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Updated: June 9, 2025
Our route wound through groves of palms surrounding the tumble-down tomb of some holy man, occasional collections of squalid little huts, and in the intervening "despoblado" we would catch sight of a jackal crouching in the hollow or slinking off through the scrub. Deli Abbas proved a half-deserted straggling town which gave evidence of having once seen prosperous days.
We see the long line of tall mules, with dusty flanks and well-poised burdens, winding their way over some rugged sierra, or across a weary despoblado, their gay worsted head-gear nodding in the sunbeams, the tinkle of their innumerable bells mingling with the mournful song of their conductor, to which, when the latter, weary of striding beside his beasts, mounts aloft upon the bales for a temporary rest, is added the monotonous thrum of a guitar.
In the Despoblado Valley, north of Copiapo, the horizontal elevation, judging from the compact, stratified tufaceous deposit, capping the distant mountains at corresponding heights, was about ten thousand feet.
I confess that I am surprised to see a gentleman of your country travelling alone, and in this manner, through such regions as these. The roads are at present very bad; there have of late been many accidents, and more than two deaths in this neighbourhood. The despoblado out yonder has a particularly evil name; be on your guard, Caballero.
In one case alone, and it was in this Valley of the Despoblado, I was able actually to trace a thick stratum of purplish porphyry, which for a space of some miles conformably overlay the usual alternating beds of breccia-conglomerates and claystone lavas, until it became united with, and blended into, a mountainous mass of various unstratified porphyries.
A dispute ensued as to how much he knew, even about the foot of Coropuna. He denied that there were any huts whatever in the canyon. "Abandonado; despoblado; desierto." "A waste; a solitude; a wilderness." So he described it. Had he been there? "No, Señor." Luckily we had been able to make out from the rim of the canyon two or three huts near a little stream.
Lambert extends far northward, is of interest, as typifying what has taken place on a grander scale on the corresponding western side of the Cordillera of Peru. In the valley of the Despoblado, the stratification, as before remarked has been much disturbed, and in some points to a greater degree than I have anywhere else seen.
Happily, perhaps, for me, that my acquaintance with the ruffians of Spain commenced and ended in the towns about which I wandered, and in the prisons into which I was cast for the Gospel's sake, and that, notwithstanding my long and frequent journeys, I never came in contact with them on the road or in the despoblado.
The smell of the fresh clover was quite delightful, after the scentless air of the dry, sterile Despoblado. Whilst staying in the town I heard an account from several of the inhabitants, of a hill in the neighbourhood which they called "El Bramador," the roarer or bellower.
The road along which I sped was narrow and sandy, winding amidst thickets of broom and brushwood, with which the despoblado was overgrown, and which in some places were as high as a man's head. Across the moor, in the direction in which I was proceeding, rose a lofty eminence, naked and bare. The moor extended for at least three leagues; I had nearly crossed it, and reached the foot of the ascent.
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