UNIFORMITY OF THE CLIMATE.
On the 6th of May we reached Taltal, a small place, the general aspect of which reminded me of Tocopilla, and my first impression on landing was that this was equally devoid of vegetable and animal life. But on reaching the rocky slope, which rises very near the landing-place, I at once perceived some indications of water having flowed over the surface, and in the course of the short half-hour which was allowed ashore I found three flowering plants, two of them in a condition to be determined, the third dried up and undistinguishable. In the evening we touched at Chañeral, a place rising into importance as being the port of a rich mining district. The southerly breeze had been rather stronger than usual during the afternoon, and some passengers complained of the motion of the ship. An addition of seventy tons of copper in the hold, which was shipped here by torchlight, appeared to have a remarkable effect in steadying the vessel.
We reached Caldera early on the 7th, and remained for five or six hours. This is the port of Copiapò, the chief town of Northern Chili – the only one, indeed, which could have grown up under natural conditions. A considerable stream, the Rio de Copiapò, which drains the western slope of the Cordillera, passes by the town. Caldera, the port, is not at the mouth of the river, but several miles further north, and water is doubtless conveyed there in some abundance, as, for the first time since leaving Arica, a few bushes in little enclosed gardens could be descried from the harbour, and I was afterwards shown two stately trees, the ornament of the place, which were nearly fifteen feet in height. I went inland about a mile and a half, visiting a slight eminence where the rock, evidently very recent, crops out at the surface, and one or two other promising spots. Most of the country was covered with sand, in places soft and deep, and anywhere else in the world I should have thought it wretchedly barren, but after my recent experience the meagre vegetation appeared almost luxuriant.
There is much interest attaching to the flora of this desert region of South-western America. The species which grow here are the more or less modified representatives of plants which at some former period existed under very different conditions of life. In some of them the amount of modification has been very slight, the species, it may be presumed, possessing a considerable power of adaptation. Thus one composite of the sun-flower family, which I found here, and also at Payta, is but a slight variety of Encelia canescens,16 which I had seen growing luxuriantly in the gravelly bed of the Rimac near Lima, and along that river to a height of six thousand feet above the sea. In this parched region the plant is stunted, and the leaves are hoary with minute white hairs, which may serve as a protection against evaporation. The same species, with other slight modifications, extends to all the drier portions of the western coast as far south as Central Chili. A dwarf shrub with yellow flowers like those of a jessamine, but with very different two-horned fruit, called Skytanthus, was an example of a much greater amount of change. Its only allies are two species in tropical Brazil, very different in appearance, though nearly similar in essential structure. We may safely conclude that a long period has elapsed since these forms diverged from a common stock, and that many intermediate links have perished during the interval.
BRITISH PACIFIC SQUADRON.
Several of the ships composing the British Pacific squadron were lying at Caldera at this time, and after returning from my short excursion ashore, I went on board the Triumph, Captain Albert Markham, bearing the flag of Admiral Lyons, commander-in-chief. With regret I declined the admiral’s hospitable invitation to accompany the squadron to Valparaiso, but I was unable to refuse Captain Markham’s kind suggestion that, as his ship was under orders to return to England on the arrival of the Swiftsure, then expected, I should become his guest on the passage from Valparaiso to Montevideo. The Triumph having been detained in Chilian waters many weeks longer than was then expected, I was afterwards forced to forego the agreeable prospect of a voyage in company with an officer whose varied accomplishments and extensive observation of nature under the most varied conditions make his society equally agreeable and instructive.
