I

“Chile,” which, by a curious coincidence, had about the same significance in the Inca language that our word “chilly” has in English, is the name that was originally given by the Incas to that part of the Pacific slope of the Andes which lies beyond the river Maule, the southern boundary of their great empire. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the first Governor, Pedro de Valdivia, dubbed it “Nueva Estremadura,” after his native province in Spain, and so called it in his official communications, yet not only did the Inca name cling to the country south of the Maule but soon it was popularly applied to that in the north as well, as far up as Peru. And so when, some years afterward (says the historian Rosales), the Emperor Charles V of Germany, who was also King of Spain, was negotiating the marriage of his son Philip with Mary, Queen of England, and was told that, being a sovereign in her own right, she would enter into such an alliance only with a reigning monarch, he caused Philip to be crowned King of Chile and Naples, and thus incidentally, in distinguishing the province above his other American possessions, confirmed its original name, and Chile it has been called ever since.

The territory of the present republic consists of a strip of land of most extraordinary conformation lying between the main Cordillera of the Andes and the sea. It has an average width of less than a hundred miles, yet stretches for nearly three thousand miles from a point in the tropics considerably above the center of the continent, clear down to Cape Horn, crossing thirty-eight degrees of latitude and embracing an area of nearly 291,500 square miles. A strip of the same length in North America would reach from Key West to northern Labrador, or, if measured along the Rocky Mountains, from Mexico to the Yukon in Alaska. Reckoned in square miles, it is larger than any country in Europe except Russia, though it has a population, according to the last census (1907), of only 3,254,451—less than that of the city and suburbs of Paris or of New York. In foreign commerce Chile ranks third among the South American republics. In 1910 it amounted in value to $228,604,198.64. The principal exports are silver, copper, nitrates, borax, sulphur, vegetable products, wines and liquors. Her exchange of commerce with the United States amounted to $38,050,652.

On ordinary maps this narrow Chilean half of the Andean region looks like a mere strip of coast traversed by a single range. As a consequence, it is not generally understood by those who have not visited the country that there is really here, as in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, a double formation, connected by transverse ridges in places, but perfectly distinct, known as the Andes proper, or main Cordillera, and the coast range, or western Cordillera. Between the two systems is a vast plateau, called the central valley, which begins in the northern Province of Atacama, and, gradually decreasing in height, extends south for seven hundred miles, with an average width of from fifty to sixty miles, through the Province of Llanquihue, about two-thirds of the way down the coast, where it disappears, with the coast range itself, in the long series of groups of islands into which the shore line is broken up. From its culminating point back of Santiago, the main Cordillera also decreases in height toward the south, but, instead of disappearing with the coast range, extends throughout the whole length of the country, from Peru to the southernmost islands of the Fuegian archipelago, forming the most magnificent background imaginable to the view from the sea.

In the northern section, between the Bolivian frontier and Coquimbo, there are more than thirty extinct or dormant volcanoes of great altitude—Toroni (21,340 feet, or about four miles, high), Pular (21,325 feet high), Iquima (20,275 feet), Aucasquilucha (20,260 feet), Llulaillaco (20,253 feet), San JosÉ (20,020 feet), Socompa (19,940 feet), and many others over 17,000 feet. Imagine these in contrast with Etna (10,875 feet) and Vesuvius, which is only 3800 feet, not as high as the cones of some of them alone. South of the Province of Copaibo, the main range itself develops a plateau formation that is crossed by several relatively low passes, such as the Portezuelo de Come Caballo (14,530 feet), Los Patos (11,700 feet), and, farther south, on a line with Valparaiso, the Uspallata Cumbre (12,795 feet). Although little used even now because of its extremely rugged character, Los Patos is associated with perhaps the most memorable event in the war of independence. It was there that, in the execution of that strategic movement which South American historians say excelled that of Hannibal in the Pyrenees and Napoleon’s crossing of the Alps, the Liberator San MartÍn safely made his way through with his whole army in 1817—artillery, impedimenta, and all—and, within five days, joined forces with the Chilean hero, O’Higgins, surprised the Royalist army awaiting him on the plain opposite the Cumbre below, fought the great battle of Chacabuco, and entered Santiago in triumph.

But this lower Uspallata Pass, which has always been the principal means of land communication with Argentina, was destined to become famous in another way, because (as already mentioned in the chapter on Argentina), it was the place chosen as the most suitable for the route of the Chilean-Argentine transcontinental railroad, connection between the eastern and western sections of which was established in April, 1910, by completion of a tunnel through the mountain two miles long and half a mile beneath the Cumbre—a work of the utmost importance, for, aside from the matter of comfort and saving of time, it has made it possible to go from one country to the other by the land route in winter, when the pass above is covered with drifts and the deadly winds and snowstorms are so likely to whirl down on the traveler at any moment that few except the hardy mail-carriers ever dared attempt it.

