ttlements of the Norwegians in Greenland. In Chiloe it often rains for
a whole month without intermission, and these rains are frequently
accompanied by such tremendous hurricanes that the largest trees are
torn up by the roots, and the inhabitants do not feel safe in their
houses. Even in January, their mid-summer, they have often
long-continued heavy rain. If during the height of a storm the smallest
opening be perceived in the clouds towards the south, fine weather soon
succeeds; but first the wind changes suddenly to the south, with even
greater violence than it blew before from the opposite quarter, and
comes on with a crash as loud and sudden as the discharge of a cannon.
The storm then passes away with a rapidity proportional to its violence,
and the weather clears up. But at this critical change of the wind,
vessels are exposed to the utmost danger. Thunder and lightning are
rare, but earthquakes are frequent. In 1737 these islands suffered
severely by an earthquake; a few days after which a cloud or exhalation
of fire, coming from the north, passed over the whole archipelago, and,
as is said, set fire to the woods in many of the islands in the group of
the Guaitecas. It is said also that these islands were then covered over
with ashes, and that vegetation did not again appear upon them till
1750, thirteen years afterwards.

Though excessively rainy, the climate is not unhealthy; but no people on
earth ever had more cause to believe that the ground was cursed to bring
forth thorns and thistles, and that man is condemned to eat bread with
the sweat of his brow, as there are none who labour so hard and procure
so little. They are so poor as to have no iron, or so very little that a
family which has an axe guards it like a treasure. Their substitute for
a plough has been already described as made of two crooked branches of a
tree, with a sharp point at one end and a round ball at the other, which
they force into the ground by means of their breast, protected by a
sheeps skin during this rude operation of tillage. Laborious as this
mode must be even in a free soil, it is rendered still more so in Chiloe
by the myrtle roots which everywhere infest their cultivated land. The
little corn they raise can never be left to ripen in the field, on
account of the heavy and frequent rains. It must be cut before it
ripens, and its sheaves hung up to dry in the sun-shine, if the sun
happens then to shine; and otherwise it has to