Alfalfa is sold chiefly to the cattle drivers that pass through, immense quantities of it being stacked up at convenient points near a water supply, with stone or mud fences about to keep the droves within bounds. Fruit is produced in large quanti- ties and sold to the nitrate establishments on the distant pampa toward the west. Pears, apples, grapes, figs, quinces— these are the chief products, and they constitute the principal fruit crop of Toconao as well (Fig. 1). The latter town is a day's journey, or 25 miles, from San Pedro and is celebrated not only for its fruit but for the clearness and purity of its water. About a dozen well-to-do familics at San Pedro send peons to Toconao to obtain drinking water, brought in casks on mule back.
So valuable are the water rights at San Pedro and in the towns near by that a jues de aguas, or judge of water, is ap- pointed who decides how much water each landowner is to have. In the driest years it may be impossible for a landowner to irrigate oftener than once every ninety days, though in general he is not required to abstain from the use of water for more than sixty days. The mountain snowfalls are a matter of real importance, for upon them depend the source and flow of the Rio Atacama that quite literally “waters” the valley. The snow that falls in the cordillera about the 3rd of May is called the nevada de la Cruz, and that which falls about the 4th of October the nevada de Cordonazo de San Francisco. Though snow is a rarity in the desert it fell in 1911 down to 8000 feet (compare p. 43). In the oases it covered orange trecs, vege- table gardens, and grainficlds and effected a glory that was as novel as it was short-lived. It covered the mud huts thatched with grain straw mixed with earth and on melting germinated the seed, so that more than one householder grew a small crop of wheat and barley on his roof!
Corn is planted in August or September. Both it and the fruit may freeze, for frosts come as late as December and may work gricvous injury to the growing crops and necessitate replanting. Furthermore, the crops are sometimes destroyed by hailstorms which occur when the wheat is heading and which are accompanied by thunder and lightning. The floods
