Copiapó

“ In the morning Captain Duck was informed by some Indians that they had met the deserters on their road to Copiapo. He immediately wrote to the governor to inform him that they were mutineers, and to request him to send them back. The following day five Spanish gentlemen arrived from Copiapo, who stated that they had met the deserters four or five leagues from that town, and had been informed by them that the ship was an English privateer, in consequence of which, not knowing what to believe, they had sent back the greater part of the money with which they had intended to purchase goods. ”

“ I am aware that the Peruvian Indians now frequently inhabit most lofty and bleak situations; but at Copiapo I was assured by men who had spent their lives in travelling through the Andes, that there were very many (muchisimas) buildings at heights so great as almost to border upon the perpetual snow, and in parts where there exist no passes, and where the land produces absolutely nothing, and what is still more extraordinary, where there is no water. ”

“ Copiapó is retrogressant and will become even more so. Work has long since stopped at the mines and the only thing that keeps the place alive is that it is the capital of a province. If asked for a description of the city, I would say that it is an old adobe town in an oasis surrounded by barren mountains, with a broad alameda bordered with giant pepper trees. ”

“ From Guasco to Copiapo, I followed the road near the foot of the Cordillera, and therefore saw no upraised remains. At the mouth, however, of the valley of Copiapo there is a plain, estimated by Meyen (“Reise um die Erde” th. 1 s. 372 et seq.) between fifty and seventy feet in height, of which the upper part consists chiefly of gravel, abounding with recent shells, chiefly of the Concholepas, Venus Dombeyi, and Calyptraea trochiformis. ”

“ Nothing so advanced as this proof of settled communities is found south of Copiapó, and seekers must fain rely upon the evidence of shell-heaps and arrowheads, plus the records of early visitors and such help as is afforded by the life of indigenous folk surviving today. ”

“ Setting sail, they missed the mouth of the Copiapó River, and had an anxious search for water along the arid coasts of Tarapacá. Entering at length the mouth of the Pisagua River they had a stroke of luck, for there on the bank lay a Spaniard, fast asleep, in charge of a train of llamas laden with silver bars from Potosí and a quantity of charqui (dried meat) . ”

“ Upon the horrors of this march, of which so thrilling an account is given by Prescott in the 'Conquest of Peru,' it is unnecessary for us to dwell; suffice it to state that, on reaching Copiapo no less than one-fourth of his Spanish troops, and two-thirds of his Indian auxiliaries, had perished from the effects of cold, fatigue and starvation. ... Everywhere the Spaniards met with a friendly reception from the natives, who regarded them as a superior race of beings, and the after conquest of the country would probably have been attended with no difficulty had a conciliatory policy been adopted ”

“ I learned from these friends that the northern passes that led to Copiapo and Coquimbo were buried in the snow, and that, on the first-named road, a party of [Pg 278] eight arrieros, while lately attempting to cross into Chili, had been frozen to death. The Coquimbo road was said to be equally as bad, for there eleven experienced guides had just fallen victims to a fierce snow storm in the valleys of the Andes. The two southern passes of Uspallata and Portillo were more elevated than the two northern ones, but were much shorter. The Portillo could not be passed by man. ”

“ We saw it as far south as the inland plains of Patagonia at Santa Cruz, in lat. 50°. On the western side of the Cordillera, near Concepcion, where the forest land changes into an open country, I saw this bird, but did not procure a specimen of it: from that point throughout Chile, as far as Copiapo, it frequents the most desolate places, where scarcely another living creature can exist: it thus ranges over at least twenty-three degrees of latitude. It is found either in pairs or in small flocks of five or six ”

“ Inland there are no populations more permanent than those of the nitrate oficinas, save here and there along the beds of snow-fed streams. Next in order from north to south comes the string of copper ports, with interior towns beginning to appear as the edge of the permanently fertile lands is reached. Chañaral, Caldera, Carrizal, points where the famous “Chile bars” of copper were smelted and shipped overseas; inland Copiapó, dependent for wealth upon copper and silver mines, but clothed with all the charm of a cloveredged oasis in the desert ”

