CHINCHA ISLANDS, three small islands in the Pacific Ocean, about 12 miles from the coast of Peru, opposite the town of Pisco, and 106 miles distant from Callao, in 13° 38′ S. lat. and 76° 28′ W. long. The largest of the group, known as the North Island or Isla del Norte is only four-fifths of a mile in length, and about a third in breadth; and their whole importance is due to their immense deposits of guano. They are of granitic formation, and rise from the sea in precipitous cliffs, worn out into countless caves and hollows, which furnish convenient resting-places for the sea-fowl. Their highest points attain an elevation of 113 feet, which was increased about 90 feet by the guano-bed. The name of the islands, and of the town and valley of Chincha on the mainland, is derived from an ancient Indian race which has left some interesting relics of its sojourn. A stone idol and two water-pots of grotesque construction were discovered under 62 feet of guano; and a number of wooden idols, two regal emblems, and a curious stone slab have also been found. That these must be of very great antiquity is obvious; but the rate of increase in the guano deposits is too much a matter of conjecture to furnish even an approximate date. Mr George Peacock, of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, calculated the quantity of guano in the islands in 1846 at 18,250,000 tons; and, according to the survey of the Peruvian Government in 1853, they then still contained 12,376,100. The supply is now practically exhausted; and the foreign export which had begun in 1841 was brought to a close in 1872. Between 1853 and 1872, 8,000,000 tons were obtained from the North and Middle Islands. The former was still visited by 35 Peruvian vessels in 1873, and furnished 11,634 tons. Its population in 1874 was only 105 persons, and the other islands were quite deserted; whereas in 1868 the total population amounted to 6000, who consisted partly of Peruvians, partly of Chinese coolies, and partly of Peruvian convicts. In 1853–4 the Chincha Islands were the chief object in the contest known as the Guano War between President Echenique and General Castilla; and in 1864 they were taken possession of by the Spanish rear-admiral Pinzon in order to bring the Peruvian Government to apologize for its treatment of the immigrants from Biscay.
CHINCHEW or Chinchu, is the name usually given in English charts to an ancient and famous port of China in the province of Fuh-keen, of which the Chinese name is Chwanchow-foo, or Tswanchow-foo (by French scholars written Thsíouan-chéou-fou). It stands in 24° 57′ N. lat. and 118° 35′ E. long. It is described by Martini (in the 17th century) as pleasantly situated on a tongue of land between two branches of the river which forms the harbour, and these so deep that the largest (Chinese) ships could come up to the walls. The city, though now occasionally visited by missionaries and others, is not one of the treaty-ports, and modern information about it is not abundant. But large junks still come close to the city. The walls have a circuit of 7 or 8 miles, but embrace much vacant ground. The chief exports are tea and sugar, tobacco, china-ware, nankeens, &c. There are still to be seen the remains of a fine mosque, founded by the Arab traders who resorted thither. The English Presbyterian Mission has had a chapel in the city since about 1862. Beyond the northern branch of the river (which is several miles from the city) there is a suburb called Loyang, which is approached by the most celebrated bridge in China.
Chwanchow was in the Middle Ages the great port of Western trade with China, and was known to the Arabs and to Europeans as Zaitûn or Zayton, the name under which it appears in Abulfeda's Geography, and in the Mongol history of Rashîduddîn, as well as in Ibn Batuta, Marco Polo, and other mediæval travellers (see China, p. 628). Marco Polo calls it “one of the two greatest commercial havens in the world;” Ibn Batuta, “the greatest seaport in the world.”
Some argument has of late been alleged against the identity of Zayton with Chwanchow, and in favour of its being rather Changchow (a great city 60 miles W.S.W. of Chwanchow), or a port on the river of Changchow near Amoy. It is possible that the name “Port of Zayton” covered a good deal, and may have embraced the great basin called Amoy Harbour, the chief part of which lies within the Foo or department of Chwanchow; but there is hardly room for doubt that the Zayton of Marco Polo and Abulfeda was the Chwanchow of the Chinese.
Ibn Batuta informs us that a rich silk texture made here was called Zaitûniya; and there can be little doubt that this is the real origin of our word Satin,—Zettani in mediæval Italian, Aceytuni in Spanish.
With the question already indicated is connected a singular ambiguity. The name Chinchew is now applied as we have defined; but the Chincheo or Chinchew of old English books, and of the Spaniards and Portuguese to this day, is, as Mr G. Phillips has lately pointed out, not Chwanchow but Changchow. The province of Fuh-keen is often called Chincheo by the Jesuits of the 16th and 17th centuries. Changchow, and its dependencies seem to have constituted the port of Fuh-keen with which Macao and Manilla chiefly communicated at that period, and where the Portuguese had at one time a factory; and hence they seem to have applied the same name to the port and the province, though Changchow has never been the official capital of Fuh-keen. How English mariners and maps came to transfer the name to Chwanchow is obscure. (See Journal R. Geog. Soc., vol. xliv.; Yule's Marco Polo, 2d ed., 1875, vol. ii., &c.)
CHINCHILLA, a city of Spain, in the province of Murcia, picturesquely situated on an abrupt hill ten miles south-east of Albacete, in the immediate neighbourhood of the junction of the railway lines from Cartagena and Valencia to the capital. It is surrounded by walls rebuilt in 1837, and defended by a citadel; and in the principal church there are reservoirs capable of furnishing the city with water for several months. Earthenware and crucibles, coarse linen, and woollen cloths are manufactured. Population, 3500.
belonging to the order Rodentia, inhabits the eastern slopes of the Andes in Chili, Bolivia, and Peru, where it has a vertical range of from 8000 to 12,000 feet. It is very similar in size to the common squirrel, being about 10 inches long exclusive of the tail, and in the form of its head it resembles a rabbit. It is covered with a dense soft fur three-fourths of an inch long on the back, and upwards of an inch in length on the sides, of a slate-grey colour, darkly mottled on the upper surface, and of a dusky white beneath; its ears are long and broad and thinly covered with hair. It lives in burrows, and these subterranean dwellings undermine some parts of the Chilian Andes to such an extent as to cause considerable inconvenience and even danger to travellers on horseback. Chinchillas live in communities, forming their burrows among loose rocks, and coming out to feed only in the early morning and towards sunset. They feed chiefly on roots and grasses, in search of which they often travel a considerable distance from their homes ; and when eating they sit on their haunches, holding their food in their fore paws. The Indians in hunting them employ a weasel (Galictis vittata), which is trained to enter the crevices of the rocks, where the chinchillas often lie concealed during the day in order to avoid the sunshine, and drive them out, when they are readily killed. The fur of this rodent was prized by the ancient Peruvians, who made coverlets
and other articles with the skin, and at the present day
