A fowl costs five or six shillings; meat is nearly as dear as in England; firewood, or rather sticks, are brought on donkeys from a distance of two and three days' journey within the Cordillera; and pasturage for animals is a shilling a day: all this for South America is wonderfully exorbitant.
JUNE 26, 1835.
I hired a guide and eight mules to take me into the Cordillera by a different line from my last excursion.

As the country was utterly desert, we took a cargo and a half of barley mixed with chopped straw.

About two leagues above the town a broad valley called the "Despoblado," or uninhabited, branches off from that one by which we had arrived.

Although a valley of the grandest dimensions, and leading to a pass across the Cordillera, yet it is completely dry, excepting perhaps for a few days during some very rainy winter.

The sides of the crumbling mountains were furrowed by scarcely any ravines; and the bottom of the main valley, filled with shingle, was smooth and nearly level.