Leaving Caldera soon after midday, the Ayacucho reached Coquimbo early on the following morning. With only the exception of Talcahuano, this is the best port in Chili, being sheltered from all troublesome winds, and affording good anchorage for large ships. The town of La Serena, the chief place in this part of Chili, stands on moderately high ground about two miles from the sea, and may be reached in about twenty minutes from the port by frequent trains which travel to and fro. We were warned that our stay was to be very short, and that those who went to the city could not remain there for more than half an hour. I had no difficulty in deciding to forego the attractions of the city, whatever they might be, for a far more tempting alternative offered itself. The range of low but rather steep slopes that rises immediately behind the chief line of street was actually dotted over with bushes, veritable bushes, and the unusual greenish-grey tint of the soil announced that it was at least partially covered with vegetation. In the spring, as I was assured, the hue is quite a bright green. To a man who for the preceding week had seen nothing on land but naked rocks or barren sand, the somewhat parched and meagre vegetation of Coquimbo appeared irresistibly attractive. I could not expect to add anything of value to what is already known, through the writings of Darwin and other travellers, respecting the evidences of elevation of the coast afforded by the raised terraces containing recent shells, whose seaward face forms the seeming hills behind the town, and I felt free to give every available moment to collecting the singular plants of this region.
IMMUNITY OF THE BOTANIST.
One of the minor satisfactions of a naturalist in South America arises from the fact that the inhabitants are so thoroughly used to seeing strangers of every nationality, and in the most varied attire, that his appearance excites no surprise and provokes no uncivil attentions. Going about almost always alone, with a large tin box slung across my back, I never found myself even stared at, which, in most parts of Europe, is the least inconvenience that befalls a solitary botanist. The amount of attention varies, indeed, in different countries. In Sicily and in Syria one is an object of general curiosity, and one’s every movement, as that of a strange animal, watched by a silent crowd; but it is only in Spain that the inoffensive stranger is subject to personal molestation, and the little boys pelt him with stones without rebuke or interference from their seniors, who nevertheless boast of their national courtesy.17 Fortunately it nowhere occurs to the most ill-disposed populations that a shabbily dressed man, engaged in grubbing up plants by the roots, can be worth robbing. Usually regarded as the assistant to some pharmacist, the botanist is, I think, less subject to molestation than the follower of any other pursuit; his only difficulty being that, if ignorant of the healing art, he cuts a poor figure when applied to for medical advice.
Quite unnoticed, I made my way through the long street of Coquimbo, and, at the first favourable opportunity, turned up a lane leading to the slopes above the town. The first plant that I saw, close to the houses, was a huge specimen of the common European Marrubium vulgare, grown to the dimensions of a much-branched bush four or five feet high. It is common in temperate South America, reaching a much greater size than in Europe. The season was, of course, very unfavourable, the condition of the vegetation being very much what may be seen at the corresponding season – late autumn – in Southern Spain, before the first winter rain has awakened the dormant vegetation of the smaller bulbous-rooted plants. Nevertheless, I found several very curious and rare plants still in flower, some of them known only from this vicinity, and among them a dwarf cactus, only three or four inches in height, with comparatively large crimson flowers just beginning to expand.
At length, on the morning of May 9, the voyage came to an end as we slowly steamed into the harbour of Valparaiso, which, with the large amount of shipping and the conspicuous floating docks, gives an impression of even greater importance than it actually possesses. The modern town, built in European fashion, with houses of two and even three floors above the ground, on the curved margin of the bay partly reclaimed from the sea, and the older town, chiefly perched on the edge of the plateau some two hundred feet above the main street, and divided by the deep ravines (quebradas) that converge towards the bay, have been described by many travellers; but I do not remember to have seen any sufficient warning as to the frightful peril to which the majority of the population is constantly exposed. Over and over again earthquakes have destroyed towns in western South America. Houses built of slight materials, with a ground floor only, or at most with a single floor above it, may fall without entailing much loss of life; but it is frightful to contemplate the amount of destruction of life and property that must ensue if a violent shock should ever visit Valparaiso. And the peril is twofold; the great wave which is the usual sequel of a violent earthquake, would inevitably destroy whatever might survive the first shock in the crowded streets of the lower town.
VALPARAISO.
