The Plantless or Desert Zone (Northern Chile).
This zone of the coast, which stretches north for some 700 miles from Coquimbo to near Arica (30°-18°30ʹ S. lat.), corresponds to the great desert region of North Chile. On the beaches of Antofagasta, Tocopilla, and Iquique, which are situated in the midst of this zone, I found no plants. This rainless sea border of barren mountains, presenting to the eye of the traveller from the deck of a passing steamer nothing but rock and sand, must be one of the most desolate coasts on our globe. It is therefore not a matter for surprise that the beaches are of dry loose sand in which the hand fails to find on scooping below the surface that refreshing coolness which is the character of beaches in all latitudes where the land is vegetated and a subsoil drainage seaward exists. Under ordinary conditions the sensation of moisture in the sand a few inches down is not produced by the mere proximity of the sea. On the Antofagasta and Iquique beaches the temperature in the heat of the day of the surface half inch ranged from 120° to 130° F., whilst four inches down it was 95° to 100°, and no moisture was found by scooping five or six inches down. On the Taltal beach, which lies towards the southern end of the desert region, I noticed, besides a few plants of Suæda fruticosa, two other species of the orders Santalaceæ and Nolanaceæ, evidently intruders from the inland regions. Where the zone of extreme aridity terminates at the north between Pisagua and Arica a few bushes are to be seen on the hill-slopes behind the beaches.
Very little seed-drift came under my notice on the beaches of the desert zone. Here and there I found a few Medicago pods and some seeds of the large pumpkin above noticed, but that was all. This is due as a rule to the seed-drift being masked by an enormous amount of rubbish, mostly brought from the south by the Humboldt Current. My walk for five miles along the beaches immediately north of Antofagasta gave me an experience in the way of stranded drift such as I have never met with on the beaches of any other region. All the dead bodies of the Chilian coast to the southward seem to have been stranded in the bend of Moreno Bay, on the shore of which Antofagasta lies; and the air was tainted with decaying flesh, the past being mixed up with the present in a most unrefreshing fashion. Besides carcases of sea-lions, six feet in length, sharks, dog-fish, and fish of many sorts, some of them dried up, others in a state of putrefaction, there were dead penguins, dead pelicans, dead sea-birds of other kinds, the bodies of horses, cattle, dogs, &c., all preyed upon by the numerous vultures and skuas, and in some localities by hungry-looking dogs of large size that took no notice of me as they slunk along. The past was represented by great quantities of bones that lay bleaching on the sand, with here and there a vertebra of a whale, making in all quite a varied osteological collection. But this was not all. Carcases of all sorts were drifting towards the beach. Here a vulture, there a skua, there again a dog stood just beyond the tide-wash looking keenly seaward; and by following the direction of their gaze one could see that each had marked down a carcase slowly drifting in. Now and then they would make a dash, scarcely waiting for the new arrival to be washed up by the waves. But there was no competition, since there was enough for all.
Under such conditions my investigation into the seed-drift was out of the question; but I saw what would be considered by some as more interesting, namely, the dead of many latitudes piled up on the beach by the Humboldt Current.