In this neighborhood the mountains attain their greatest altitude. A few miles to the north and visible a little distance from the Cumbre is the “Monarch of the Andes,” Aconcagua, which, according to the record at the Harvard University Observatory in Arequipa (Peru), is 24,760 feet (more than four miles and a half) high—the highest in the world, it is now regarded, next to Mt. Everest in the Himalayas. In his interesting story of the ascent of Aconcagua, Sir Martin Conway, one of the very few who ever succeeded in accomplishing it, gives a good idea of the region, viewed from a point near the lesser of the two summits. “At last I heard a shout and looked up and saw Maquignaz a yard or two above my head,” he says,

“Standing on the crest of the bed of snow that crowned the arÊte. In a moment I was beside him and Argentina lay at our feet. The southern snow face, delusively precipitous though actually as steep as snow can lie, dropped in a single fall to the glacier two miles below. To the right and left for over a mile there stretched, like the fine edge of an incurved blade, the sharp snow arÊte that reaches from the slightly lower southern summit to the northern. It forms the top edge of the great snow slope down which we were looking, and is only visible from the Horcones valley side as a delicate silver crest, edging the rocks. At many points it overhung in big cornices, like frozen waves about to break. The day had thus far been fine, but clouds were now gathering in the east. Fearful lest the view might soon be blotted out, I took a few photographs before moving on. The view abroad from this point differed little from that which we finally obtained. To the south was Tupungato (22,408 feet), a majestic pile of snow, over which even more majestic clouds were presently to mount aloft. To the north was the still grander Mercedario (22,315 feet), beheld around the flank of the final rocks. In the west were the hills, dropping lower and lower to the Chilean shore, and then the purple ocean. To the northeast, like another ocean, lay the flat surface of the Argentine pampas. Elsewhere the Cordillera, in long parallel ridges running roughly north and south, stretched its great length along, crowding together into an inextricable tangle the distant peaks, partly hidden by the near summits, which alone interrupted the completeness of the panorama.”

All the high peaks are said to be of volcanic origin. Those from Mercedario to Tupungato are precipitous and craggy and decked with great glaciers. The sky line is jagged, like the walls of a ruined castle. Below the snow, the rocks are richly colored. There are vast palisades of dark reds and browns, slopes of purple streaked with yellow, and all sorts of other gorgeous combinations, and, down in the lower valleys, brilliant greens. The streams of melting snow pouring down the sides seem to take on tints that correspond. In some places they flow red, as with blood from the breast of a giant; in others, with the sun gleaming on them, they look like molten gold. The main branch of the Rio Mendoza, for instance, above Cuevas on the Argentine side, seems pink at first, and, lower down, after mixing with the waters of its tributaries, changes to a golden brown. It is one of those scenes that artists are always accused of exaggerating and adding fanciful touches to when they attempt the poor reproductions that the greatest only can give, so far are they beyond human skill to portray—one of those scenes that few mortals are gifted enough to comprehend the unutterable majesty and magnificence of even when they have an opportunity to view the originals. Even Burton Holmes, the great globe-trotter and lecturer, in relating his impression in a recent article, confesses that he could not appreciate it at first.

“Naturally, we were eager at least to see this monarch mountain—Aconcagua, the King of the Cordillera,” he says.

“Accordingly, we organized a little expedition, and, under the guidance of the capable young Britisher who is in charge of the livestock of the camp at Puente del Inca, and his Chilean ‘Capitaz,’ or chief man, we rode away up a lateral valley toward a well-known point of view, whence Aconcagua could be clearly seen. A snow-clad mountain looms up at the end of that barren valley. ‘That’s a rather fine peak,’ I remarked. ‘Well, rather,’ replied the Englishman. ‘That’s the one you have come to see; that’s Aconcagua.’ We were astounded, for the mountain seemed no huger than the Jungfrau, as viewed from Interlaken. In fact, it greatly resembles the Jungfrau in form and outline, and its setting, from this point of view, is similar. We had expected to be overwhelmed at sight of some sharp, tremendous, towering shape—some magnified Matterhorn. What we beheld was like a section of a snowy range—a culminating section of that range, perhaps—but not a sharply defined peak. Yet we were looking at the highest crest of the Western Hemisphere. Everything about us was on a scale so vast that even Aconcagua was dwarfed by the tremendous setting.”

