family, especially to Señora Bussey and her brothers for the great kind¬ ness they showed me when seized by a severe choleraic attack, and for the assistance they gave me in engaging men, mules and outfit for what was looked on even then as a somewhat venturesome journey.
I first went as far south as Victoria, Temuco and Tolten, which was then the end of the great southern railway, to be connected soon with Valdivia and Puerto Montt. Here I saw the way in which the great southern forest of Araucania was being rapidly converted into wheat- fields and grazing grounds, largely by German immigrants. I made the acquaintance of two timber merchants, Mr. Smith, a Canadian, and Herr von Voden, a German, who gave me much valuable information about the timber resources of the forests of Southern Chile, which are already supplying railway sleepers to Argentina, and which, if properly conserved, will be one day one of the greatest sources of wealth in the country.
At San Ignacio I was detained ten days, partly by illness, and only succeeded in making a start for the frontier on January 22nd.
The forest has been to a great extent cleared for wheat cultivation from a point a little east of Mulchen up to the foot of the mountains, but in the valley of the Renaico river, which I followed from San Ignacio lip to its source in the Sierra de Pemehue, I found a great many of the plants which are peculiar to South Chile, and which require a moist climate. Among these may be mentioned the beautiful climber Lapageria rosea, one of the greatest ornaments of English greenhouses; Eucryphia pinnatifida, a very handsome white-flowered shrub which ripens seed in the South of England; and Embothrum coccineum, a shrub which grows in Cornwall to a greater size than I ever saw it attain in Chile.
This was the first place where ferns were a conspicuous feature in the flora, and covered the wet rocks on the river bank in company with Gunnera chilensis, which, though it becomes a conspicuous feature in the scenery further south, is only found in Central Chile in swamps and places where moisture is constant.
Our journey for the first six days was of surpassing beauty and interest, leading over the Sierra de Pemehue, a range which, though not exceeding 7,000 to 8,000 feet in elevation, is a more striking feature in the orography than the true Cordillera is in this latitude, and is covered with splendid forests of beech and Araucaria. We stopped at Lolco, a large grazing farm near the Biobio river, which is the longest if not the largest river in Chile, and, crossing a pass of about 7,000 feet, where I found many beautiful Alpine plants and a butterfly which very closely resembles a species from the high mountains of New Zealand, descended to the frontier settlement of Lonquimai. Here the Chilean custom house is situated about fifty miles east of Victoria, and a long day’s ride up the Biobio valley from the actual frontier at Los Arcos. The scenery about here changes completely and begins to show a dryer type of vegetation, resembling that of the Argentine territory on the east side of the watershed. The broad, open, upper valley of the Biobio is covered with grass, bushes and an umbelliferous plant called “Yerba negra,” Mulinum spinosum Pers, which is very abundant and characteristic of the frontier region
