The town contains about a thousand inhabitants, and stands on a little plain of sand at the foot of a great wall of rock, 2000 feet in height, here forming the coast.

The whole is utterly desert.

A light shower of rain falls only once in very many years; and the ravines consequently are filled with detritus, and the mountainsides covered by piles of fine white sand, even to a height of a thousand feet.

During this season of the year a heavy bank of clouds, stretched over the ocean, seldom rises above the wall of rocks on the coast.

The aspect of the place was most gloomy; the little port, with its few vessels, and small group of wretched houses, seemed overwhelmed and out of all proportion with the rest of the scene.
The inhabitants live like persons on board a ship: every necessary comes from a distance: water is brought in boats from Pisagua, about forty miles northward, and is sold at the rate of nine reals (four shillings and sixpence) an eighteen-gallon cask: I bought a wine-bottle full for threepence.