The next great division of the range is defined on the north by the Maipo Pass and by Las Demas Pass on the south. Its principal heights are between 16,000 and 17,000 feet. From Las Demas on, few are over 10,000 feet, and, beyond Copahue, near the source of the Bio-bio River, the average is about 9000. Beyond the volcano Tronador (the Thunderer), in the latitude of Lake Llanquihue, and as far as Lake Buenos Aires, it consists of a series of Swisslike mountains, still decreasing in height, but with an occasional high peak, such as San ValentÍn (12,720 feet), and glaciers growing ever larger and more numerous. San ValentÍn towers in the midst of an elevated ice field eighty miles long and thirty wide and sends down two great glacial streams, one to the south and the other into the San Rafael Lake, where the ice glides along the bottom until it breaks into fragments that drift away in the channel of Morelada. All these places can now be reached by railroad or steamer.

No conception of the Chilean country as a whole can be formed, however, unless it is understood that it is naturally divided into zones, as characteristically dissimilar as are the various grand divisions of the United States. For instance, there is the Magellan and Fuegian region, where, to the east of the mountain ranges, the great Argentine pampa extends clear down through Tierra del Fuego, and where, as the climate is too rigorous to invite agricultural pursuits, the principal industry, and the only important one, aside from a small amount of lumbering and gold mining, is the raising of herds of sheep and cattle. With the exception of the ranchers and the ten or twelve thousand people of Punta Arenas—which is the only port of call in these parts, and is, therefore, the distributing and shipping point for all the enormous expanse of country round about, including the southern section of Argentine Patagonia—the inhabitants are of the lower order of Indians and live in the forests, supporting themselves by hunting and fishing, just as they did before they ever saw or heard of a white man.

Then there is the island, lake, and forest region between Smyth Channel, say, and Valdivia. In the southern part, the principal industries are lumbering and fishing, but in the north, especially in the Province of ChiloÉ (both the island and mainland) and in Llanquihue, there are also wheat and barley fields, and the fruit, dairy, and cattle-raising industries rank ahead of the timber and fishing, though in ChiloÉ this last is among the most important. The inhabitants are mostly immigrants, mestizos, and Indians, though of a better and far more amenable class than the races farther south. Most of them are descendants of those famous Araucanians, whom it took nearly four hundred years to subdue. Here, throughout nearly the whole of the country, in the uplands as well as near the coast, is the towering alerce (the Chilean pine), often two hundred feet high, sometimes two hundred and fifty, which has a superb white trunk, varying from ten to fifteen feet in diameter, according to height—the rival of the California giant redwoods—and here is the dingue, that resembles the mighty German oak, and supplies wood for railroad cars, carriages, casks, and ship-building, of wonderful toughness and durability. There are cypress, walnut, cedar, ash, beech, and others excellent for general building and cabinet purposes, too, and other species of value for their barks.

Then, from Valdivia north through the Province of Coquimbo, comes the great central valley, which is excelled by few, if any, of the temperate agricultural regions of the world. It is here, of course, that the principal centers of population are located—Valparaiso, the most important seaport south of San Francisco, and Santiago, the capital, and the ports of ConcepciÓn and La Serena, or Coquimbo. In this region all the cereals, fruits, and vegetables are produced in abundance. There are immense vineyards and sugar-beet and tobacco plantations, stock and dairy farms, copper, silver, and coal mines, and factories of almost every description.

North of Coquimbo are the desert provinces of Atacama, Antofagasta, TarapacÁ, and Tacna, where the rain so seldom falls that no useful vegetation can thrive except in a few places where irrigation is possible, yet which are the chief source of Chile’s revenue and wealth. These constitute the fourth, or almost exclusively mineral zone, and, aside from their gold and silver and copper, contain the famous nitrate of soda beds, the only known extensive deposit of the kind in the world, though here they are found thickly scattered over a strip four hundred and sixty miles long, averaging about three miles in width. Every year more than 2,000,000 tons (in 1910 it was 2,367,000 tons, worth $86,018,000) are exported to fertilize the fields and make the gunpowder of Europe and the United States, to say nothing of the iodine and other by-products extracted in the process of preparation. “Plants make use of nitrogen only when it is present in the soil in the form of nitrates,” says the Pan American Bulletin (Review Number, August, 1911)—

“And nitrate of soda is the only fertilizer that contains this food in a suitable and available form. The manner of using it, once it is applied, is the subject of technical, agricultural chemistry, but every year it is better understood and results are more satisfactory. On the first discovery of the value of nitrate, it was scattered promiscuously in the soil in its crude form, just as it was taken from the beds in Chile. As the industry advanced, it was found that it was more economical to export a purer mineral, and that, also, the purer the mineral, the more plant nourishment it offered, provided that the need of the plant was carefully investigated. The results have been a more highly developed agriculture and the saving of certain by-products, of which iodine is one, the profit from which aids the manufacture. Another use for nitrate is in the manufacture of nitric acid, and, ultimately, of many kinds of explosives....

