When the difficulties of this terrible passage had been surmounted, Almagro and his men found themselves in a country supplied with abundance of provisions. The Chilians in fact, we are told, possessed maize, pulse of various kinds, the potato, the pumpkin, the pepper plant, the strawberry, and numerous other elements of vegetable food. Of animals they possessed the rabbit and the Araucanian camel, and, as tradition relates, the hog and the domestic fowl. The country may be assumed to have been well peopled, from the fact that one language prevailed throughout it, rather than the various dialects of several separate tribes. It possessed, in many parts, skilfully constructed aqueducts for watering the fields. Of these one remains in the vicinity of the capital, remarkable alike for its extent and solidity. The Chilians ate their grain cooked, either using earthen pots for the purpose of cooking it, or roasting it in hot sand. They likewise made of it two distinct kinds of meal,--the parched, which was used for gruel; and the raw, from which bread and cakes were baked in small holes formed like ovens. They made use of a kind of sieve, and they were so far civilized as to employ leaven. They were also in possession of several kinds of spirituous liquors derived from grain or berries. The Chilians, having adopted a settled mode of life, collected themselves into families in the districts best adapted for agriculture, where they established themselves in large villages. These settlements consisted of a number of huts irregularly distributed. In each village there was a chief called _Ulmen_, subject to the supreme ruler of the tribe. This dignity was hereditary, which argues a certain antiquity and likewise a peaceful rather than a warlike mode of living, since in the latter state military ascendancy is apt to overrule the hereditary principle. The right of private property was fully recognized. Each man was absolute proprietor of the field which he cultivated and of the product of his industry, which he could transmit to his children. The houses, which were quadrangular and roofed with rushes, were enclosed by walls of wood plastered with clay, and sometimes with walls of bricks, the art of making which they had acquired from _Peru_. From the wool of the camel they manufactured cloth for garments, using the distaff and spindle. They were familiar with the use of the needle, and were so far advanced in taste as to admire embroidery.