After overcoming the preliminary difficulties of landing and passing my luggage through the custom-house, I proceeded to the Hotel Colon, in the main street, kept by a French proprietor to whose lively conversation I owed much information and amusement during my short stay. Some three hours were occupied by a few visits, a stroll through the chief streets, and the despatch of a telegram to Buenos Ayres. Not choosing to incur the heavy expense of a telegram from Valparaiso to England, I had availed myself of the courtesy of the officials of the Royal Mail Steamboat Company to arrange that a telegram from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres should be forwarded by post from the latter place, thus saving fully three weeks’ time. In the afternoon I climbed up one of the steep tracks leading to the upper part of the town, where the population mainly consists of the poorest class. The houses were small and frail looking, but fairly clean, and I nowhere saw indications of abject want, such as may too often be witnessed in the outskirts of a large European city.
Valparaiso has all the air of a busy place, with some features to which we are not used in Europe. Along the line of the narrow main street tramcars are constantly passing to and fro. The names over the shops, many of which are large and handsome, are mainly foreign, German being, perhaps, in a majority; but the important mercantile houses are chiefly English, and, except among the poorer class, the English language appears to be predominant. All people engaged in business acquire it when young, and very many of Spanish descent speak it with fluency and correctness. The Hotel Colon stands between the main street and a broad quay, part of the space reclaimed from the margin of the bay, and my windows overlooked the busy scene, thronged from daylight till evening with a crowd of men and vehicles. It was somewhat startling to see frequent railway trains run through the crowd, with no other precaution than the swinging of a large bell on the locomotive to warn people to get out of the way.
I started soon after daylight on the 10th for a botanical excursion over the hills behind the town, and, as I had rather exaggerated expectations of the harvest to be collected, I had engaged a boy to carry a portfolio wherein to stow away what I could not conveniently carry for myself. Though I moved slowly, as naturalists generally do, my companion soon grew tired, or pretended fatigue, and after an hour or so I sent him back to the hotel with the portfolio well filled.
FLORA OF CENTRAL CHILI.
The flora of Central Chili is denominated by Grisebach that of the transition zone of western South America; but, except in the sense that it occupies a territory intermediate between the desert region to the north and that of the antarctic forests to the south, the term is not very appropriate. On the opposite side of the continent, the flora of Uruguay, Entrerios, and the adjoining provinces, may be truly said to offer a transition between that of South subtropical Brazil and that of the pampas region, most of the genera belonging to one or other of those regions, the one element gradually diminishing in importance as the other assumes a predominance. In this respect the Chilian flora presents a remarkable contrast, being distinguished by the large number of vegetable types peculiar to it, and having but slight affinities either with those of tropical or antarctic America.
Of 198 genera peculiar to temperate South America, the large majority belong exclusively to Central Chili, and these include several tribes whose affinity to the forms of other regions is only remote. Two of these tribes – the Vivianeæ and Francoaceæ– have even been regarded by many botanists as distinct natural orders; and many of the most common and conspicuous species will strike a botanist familiar with the vegetation of other regions of the earth as very distinct from all that he has known elsewhere. With only a few exceptions, these endemic types appear to have originated in the Andean range, whence some modified forms have descended to the lower country; several of these, as was inevitable, have been found on the eastern flanks of the great range, and it is probable that further exploration will add to the number; but it is remarkable that as yet so large a proportion should be confined to Chilian territory.
Grisebach has fixed the limits of that which he has called the transition zone at the Tropic of Capricorn to the north, and the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude to the south; but these in no way correspond to the natural boundaries. As I have already pointed out, the flora of the desert zone, extending from about the twentieth nearly to the thirtieth parallel of south latitude, shows a general uniformity in its meagre constituents. It is about the latitude of Coquimbo, or only a little north of it, that the characteristic types of the Chilian flora begin to present themselves, and these extend southward at least as far as latitude 36° south, and even somewhat farther, if I may judge from the imperfect indications of locality too often afforded with herbarium specimens.18
DISTRIBUTION OF RAINFALL.