“Saltpeter, or nitrate of soda, is found mixed with other substances. The beds contain four layers of material, the next lowest being that of the nitrate itself. Above this are the chuca, on the surface, which is nothing more than the accumulation of ages; the costra beneath, a harder and older mass, but still a somewhat worthless dÉbris; the caliche, the real nitrate of soda, and, finally, the stratum of bed rock called gova. To obtain the nitrate, a shaft is sunk to the gova, on which powder is placed and exploded; the overlying mass is thrown up and the caliche containing the nitrate scattered over the ground. This is then collected and taken to the refining works for preparation into refined or almost pure nitrate of soda, ready for export. In the oficinas” (refining works) “machinery of the most economical and effective pattern is used, and the methods of refining the salt are according to the best researches of industrial chemistry. The same is true of the facilities for transportation to the steamer. Many small but well-equipped railways are in operation in the fields, and they carry the product to the coast towns, from which they are finally shipped abroad.... Great Britain takes about forty per cent., Germany and the United States each about twenty per cent., France about ten per cent., and the remainder goes to such far-away places as Egypt, Japan, the Hawaiian Islands, and Australia. In fact, without nitrate the great agricultural producers cannot advance.”

And it is well for Chile that these nitrate deposits have proven of such great value—they were acquired only at the cost of a long and expensive war. Formerly the Province of Antofagasta belonged to Bolivia and the Provinces of TarapacÁ and Tacna to Peru. The dividing line between Chile and Bolivia, it appears, had always been a bone of contention, and, in 1866, while these republics were allied in a war with Spain, a treaty had been entered into between them, fixing a boundary and agreeing that the citizens of either should have the right to engage in mining operations in the territory of the other, and export the products free of all taxation, within a certain limited area. It appears also that in 1870 Bolivia, for a money consideration, granted to a company composed of Chileans and Englishmen the right to work the nitrate beds both in and north of the treaty area, also to construct a mole at the port of Antofagasta and a road to CarÁcoles, where rich silver mines had been discovered. The mole was constructed and not only a road but a railroad, and the company is said to have invested heavily in various plants for the preparation of the nitrate and the reduction of the silver ore. As a result, as it was contended, it was Chilean and British capital, and principally Chilean energy and labor that developed the wealth of the region.

It further appears that, in 1873, Bolivia and Peru had entered into a secret alliance, by the terms of which each was to protect the others independence and territorial integrity from foreign aggression, and that in 1874 another treaty between Chile and Bolivia was negotiated, having in view the settlement of certain differences, but which the Bolivian Congress had refused to ratify except on condition that an export duty on nitrates should thereafter be paid. Chile remonstrated, contending that such a tax would be in violation of the treaty of 1866. Bolivia, it was charged, sought to impose it nevertheless and seized the property of the Chileno-British company on default in payment. The situation having thus become acute, Chile sent a fleet to protect the interests of her citizens and blockaded the port of Antofagasta. At this stage Peru, doubly concerned because of her secret alliance and because Chileans had acquired rights in her own nitrate fields in TarapacÁ, offered her services as mediator, but no agreement could be reached and she became involved in the dispute herself, and, because of her more accessible situation, it fell to her lot to bear the chief burden of the defence in the war that followed.

In spite of the heroic sacrifices of her officers and the desperate courage with which her soldiers fought, especially toward the last, in nearly every battle, on both land and sea, the Chileans were successful, and at last, when they had taken Lima itself and made their victory complete, the provinces in question were ceded to her provisionally and have been developed to their present importance under her protection. The half-breed descendants of the Aymaras and Incas, of which the rank and file of the Peruvian and Bolivian armies were composed, were no match for the virile roto, in whose veins flowed the fiery blood of the Basque and Biscayan pioneers, mingled with that of the spirited, warlike aborigines of Chile.

