ATACAMA, DESERT OF, an arid, barren and saline region of western South America, covering the greater part of the Chilean provinces of Atacama and Antofagasta, the Argen tine territory of Los Andes, and the south-western corner of the Bolivian department of Potosi. The higher elevations are known as the Puna de Atacama, which is practically a continuation southward of the great Puna region of Peru and Bolivia. It is a broken, mountainous region, volcanic in places, saline in others, and ranges from 7,00o to 13,5oof t. in general elevation. Its cul minating ridges are marked by an irregular line of peaks and extinct volcanoes extending north by east from about S. into southern Bolivia. On the eastern side, occasional rainfalls occur and streams from the snow-clad peaks produce some slight dis plays of fertility, but the general aspect of the plateaus, which are dry and cold in winter and in summer are swept by rain storms and covered by occasional tufts of coarse grass, is bar ren and forbidding. They are also broken by great saline lagoons and dry salt basins. This region forms the Argentine territory of Los Andes and is habitable in places. On the western slope the land descends gradually to the Pacific, being broken into great basins, or terraces, by mountainous ridges in its higher ele vations, widening out into gently sloping sandy plains below, famous for their nitrate deposits, and terminating on the coast with sharply-sloping bluffs, having an elevation of Boo to 1,sooft. and looking from the sea like a range of flat-topped hills. This desolate region, which is rainless and absolutely barren, and was considered worthless for three and a half centuries, is now a treasure-house of mineral wealth, abounding in copper, silver, lead, nickel, cobalt, iron, nitrates and borax. It is occupied by many mining settlements, and includes some of the most pro ductive copper and silver mines of the world.
Ball, Notes of a Naturalist in South America (1887) • L. Darapsky, "Zur Geographie der Puna de Atacama," Zeits. Ges. Erdk. zu Berlin (5899) ; G. E. Church, "South America: an Out line of its Physical Geography," Geog. Jour. (Aug. 1901) ; F. O. Driscoll, "A Journey to the North of the Argentine Republic," Geog. Jour. (19o4) ; J. G. Mills, Argentina, and Chile, Pitman's South Amer. Handbooks (1914) ; I. Bowman, Desert Trails of Atacama, Amer. Geog. Soc. (1924) ; Foster Bain and H. S. Mulliken, "The Cost of Chilean Nitrate," U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Trade Information Bulletin No. 17o (Jan. 1924) ; F. Klute, Argentinien-Chile von Leute (Lubeck, 1925) ; F. C. Walcott, "Laguna Colorada, Puna de Atacama," Geog. Review (1925) . See also The Mining Magazine (1909, etc.) .
(A. J. L.)