In discussing the causes that have operated on the development of the Chilian flora, the same eminent writer has been misled by incomplete and erroneous information as to the climate of the region in question, and more especially as to the distribution of rainfall, which is no doubt the most important factor. It is true that the peculiar character of the Chilian climate makes it very difficult to express by averages the facts that mainly influence organic life. Between the northern desert region, where rain in a measurable quantity is an exceptional phenomenon, and the southern forest region, extending from the Straits of Magellan to the province of Valdivia, Central Chili has in ordinary years a long, dry, rainless summer, followed by rather scanty rainfall at intervals from the late autumn to spring. About once in four or five years an exceptional season recurs, when rain falls in summer as well as winter, and in which the total fall may be double the usual amount, and at longer intervals, usually after a severe earthquake, storms causing formidable inundations occur, when in a few days the rainfall may exceed the ordinary amount for an entire year. When several such storms are repeated in the same year, we may have a total rainfall of three or four times the ordinary average.19 Such seasons appear to recur six or seven times in each century, and it is clear that, according as the meteorologist happens to include or exclude such a season in his data, the figures expressing the average must vary very largely. Inasmuch as plant life is regulated by the ordinary conditions of temperature and moisture, we are less liable to error in taking the results which exclude exceptional seasons.
In discussing, therefore, the conditions of vegetation in Central Chili, it seems safe to conclude that the averages given in the following table, extracted from the careful work of Julius Hann, “Lehrbuch der Klimatologie,” are above rather than below the ordinary limit. I find, indeed, that while the average rainfall at Santiago during the twelve years from 1849 to 1860 was 419 millimetres, or nearly 16½ English inches, the average for the six years from 1866 to 1871 was 299 millimetres, or less than 12 inches. It is evident that the indigenous vegetation must be adapted to thrive upon the smaller amount of moisture expressed by the latter figures.
CLIMATE OF CENTRAL CHILI.
The following table, compiled from Hann’s work, gives the most reliable results now available, and shows the mean temperature of the year, of the hottest and coldest months, the extremes of annual temperature, and the rainfall for the chief places in Chili, with a few blanks where information is not available. The maxima and minima do not express the absolute extremes attained during the entire period for which observations are available, but the means of the annual maxima and minima. The temperatures are given in degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer.
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This table brings out very clearly the influence of the cold southern currents of the ocean and air in reducing the summer heat of the western side of South America; for, while the winter temperatures are not very different from those of places similarly situated on the west side of Europe and North Africa, those of summer are lower by 8° or 10° Fahr., and the mean of the year is lower by 6° or 7° than that of places in the same latitude on the east side of South America. It is also apparent that much of what has been stated in works of authority as to the climate of this region is altogether incorrect. In his great work on the “Vegetation of the Earth,” Grisebach gives the mean temperature of Santiago as 67·5°, or nearly 12° higher than the mean result of ten years’ observation, and the rainfall as over 40 inches, or nearly three times the average – more, indeed, than three times the average – of ordinary seasons.
Arriving in Chili about the end of the long dry season, I had but very moderate expectations as to the prospect of seeing much of its peculiar vegetation, and I was agreeably surprised to find that there yet remained a good deal to interest me, especially among the characteristic evergreen shrubs, having much of the general aspect of those of the Mediterranean region, though widely different in structure from the Old-World forms. One or two slight showers had fallen shortly before my arrival, and as a result the ground was in many places studded with the golden flowers of the little Oxalis lobata. This appears to have a true bulb, formed from the overlapping bases of the outer leaves, in the centre of which the undeveloped stem produces one or more flowers, which appear before the new leaves. The surface of the dry baked soil was extremely hard, costing some labour to break it with a pick in order to collect specimens, and it is not easy to understand the process by which a young flower-bud is enabled to force its way to the upper surface. The open country on the hills near Valparaiso is bare, trees being very scarce, and for the most part reduced to the stature of shrubs with strong trunks; but in the ravines, or quebradas, that descend towards the coast some of these rise to a height of twenty or twenty-five feet.
