These words, however, as commonly used, are comparative; I have always applied them to the plains of Patagonia, which can boast of spiny bushes and some tufts of grass; and this is absolute fertility, as compared with Northern Chile.
Here again, there are not many spaces of two hundred yards square, where some little bush, cactus or lichen, may not be discovered by careful examination; and in the soil seeds lie dormant ready to spring up during the first rainy winter.

In Peru real deserts occur over wide tracts of country.

In the evening we arrived at a valley in which the bed of the streamlet was damp: following it up, we came to tolerably good water.

During the night the stream, from not being evaporated and absorbed so quickly, flows a league lower down than during the day.

Sticks were plentiful for firewood, so that it was a good place of bivouac for us; but for the poor animals there was not a mouthful to eat.
JUNE 11, 1835.
We rode without stopping for twelve hours till we reached an old smelting-furnace, where there was water and firewood; but our horses again had nothing to eat, being shut up in an old courtyard.
The line of road was hilly, and the distant views interesting from the varied colours of the bare mountains.