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This valley runs in an east and west direction to the Cordillera, a distance of about one hundred and sixty miles. It cuts through the great Patagonian tertiary formation, including, in the upper half of the valley, immense streams of basaltic lava, which as well as the softer beds, are capped by gravel; and this gravel, high up the river, is associated with a vast boulder formation.
Santa Cruz. Expedition up the River. Indians. Immense Streams of basaltic lava. Fragments not transported by the River. Excavation of the valley. Condor, habits of. Cordillera. Erratic boulders of great size. Indian relics. Return to the ship. Falkland Islands. Wild horses, cattle, rabbits. Wolf-like fox. Fire made of bones. Manner of hunting wild cattle. Geology. Streams of stones.
At length they reached the crest of the Cordillera, where it spreads out into a bold and bleak expanse, with scarce the vestige of vegetation, except what is afforded by the pajonal, a dried yellow grass, which, as it is seen from below, encircling the base of the snow-covered peaks, looks, with its brilliant straw-color lighted up in the rays of an ardent sun, like a setting of gold round pinnacles of burnished silver.
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. It is almost become a proverb, that rain never falls in the lower part of Peru.
On a clear day the view up the valley is very fine; the straight opening terminates in the far-distant snowy Cordillera; on each side an infinity of crossing-lines are blended together in a beautiful haze.
The principal structure on Koati was built around three sides of a small plaza, constructed on an artificial terrace in a slight depression on the eastern side of the island. The fourth side is open and affords a magnificent view of the lake and the wonderful snow-covered Cordillera Real, 200 miles long and nowhere less than 17,000 feet high.
And had they been contemporaneously deposited, without any such dividing ridge, surely some of the gypseous and other sedimentary matter forming such immensely thick masses in the Cordillera, would have extended this short distance eastwards; and surely some of the Uspallata tuffs and basalts also accumulated to so great a thickness, would have extended a little westward.
The valley of Copiapo, forming a mere ribbon of green in a desert, runs in a very southerly direction; so that it is of considerable length to its source in the Cordillera. The valleys of Guasco and Copiapo may both be considered as long narrow islands, separated from the rest of Chile by deserts of rock instead of by salt water.
This gregarious habit, in so typical a genus as Epeira, among insects, which are so bloodthirsty and solitary that even the two sexes attack each other, is a very singular fact. In a lofty valley of the Cordillera, near Mendoza, I found another spider with a singularly-formed web.
"While on her way to Mendoza over the Pequena Pass she was betrayed by her escort of Carreras' men, and given up to the officer in command of a Chilian fort on the upland at the foot of the main Cordillera range. This atrocious transaction might have cost me dear, for as a matter of fact I was a prisoner in Gaspar Ruiz' camp when he received the news.
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