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 the measuring is done by an elder with the official bowl, ap- pears to ensure that this quaint old-fashioned method of meas- uring time gives satisfaction to all concerned.

“The lack of a sufficiency of water, which has called into use the water-clock just described, also tends to maintain in existence an old custom connected with prayer for rain which may well have existed in Algeria for countless ages before the arrival of the Mohammedan faith, and which, when once we had observed it, helped us considerably towards commencing our investigations into the superstitions of the Shawia.”

But there is a happier aspect to the picture of the struggle for water. With what enthusiasm a desert dweller still speaks of the years of abundance—when the rains come, and there is plenty for all. The influence of the seasons on the valley people is as marked as ever. In spite of a railroad, a higher degree of organization, and a position near one of the routes of world commerce, the Copiapefios find the rains of deepest concern. When showers come cattle are driven to the free upland pastures. Between 1890 and 1892 the valley stock was sent into the hills, the owners lived in tents like true nomads and in the plenty of those years forgot long-standing quarrels over water rights. The earth is then no longer a desert waste. Where sand and tough shrubs ordinarily hold sway there is now wild clover, knee-deep, luxuriant. The erstwhile niggardly earth yields an abundance of food, as if suddenly awakened to generosity of its own free will—sponte sua, as Horace observed in-an environment that bred the phrase. Flowers bedeck the light-green upland meadows. It is a year of rain!

Now that the nitrate fields are in a high state of development and in chronic need of laborers, the dry years in the southern valleys are times of migration to the northern desert. There the workers remain until they hear from relatives and friends that rains have brought plenty, whereupon they drift back to old occupations—the transport of merchandise by pack train, the cattle business, the production of alfalfa, or a host of minor