that with skill and enterprise Chile will soon rival California as a fruit¬ growing country, and at Quillota some tropical fruits may be grown in addition.
Agriculture in Chile has been fostered by the establishment of a college at Santiago, which in its equipment surpasses anything we have in England. And though old-fashioned methods are still in vogue in the haciendas of the country, many of the enlightened landowners of Chile are devot¬ ing themselves to the improvement of their estates in a way which will bring its own reward.
My next trip was to the Baths of Chilian, sixty miles east of the town of that name, and situated in a forest-clad tract of mountains at the foot of the Nevada de Chilian at an elevation of about 6,000 feet. Here I collected many beautiful plants and insects, and saw the beech forests, which here clothe the mountains from the plains up to about 6,000 feet, in all their glory.
As this is the only place where comfortable accommodation can be obtained at a high elevation in an accessible part of the Andes south of the Mendoza Pass, the Baths of Chilian have been visited by several naturalists, though much remains to be discovered. I collected a large number of the curious terrestrial orchids of the genus Chlorœa, which grow here and which were first discovered and described by Poeppig in the valley of Antuco, whose volcanic peak can be seen to the southward from the mountains round the Baths of Chilian. I very much doubt, however, whether we shall succeed in cultivating them successfully as their long fleshy roots are so deeply buried in the sand and stones among the roots of bushes and a bamboo-like grass, Chusquea andina, that they are very difficult to get up without injury. And as they grow most abundantly at an elevation where they are covered by snow during the English summer and flower in brilliant sunshine and a dry air at the time when our English winter is at its worst, the conditions are very hard to deal with. Those which I sent to Kew from the coast region about Concepcion are, however, growing fairly at Kew, and their beauty and interest are so great that every effort should be made to flower them. Some of the species found here at 5,000 to 7,000 feet elevation, as for instance Pogonia tetraphylla, extend south to the Straits of Magellan, where they grow at sea-level, and there are many other plants, and some birds and insects, which have the same great range of distribution.
Having obtained nearly all the butterflies which were found at this place by Mr. Edmonds, and which were described by Butler in 1883,
I returned to Santiago and found that the immediate risk of war was over and it was now possible to start on my journey along the frontier to Lake Nahuelhuapi. President Barros of the Santiago University advised me to go to his brother-in-law Mr. Bussey, an English gentleman who had married a Chilean lady, and who lived at the Hacienda de San Ignacio, a part of the great Puelma property which extends from Mulchen nearly up to the Lonquimai pass, now the principal route by which the cattle and sheep from the Argentine frontier ranches as far south as the Rio Limay are brought to market at Victoria. I cannot sufficiently ex¬
press my gratitude to the members of this most charming and amiable
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