time, to engage in the tasks requisite for the planting of the portions of ground which may be allotted to them, it is essential that the sub-delegates should have them enregistered, and keep them under a strict restraint. These poor families may be subsisted, at the commencement, on the salted meats and maize with which the college of Ocopa is enabled to supply them, from the alms it collects, until they can gather the first fruits, consisting of beans, squashes, maize, sweet potatoes, and mani, all of which come to maturity in the space of four months. With these resources they may be enabled to reach the end of the year, when their lands will supply them with an abundance of plantains, yucas, and other productions. They should afterwards be obliged to form plantations of sugar-canes, coca, and cotton; and, in exchange for these commodities, the inhabitants of the surrounding districts will supply, as they did before the insurrection, cattle, brandy, cloths, working tools, &c. The new settlers may themselves rear goats, hogs, fowls, and other animals, with which they will enjoy a greater share of prosperity than in the mountainous territory, and will proportionably be better enabled to discharge the tribute.
ENTRANCE INTO THE MOUNTAINOUS TERRITORY, FROM JAUXA, BY COMAS AND ANDAMARCA.
The Cordillera of the Andes is not, perhaps, in any part so inaccessible, as in the entrance from Jauxa, by Comas and Andamarca; seeing that it is necessary to cross three difficult branches, the continual precipices presented by which, and the great number of morasses, having their surfaces frozen, encountered in the intervening spaces, render the road in a manner impassable. This is the reason why, at the time of the first entrances made by this route, the opening of a track for the passage of cattle was deemed impracticable. It thus happened that the travellers were reduced to the necessity of carrying the provisions on their shoulders, with incredible labour and fatigue. The wish, however, to contribute to the salvation of the Indians residing in the mountainous territory, many of whom were accustomed to pay a visit, in the summer season, to the town of Andamarca, with the pious view of submitting to the baptismal ceremony, stimulated the venerable father Biedma to overcome these difficulties, apparently invincible. This truly apostolical man, after having dedicated his fervent zeal to the conversion of the
