boats which are used
by the islanders. They are without keel or deck, and the planks of which
they are composed are sewed or laced together by means of strong
withies, the seams being caulked or stuffed with a kind of moss, or with
pounded cane leaves, over which the withies are passed. The cross
timbers or thwarts are fixed by means of pegs or tree-nails. In these
frail barks, which are very easily overset, the Chilotans venture with a
fearlessness proceeding entirely from being accustomed to danger, not
from skill in avoiding it. Their main source of food is from the sea,
which is general most bountiful in those parts of the world where the
earth is least so. Their mode of fishing is singular and ingenious. At
low water, they inclose a large extent of the flat shore with stakes
interwoven with boughs of trees, forming a kind of basket-work; which
pens or _corrales_ are covered by every flood and left dry by the ebb
tide, at which time they generally find abundance of fish. They likewise
employ as food a species of sea-weed, called _luche_, which they form
into a kind of loaves or cakes which are greatly esteemed even by the
wealthy inhabitants of Lima. Seals are more numerous in the archipelagos
of Guaitecas and Guayneco, still farther to the south, where they are
eaten by the natives, who are said to acquire so rank an odour from the
use of this food that it is necessary to keep them to leeward. Whales
sometimes run aground among these islands but are greatly more numerous
farther to the south. They have probably retired from this part of the
coast in consequence of being persecuted, as ambergris was formerly
found in great abundance on these shores, but is now very rare.

All the islands are very mountainous and craggy, so that only a few
vallies among the hills and the flat grounds near the shore are
susceptible of cultivation. On this scanty cultivable ground, there are
forty-one settlements, called _pueblas_ or townships, in the _isla
grande_, or large island of Chiloe. There is one road indeed across the
mountains, but the whole interior of the island is uninhabited. The isle
of Quinchau has six pueblas; Lemui and Llaicha each four, Calbuco three,
all the other inhabited islands only one each, and there are three on
the continent, in all eighty-one. In these pueblas or townships, the
houses are much scattered, each being placed upon its attached property.
The church stands near the beach, having a few huts erecte