they hold a
kind of fair which generally lasts fifteen or twenty days. On these
occasions they bring for sale, besides horses and cattle, fossil salt,
gypsum, pitch, bed-coverings, ponchos, skins, wool, bridle-reins
beautifully wrought of plaited leather, baskets, wooden vessels,
feathers, ostrich-eggs, and a variety of other articles; and receive in
return wheat, wine, and European manufactures. In the conduct of this
barter they are very skilful, and can with difficulty be overreached.
Lest they should be cheated or plundered by the Christian merchants, who
think every thing lawful against unbelievers, they never drink all at
one time; but separate themselves into several companies, some of whom
keep guard while the rest indulge in wine. They are generally humane,
courteous, just in their dealings, and possessed of many estimable
qualities.

The Chiquillanians, whom some persons have supposed a tribe of the
Pehueaches, live to the north-east of that nation, on the eastern
borders, of the Andes[86]. These are the most savage, and consequently
the least numerous of any of the tribes of the Chilese; for it is an
established fact, that the ruder the state of savage life the less
favourable it is to population. They go almost naked, merely wrapping
the skins of the _Guanaco_ round their bodies, and they speak a
corrupted and guttural dialect of the Chili-dugu or Chilese language. It
is observable that all the Chilese tribes which inhabit the elevated
valleys of the Andes, both Pehuenches, Puelches, Huilliches, and
Chiquillanians, are much redder than those of their countrymen who dwell
in the lower country to the west of these mountains. All these
mountaineers dress themselves in skins, paint their laces, subsist in a
great measure by hunting, and lead a wandering and unsettled life. They
are in fact the so much celebrated Patagonians, who have been
occasionally seen near the Straits of Magellan, and who have sometimes
been described as giants, and at other times as not much beyond the
ordinary stature of mankind. Generally speaking however, they are of
lofty stature and have great muscular strength.

[Footnote 86: In the map accompanying the English translation of Molina,
the Penuenches and Chiquillanians are placed under the same parallel
between lat. 33 deg. SO' and 36 deg. S. The former on the western and the latter
on the eastern side of the Andes.--E.]

On information being sent to Spain of the death of Quiroga, a