One of the objects of my walk over the hills was to obtain a good view of the Andes, and especially of the peak of Aconcagua, the highest summit of the New World. I had had a glimpse of the peak from the sea on the previous morning, but light clouds hung about the entire range during this day, and I was unable to identify with certainty any of the summits. The distance in an air line is about one hundred English miles, and I was struck by the clearness of the air in this region as compared with what I had seen from the coast of Ecuador or Peru. Every point that stood out from the clouds was seen sharply defined, as one is accustomed to observe in favourable weather in the Mediterranean region.
WINTER’S BARK.
Returning to the town, I took my way along one of numerous deep ravines that have been cut into the seaward surface of the plateau. Though they are witnesses to the energetic action of water, they are often completely dry at this season; yet they exercise a marked influence on the vegetation. The shrubs rise nearly to the dimensions of trees, and several species find a home that do not thrive in the open country. I was specially interested in, for the first time, finding in flower the Winter’s bark (Drimys Winteri), a shrub which displays an extraordinary capacity of adaptation to varying physical conditions, as it extends along the west side of America from Mexico to the Straits of Magellan, and also to the highlands of Guiana and Brazil, accommodating itself as well to the perpetual spring of the equatorial mountain zone as to the long winters and short, almost sunless, summers of Fuegia. The only necessary condition seems to be a moderate amount of moisture; but even as to this there is wonderful contrast between the long rainless summer and slight winter rainfall of Valparaiso, and the tropical rains of Brazil on the one hand, and the continual moisture of Valdivia and Western Patagonia on the other. This is one of the examples which goes to show how much caution should be used in drawing inferences as to the climate of former epochs from deposits of fossil vegetable remains. This instance is doubtless exceptional, but there is some reason to think that what may be called physiological varieties – races of plants which, with little or no morphological change, have become adapted to conditions of life very different from those under which the ancestral form was developed – are far less uncommon than has been generally supposed.
It is to me rather surprising that a shrub so ornamental as the Winter’s bark should not be more extensively introduced on our western coasts. It appears not to resist severe frosts, but in the west of Ireland and the south-west of England it should be a welcome addition to the resources of the landscape gardener. Although voyagers have spoken highly of its virtues as a stimulant and antiscorbutic, it does not appear to have held its ground in European pharmacopeias, and I believe that the active principle, chiefly residing in the bark, has never been chemically determined.
On May 11 I proceeded to Santiago. Mr. Drummond Hay,21 the popular consul-general, who at this time was also acting as the British chargé d’affaires at the legation at Santiago, was so fully occupied at the consular court that I was able to enjoy little of his society; but he was kind enough to telegraph to the Hotel Oddo at Santiago to secure for me accommodation. With the usual difficulty of effecting an early start, which appears to prevail everywhere in South America, I reached the railway station in time for the 7.45 a.m. train. For some distance the railroad runs near the sea, passing the station of Viña del Mar, where many of the Valparaiso merchants have pretty villas. I was more attracted by the appearance of the country about the following station of Salto, where rough, rocky ground, with clumps of small trees and the channels of one or more streams, promised well for a spring visit. But I was at every turn reminded that I had fallen on the most unfavourable season. After the long six or seven months’ drought the face of the country was everywhere parched, and the only matter for surprise was that there should yet remain some vestiges of its summer garb of vegetation.
RAILWAY TO SANTIAGO.
The direct distance from Valparaiso to Santiago is only about fifty-five miles, but the line chosen for the railway must be fully double that length. The country lying directly between the sea-coast and the capital is broken up by irregular masses, partly granitic and partly formed of greenstone and other hard igneous rocks. These in Europe would be regarded as considerable mountains, as the summits range from six thousand to over seven thousand feet in height, but they nowhere exhibit the bold and picturesque forms that characterize the granite formation in Brazil. On either side of this highland tract two considerable streams carry the drainage of the Cordillera to the ocean. The northern stream, the Rio Aconcagua, bears the same name as the famous mountain from whose snows it draws a constant supply even in the dry season. Some sixty miles further south, the Maipo, draining a larger portion of the Andean range, flows to the coast by the town of Melipilla. The valley of the Maipo offers a much easier, though a circuitous, railway route to Santiago than that chosen by the Chilian engineers, which for a considerable distance keeps to the valley of the Aconcagua. The stream is reached near to Quillota, a place which has given its name to this part of the valley.
