two Chilihueques, used by the natives of the Isle of Mocha in the Araucanian Sea, where the Spaniards never had a settlement.  The Fathers Bry add, that the Chilese tilled their lands by means of these animals before the arrival of any European cattle.  However this may have been, it is certain that this Araucanian camel was employed by the natives as a beast of burden before the arrival of the Spaniards, and the transition from burden to draught is not difficult.

The Chilese cooked their grain for food in various ways, by boiling in earthen pots, or roasting it in hot sand, and by grinding it into meal, which they prepared in the form of gruel, of cakes, and of bread.  Meal made of parched grain was called murque, and when made from grain merely dried in the sun rugo.  Of the first they made gruels, and a kind of beverage still used for breakfast.  Of the second they made cakes, and a kind of bread called covque, which was baked in holes dug in the sides of hills or the banks of rivers, in the form of ovens, many of which are still to be seen.  They had even invented a kind of sieve, called chignigue, to separate the bran from the flour, and employed leaven in baking their bread.  From the grains already mentioned, and the fruits or berries of different trees, they made nine or ten different kinds of fermented liquors, which they made and kept in jars of earthen-ware.

Having adopted the settled mode of life indispensable to an agricultural people, the Chilese were collected into families or septs more or less numerous, in those situations which were best suited for procuring subsistence, where they established themselves in large villages, called cara, or in small ones called lov.  These villages consisted only of a number of huts irregularly dispersed within sight of each other, and some of them still subsist in several parts of Spanish Chili.  The most considerable of these are Lampa in the province of St Jago, and Lora in the province of Maule.  In each village or hamlet they had a chief named Ulmen, who was subject in certain points, to the supreme ruler of the tribe, or apo-ulmen.  The succession of these chiefs was by hereditary descent; and from their title of office, which signifies a rich man, it would appear that wealth had been the original means of raising these families to the rank they now occupy, contrary to the usages of other savage nations in which strength, skill in hunting, or martial prowess appear to have been the steps by which individuals have risen to rank and power.  The authority of these chiefs or ulmens appears to have been extremely limited, being merely of a directive nature and not absolute.  The right of private property was fully established among the Chilese, as every individual was the absolute master of the land he cultivated, and of the produce of his industry, both of which descended to his posterity by hereditary succession.