“ All Spanish Fruits grow better here than in Spain.
Through the midst of Copayapo runs a River of the same Denomination, and twenty Leagues in length from the Andes, and at its Mouth hath a convenient Harbor before the South Sea.
The South part of Copayapo borders the Valley Guasco, which is less fruitful than the first, but hath a convenient Haven, into which falls a fresh River, penn’d in by Sluces for the watering of the Cane-Fields. Moreover, there are plenty of Partridges; also wild Sheep and grey Squirrel-skins are of a great value. ”

“ While we were vainly looking out for a landing-place, a white man, accompanied by two Polynesians, launched a small outrigger canoe from the reef edge, and paddled out to us. From the white man we learned that the island belonged to a Mr. Halicott, an American gentleman, for whom he had been acting as care-taker for the previous five years, and that he and his native assistants were engaged in planting cocoa-nuts, and hoped in time to do a remunerative trade in copra. ”

“ Copra, the dried kernel of the coconut, is the leading, and almost the only, article of commerce in every island of the South Pacific, and as such is the principal contributor to the income of the natives from which everything else they use is bought. The copra of the South Pacific islands is incomparably finer than that of the South American, West Indian or African tropics, and the plantations of Samoa, Fiji and Tahiti are the largest [228] and most productive in the world. ”

“ One day we made an excursion up the river Andalien, which flows into Talcahuano Bay, near the village of Penco, and which at high tide is navigable for boats to a distance of seven miles from its mouth. Our main object was to see something of the nutria—a large rodent (Myopotamus coypu) , which is common in some of the rivers of southern Chili, and which the natives call "Coypo." In a deep, narrow, ditch-like tributary of the Andalien, we came across several of these animals, swimming and diving about, some half-immersed clumps of bushes. ”

“ The Canaries and the Azores, which had been discovered some generations earlier, occupied their proper places, while the western side of the Atlantic was bounded by a fancied delineation of the eastern coast of India, or of Cathay, buttressed by the island of Cipango, or Japan, and an Archipelago, that had been represented principally after the accounts of Marco Polo and his relatives. By a fortunate misconception, Cipango had been placed in a longitude that corresponded very nearly with that of Washington, or some two thousand leagues east of the position in which it is actually to be found. ”

“ They are, I believe, beautiful workmen; but with them all is not gold that glitters. There are plenty of coconuts in the island, but little water; the landing at all times is bad.
When at Coepang we saw some specimens of the gold, collected after heavy rains from the washings of the hills, and brought down for barter to the merchants in grains enclosed in small lengths of bamboo, containing each from six to eighteen drams. Thirty miles south-west of Diely, also, are some mines of virgin copper. ”

“ It runs: "On the road to the city of San Pedro, in the first town within the province of Honduras, called Copan, are certain ruins and vestiges of a great population and of superb edifices of splendour as it would appear they never could have been built by the natives of that province." From this it would seem that not a building was intact at Copan in the sixteenth century. Today the remains are crumbling heaps of pyramids and terraces overgrown by luxuriant vegetation. ”

“ There are gold-mines just beyond the town of Copaipo, and in all the country around, which have attracted many purchasers and workmen to that district, to the great injury and oppression of the Indians; as the Spanish magistrates not only take away their lands for the purposes of mining, but their horses also, which they sell to the new adventurers, under pretence of serving the king and improving the settlements. ”

“ Once, in the Pacific, there was a great big thing haunted the ship, bigger than the biggest sea-serpent, and--"
"Depend upon it we have traitors in the camp," unceremoniously interrupted the supervisor; for he knew by experience that when once Captain Copp was fairly launched upon that old marvel of the Pacific ocean, there was no stopping him. "Traitors round about us, at our very elbows and hearths, if we only knew in which direction to look for them." ”

