We
followed the course of the river, occasionally passing a few
hovels, and patches of ground cleared out of the otherwise unbroken
forest; and sometimes meeting a canoe with an Indian family. The
town is situated on the low banks of the stream, and is so
completely buried in a wood of apple-trees that the streets are
merely paths in an orchard. I have never seen any country where
apple-trees appeared to thrive so well as in this damp part of
South America: on the borders of the roads there were many young
trees evidently self-sown. In Chiloe the inhabitants possess a
marvellously short method of making an orchard. At the lower part
of almost every branch, small, conical, brown, wrinkled points
project: these are always ready to change into roots, as may
sometimes be seen, where any mud has been accidentally splashed
against the tree. A branch as thick as a man's thigh is chosen in
the early spring, and is cut off just beneath a group of these
points, all the smaller branches are lopped off, and it is then
placed about two feet deep in the ground. During the ensuing summer
the stump throws out long shoots, and sometimes even bears fruit: I
was shown one which had produced as many as twenty-three apples,
but this was thought very unusual.
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