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 have one’s own vine and fig tree. To the costly and hazardous transportation and the fact that each man lives for the pro- duction of his own food there is to be added the necessity of overcoming the inertia of the native. He has no ideals of the sort we know and live for. Wealth to him is the possession of comfort of a sort we should regard as miserable. Drink, gaudy attire, and long leisure to enjoy them, are in a way objects of veneration to the majority of the Indian inhabit- ants; and, in a large measure, it is true that only for them and the sterner necessities born of the meager years will be pro- duced, even for pay, what another man is to consume.

It may, therefore, be said in general that the commerce of these towns is decidedly fecble, is carried on under great difficulties, and tends toward no natural sclf-initiated im- provement. The interchange of products is only important under fortuitous or local conditions, as when clay deposits occur at one locality and not at another and so lead to the production of pottery; or where the culture of the grape is happily joined in one place to a good water supply, and the production of exceptionally good wine thus becomes a tra- dition. At present there is also a certain activity due to the opening up of mines in the mountains. The surplus products of the oasis of Chacarilla were formerly disposed of at the mines of Victoria, a few miles away, while some fruit and dried meats are taken from Pica and Matilla to the mines at Huatacondo in the deep gorge of Huatacondo and to Colla- huasiin the high Andes, a week'sjourneyaway over a steep trail.

The precarious situation of most of the towns is one of their striking characteristics. The least accident may betray them. This is well illustrated by the history of a line of settlements in the Chacarilla valley. It was at one time a fertile and frequently visited district. But early in the seventies, as nearly as we could determine, a great flood came down the gorge, broke down the irrigating ditches, cut up the terraces, or deposited infertile sand, gravel, and even boulders upon them, overwhelmed orchards, and so generally devastated the farms and discouraged the inhabitants that all but a remnant of them moved away. The shock which such an occurrence