“ That island of Quipit contains a quantity of gold, ginger, and cinnamon. Accordingly, we determined to go in search of food. The distance from the headland of Quipit to the first islands is about 112 leguas. It and the islands lie in an east by north and south by west direction; and this island [i.e., Mindanao] extends quite generally east and west.”
The “Roteiro” (Stanley, p. 14) calls the port of Quipit (which is located on the northeastern coast of Mindanao) Capyam or Quype. Carvalho gave the boat of the burned ship to the inhabitants of that place. ”

“ Copas took to haunting their lodgings and was nearly always there when a new hat or a new jacket came home from the shops. She would insist on Matilda’s trying them on, and would go into loud ecstatic praise and long reminiscences of the fine garments she had had when she was a young woman, and Mr. Copas was the most attentive husband in the world.
An old peacock without its tail is a sorry sight, and the young birds scorn him. ”

“ Our guest Koapena, the chief of the Aroma District, although past the prime of life, is a fine stalwart man over six feet high, and decidedly the finest specimen of savage humanity we have seen in New Guinea. He stoops slightly with age, but his bearing is full of grace and dignity, and altogether he looks like a person to select rather for a friend than a foe. ”

“ Not one of all the army would have escaped, had not Almagro pushed resolutely forward with a small party of horse to Copaipo, whence he sent back succours and provisions to his army still engaged in the defiles of the mountains. By these means, those of the most robust constitutions, who had been able to resist the inclemency of the weather, were enabled to extricate themselves from the snow, and at length reached the plains of Copaipo, the most northerly province in Chili, where they were kindly received and entertained by the inhabitants, through respect for the Peruvians. ”

“ The whole of the wood cut through by the axeman was bedewed with drops of balsam; the bark is apparently devoid of it. Trees of the largest size in good condition will sometimes yield four “potos,” equal to 84 English imperial pints.
Description—Copaiba is more or less viscid fluid, varying in tint from a pale yellow to a light golden brown, of a peculiar aromatic, not unpleasant odour, and a persistent, acrid, bitterish taste. Pará copaiba newly imported is sometimes nearly colourless and almost as fluid as water. ”

“ A screen and some hangings with a southern flash to them set the stage for eighteenth-century Peru. Copeau himself has the same Punch-like visage that he presents to you in his own study, but now he manages to make you think him a Spanish puppet, an exasperated and wily doll. The same Punch appears in Les Frères Karamazov, but a Punch of the intellect, a tragic marionette dangling on the strings of rationalism. At the end, when Ivan goes mad, you may see most clearly the subtle exaggeration which is at the heart of the acting of Copeau’s company. ”

“ Since they have received arms from the traders the Chipewyans are fearful of venturing upon their lands; and all of that nation who frequent the shores of Great Slave Lake hold the name of Akaitcho in great respect. The Chipewyans have no leader of equal authority among themselves.
The number of the Copper Indians may be one hundred and ninety souls namely eighty men and boys and one hundred and ten women and young children. There are forty-five hunters in the tribe. The adherents of Akaitcho amount to about forty men and boys ”

“ The copra trade is of course carried on all over these and the adjoining islands, but one sees more of it going on in the New Hebrides than in the Solomons or New Guinea.
Copra is the white of the cocoa-nut and is not eaten by the natives at all; all they do with the nuts is to drink the milk and use the fibre. Nearly everything out there is made either of the leaves or fibre, and even the trunks of the tree come in very handy for manufacturing articles. ”

“ We coasted along shore to the northward, and passed the port of Capaipo on the 14th, said to be a very good harbour, fenced from almost all winds. The land is here inhabited by Indians, who make good wines; and it is said to abound in good meat, corn, and other provisions, and from this port they export wine, money, and other goods for Coquimbo. We would willingly have gone ashore for refreshments, but could not for want of boats. ”