reference for events in and about Copiapo and takes preced- ence over earthquakes in this respect, terrible as these have been; the sources of firewood, quarrels over water rights, the price of forage and cart or pack mules, the state of the snows in the cordillera-—one or another is a daily theme of conversation and a running basis of business. The structure of such a community is of great historical as well as geograph- ical interest. Loria, the Italian economist, holds that the history of colonial settlement is for economic science what the mountain is for geology, bringing to light primitive stratih- cations. “America,” he says, “has the key to the historical enigma which Europe has sought for centuries in vain, and the land which has no history reveals luminously the course of universal history.”[1]
- ↑ Achille Lotia: Analisi della proprietA capitalista, 2 vols., Turin, 1889; reference in Vol, 2, p. 1§. Quoted by F. J. Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in American History (Aun. Repl. Amer. Hist. Assn. for 1803, pp. 199-227), p. 207.