Travelling at this season, I was not much struck by the boasted luxuriance of the vegetation of the vale of Quillota; but I could easily understand that the eye of the stranger, accustomed to the arid regions of Peru and Northern Chili, must welcome the comparative freshness of the landscape, in which orchards of orange and peach trees alternate with squares of arable land. Of the few plants that I could make out from the railway car what most attracted my attention was the frequent recurrence of oval masses of dark leaves, much in the form of a giant hedgehog three or four feet in length and half that height, remarkably uniform in size and appearance. The interest was not diminished when I was able, at a wayside station, to ascertain that the plant was a bramble, on which I failed to find flower or fruit, but which from the leaves can be nothing else than a variety of the common bramble, or blackberry, introduced from Europe.
* * * * *
At the station of Llaillai (pronounced Yaiyai) we met the train from Santiago, and were allowed a quarter of an hour for breakfast. The arrangements were rather rough, but the food excellent – much superior, indeed, to what one commonly finds at an English refreshment-room. This is a junction station, and a train was in readiness to take passengers from Santiago or Valparaiso by a branch line up the valley of the Aconcagua to San Felipe and Santa Rosa de los Andes. The Santiago train here leaves that valley, and, turning abruptly to the south, commences a long and rather steep ascent of the ridge that divides the basin of the Maipo from that of the Aconcagua. To our right rose the Cerro del Roble, about 7250 feet in height, one of the highest of the coast range.22
CHARACTERISTIC VEGETATION.
Here I first encountered the characteristic aspect of the hilly region of Central Chili. A tall columnar cactus (Cereus Quisco) is the most conspicuous plant. Sometimes with a solitary stem, but usually having two or three together from the same root, they stand bolt upright from fifteen to twenty-five feet in height. Next to this the commonest conspicuous plant is a large species of Puya, belonging to the pine-apple family, with long, stiff, spiky leaves, and these two combined to give a strange and somewhat weird appearance to the vegetation. Here and there were dense masses of evergreen bushes or small shrubs, and more rarely small solitary trees. Among these was probably the species of beech (Fagus obliqua of botanists) which the natives call roble (or oak), there being, in fact, no native oaks in America south of the equator; but in a passing railway train I could not hope to identify unfamiliar species. Both here and elsewhere in Chili, I noticed that the quisco is almost confined to the northern or sunny slopes; while, as Darwin observed, the tall bamboo grass (a Chusquea) prevails on the shady sides of the hills.
The summit level, according to Petermann’s map, is 4311 feet (1314 metres) above the sea, and thenceforward there is a continuous gradual slope of the ground towards Santiago. The country shows few signs of population, and the larger part of the surface is left in a state of nature, and used only for pasturage in winter. In this arid region cultivation is nearly confined to the valleys of the streams that descend from the Cordillera. The stony beds of the streams passed by the railway were almost completely dried up, and I think that I saw water in one spot only on the whole way between the Aconcagua and the Mapocho.
Any want of interest or variety in the nearer landscape was amply made up by the increasing grandeur of the views of the Cordillera as we approached the capital of Chili, rendered all the more imposing by fresh snow, which extended down to the level of ten or eleven thousand feet. Although it does not include several of the highest summits of the Andes, the range which walls in the province of Santiago to the east is probably the highest continuous portion of the great range; for in a distance of seventy miles, from near the Uspallata Pass to the Volcano of Maipe, I believe that there is but one narrow gap where the crest of the chain falls below the level of nineteen thousand feet.23 To the eye, however, the outline seen from the plain is very varied, and by no means gives the impression of a continuous wall. Huge buttresses, with peaked summits, not much inferior in height to the main range, project westward, and in the bays between them form Alpine valleys, which send down streams to fertilize the country. By these buttresses the peak of Tupungato, 20,278 feet in height, the highest summit of this part of the chain, is concealed from Santiago, and I doubt whether it is anywhere visible from the low country on the Chilian side.