name, for besides being saline it was most
offensively putrid and bitter; so that we could not force
ourselves to drink either tea or mate. I suppose the distance
from the river of Copiapo to this spot was at least twenty-five
or thirty English miles; in the whole space there was not a
single drop of water, the country deserving the name of desert
in the strictest sense. Yet about half way we passed some old
Indian ruins near Punta Gorda: I noticed also in front of
some of the valleys, which branch off from the Despoblado,
two piles of stones placed a little way apart, and directed so
as to point up the mouths of these small valleys.
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