manage to find sufficient pasture. Once every year there is a grand
"rodeo," when all the cattle are driven down, counted, and marked, and
a certain number separated to be fattened in the irrigated fields.
Wheat is extensively cultivated, and a good deal of Indian corn: a kind
of bean is, however, the staple article of food for the common
labourers. The orchards produce an overflowing abundance of peaches
figs, and grapes. With all these advantages, the inhabitants of the
country ought to be much more prosperous than they are.
16th.--The mayor-domo of the Hacienda was good enough to give me a
guide and fresh horses; and in the morning we set out to ascend the
Campana, or Bell Mountain, which is 6400 feet high. The paths were
very bad, but both the geology and scenery amply repaid the trouble. We
reached by the evening, a spring called the Agua del Guanaco, which is
situated at a great height. This must be an old name, for it is very
many years since a guanaco drank its waters. During the ascent I
noticed that nothing but bushes grew on the northern slope, whilst on
the southern slope there was a bamboo about fifteen feet high. In a
few places there were palms, and I was surprised to see one at an
elevation of at least 4500 feet. These palms are, for their family,
ugly trees. Their stem is very large, and of a curious form, being
thicker in the middle than at the base or top. They are excessively
numerous in some parts of Chile, and valuable on account of a sort of
treacle made from the sap. On one estate near Petorca they tried to
count them, but failed, after having numbered several hundred thousand.
Every year in the early spring, in August, very many are cut down, and
when the trunk is lying on the ground, the crown of leaves is lopped
off. The sap then immediately begins to flow from the upper end, and
continues so doing for some months: it is, however, necessary that a
thin slice should be shaved off from that end every morning, so as to
expose a fresh surface. A good tree will give ninety gallons, and all
this must have been contained in the vessels of the apparently dry
trunk. It is said that the sap flows much more quickly on those days
when the sun is powerful; and likewise, that it is absolutely necessary
to take care, in cutting down the tree, that it should fall with its
head upwards on the side of the hill; for if it falls down the slope,
scarcely any sap will flow; although in that case one would have
thought that the action would have been aided, instead of checked, by
the force of gravity. The sap is concentrated by boiling, and is then
called treacle, which it very much resembles in taste.
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