What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D.

RIVERS OF CHILE.
perintended this decoction of caloric, as she threw in the last
fiery ingredient, have exclaimed:
"For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble!
The casuela was at last tabled-not after the form of an ob noxious proposition in a deliberative assembly, but in all the
"pomp and circumstance of glorious war".. upon human
endurance. WYhat was to be done? Strive or starve? Fast or
feast? Be consuned by hunger or by fire? The horns of the
dilemma were before me, and suicide by either not being a ve nial crime, or an agreeable contemplation apart from moral considerations, I seized the alternative of the red-hot compound in
one hand and cold water in the other, and proceeded in the experiment by the rapid application of water to fire in process of
deglutition, to supply a natural want, and yet prevent an otherwise probable combustion. Though rashly undertaken it
proved successful; and the inner man being thus fortified at
least against freezing, we again took the road, and at twentyseven miles from Chillan reached the Rio Itata, a clear, placid,
and beautiful stream between two and three hundred yards
wide, in places appearing to have considerable depth, which we
crossed on a rudely-constructed raft of logs. This river rises in
the Andes near the thirty-seventh parallel of latitude, and flowing in a northwest direction separates the provinces of Nuble
and Conception, until it receives its principal affluent, the Rio
Nuble; it then changes its course to the west by north, which
it holds to the Pacific Ocean.
The Itata is the eleventh river we have crossed since leaving
Santiago-to which the largest river in Chile, the Biobio, subsequently seen, may be added-the majority of them of large size
and rapid current; and all of them having their sources in the
Aqzdes, running westwardly througk the Coast iRange, and emptying directly, or in some instances by a union of two, into the
Pacic Ocean. To these might be added smaller streams, tributaries of the above, flowing in the same manner from the
Andes westwardly toward the Pacific. It mnay well create sur
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