Practically all oasis settlements are small. Rarely do they ex- ceed more than a few thousand inhabitants, and they range downward in size to the smallest groups of a half dozen fam- ilies or a single family, as, for example, at Monte la Soledad in the nitrate desert east of Iquique (see p. 37). This means that there is no superstructure of society or business or professional men. [f there is a doctor he may be the only one in the village or the valley. A few so-called lawyers for the drawing up of legal papers, a few government officials, onc or two exception- ally “‘rich’’ men—these complete the class that furnishes lead- ership in the valley. Their life would be lonely and isolated if it were not merged in the common life of the community, as indeed it is. The paraphernalia of the modern city is absent. There is no leisure class, there are no social or economic para- sites. Every man is a worker, and the most prosperous and the most powerful politically or financially are only a step re- moved from the river which is the source of life to all.
The self-contained quality of such a desert valley is not one that is achieved by striving. It is assumed almost uncon- sciously. It is interwoven in the traditions of the place. More than that, if the valley is in Hispanic America its life springs naturally from the traditions of the race no less than from the geographical environment. The first Spaniards who came to desert Chile brought with them a knowledge of the technic of irrigation. They found established on the spot a people whose immemorial practice had been to irrigate the land for agricul- ture. For example the Indians of the Copiapé valley had di- verted the river, had watered the valley floor and the bordering terraces by irrigation canals—in short, had already established themselves harmoniously with nature before the Spaniards came.
The simpler life of a desert community, its awareness of the ultimate sources of its prosperity, and the absence of parasitic industries are in striking contrast with the conditions that obtain in a modern city, where the machinery of life is so com- plicated that the consumer is many times removed from the producer. In the latter case there is a dependence upon eco- nomic and financial agencies whose workings are too compli-
