monthly the value of an estate rises or falls thousands of dollars, the eagerness with which these questions are debated may be pardoned.”
There are comments on the cattle trade, the pasturing of flocks and herds afield, on the revoluion of 1851, the year in which the railroad came to Copiapó, and the effects of the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) upon business and the cattle trade generally. ‘Thus in 1879, the year in which the war began, few cattle came over the cordillera because the dealers were selling more profitably to the armies in the north. A Peruvian squad- ron was reported to have cruised along the coast in the latter part of July and to have destroyed the launches, used in lightering cargoes from ship to shore, at Taltal, Pan de Azdcar, Chafiaral, Carrizal, and Huasco and to have been kept off Caldera on account of the guns established there for the pro- tection of the port. There is an account of the conditions under which the port was changed from its old location at the mouth of the Copiapó River to its new location at Caldera. It seems as if every important shower was reported in the correspond- ence. It was noted that Welsh miners were imported and that the beginnings of steam navigation on the west coast gave great stability to shipping hitherto most irregular in quantity and availability, the ores being accumulated at the ports and shipped whenever empty vessels called. Rarely was a boat sent over for the express purpose of bringing back ore, as in later times.
Not the least interesting entry is one under date of February 16, 1844, in which the manager points out the popular belief in Copiapó at that time that the English were heretics and only the people of South America were Christians. A native of Copiap6é accused of a fraud against an English house at Val- paraiso presented an escrilo, or writing, to the court which insisted that the testimony against him of two persons, being English and consequently heretics, amounted to nothing, for it was made against himself, a Cristiano, and cited legal precedence in support of his position—more than a faint echo of two and three centuries before.
An old map without date was attached to one of the letters