If, in making the grand tour of the continent one goes first to Bolivia and visits Chile by way of the railroad from La Paz instead of going directly from Argentina over the transandean road or by steamer through the Strait of Magellan, one comes to the end of the trip at this very port of Antofagasta, which lies basking in the tropical sun on a strip of coast at the foot of a low table-land, seven hundred miles north of Valparaiso, in the heart of the rainless desert. It is very different, this region, from the bleak plateau up the twelve-thousand-foot slope, with its llama trains and poncho-clad natives. Antofagasta has a population of about 20,000, good broad streets, and a very businesslike appearance. It is a city that looks like one of our Western mining towns, and impresses one at first glance with its evidences of a more vigorous and ambitious civilization. There is a large oficina for the preparation of nitrate, steam tramcar lines, smelters for the treatment of copper and silver ores, long rows of barracks for the housing of the laborers, corrugated iron warehouses, crowds of ships in the offing taking on cargoes of nitrate and metals or unloading supplies; yet there are a plaza and promenade and hotels, and most of the residences of the officers of the companies are decidedly attractive.

For, in addition to being a nitrate and mining port, this is one of the principal gateways through which Bolivia’s commodities still come and her own products are sent out, and is the distributing center for the Chilean province besides, where the land is so barren that the inhabitants are dependent on the outside world for almost everything. There was a time when even water had to be imported into the city itself—it used to be said that they drank champagne because water was too expensive—but not long ago a conduit was constructed and now it is piped from the mountains, 250 miles away; and they have even brought soil from the south with which to make gardens to adorn their plaza and promenade and the grounds near the club where the Britishers have their tennis courts and five o’clock teas. It is said that of the $127,000,000 invested in the hundred or more oficinas generally throughout the region, $53,500,000 are English, $52,500,000 Chilean, and the rest German; so here, of course, as in the greater port of Iquique in the Province of TarapacÁ, a large proportion of the people, other than the laboring class, is English, and certain it is that the brisk, clean-cut Anglo-Saxon is very much in evidence, both in town and out along the plants lining the railroad.

II

As Antofagasta is not connected with Valparaiso by railroad, the only practicable way of getting there is by steamer. This is rather unfortunate for the tourist, because, although the accommodations are comfortable enough, the progress is slower and what is to be seen along the coast is nowhere near as interesting and attractive as in the central valley. Except at widely separated intervals, where the hills part at the mouths of the few shallow rivers or about the bays, the shore all the way down is dominated by steep, rocky cliffs, so high, when the ship’s course is near the coast, as to conceal the country behind. The only signs of life are where little ports, usually mere clusters of tin-roofed huts, are huddled on the beach, sometimes with a railroad climbing up the cliffs and back into the mining country beyond. Occasionally there is a city, such as La Serena; but, unless one has plenty of time to spare, these do not repay a stopover until the next boat.

Valparaiso (Vale of Paradise) is built at the foot of a mountain ridge, divided by deep ravines into nineteen separate cerros, or hills, that slope down to a wide bay, opening into the sea on the north. Encircling the beach is an embankment of masonry, called the Malecon, which considerably broadens the water front and serves as a protection—though there have been occasions when it has not proven a very effective one—from the heavy seas that are driven in by the “northers” during the two stormy winter months. The principal streets run parallel with the embankment and increase in number in the sections where the cerros recede, diminishing again where they extend almost to the water’s edge. In one section, away around near the end, there is scarcely room enough for the tracks of the railroad that connects the city with its beautiful, fashionable suburb, ViÑa del Mar. Many have their homes on the terraced sides and tops of the cerros, which are connected one with another by handsome bridges and made accessible from the streets below by inclined railways and elevators, so that, viewed from the entrance to the bay, the city has the appearance of a huge amphitheater.

The city has a population of nearly 250,000, but, as some one else has remarked, “As the principal port of the west coast, and, in a way, the ‘downtown’ for the capital and the rest of Chile, Valparaiso seems more important than its mere population would indicate, and, although the newspapers and street signs are in Spanish and Spanish is the language generally spoken, it has little of the look of the old Spanish-American town.” A large element of the population is foreign. The Germans are said to have the largest colony and the Italians and French to come next in order. These are mostly retail merchants of the better class; but it is here also that the men live who design and control the vast nitrate and mining enterprises in the north and the capitalists who finance the big industrial projects and railway development, the exporters and importers, bankers, brokers, and insurance men, and among these the ten or twelve thousand English in the city predominate. The better-educated class of Chileans speak English as well as Spanish and French. The French have almost a monopoly of the retail trade having to do with fashionable apparel and luxuries, for Paris has always been the Mecca of the smart set here and in Santiago, just as it has in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.

Although there are parts of the city that still retain something of the old-world aspect, the buildings generally are modern—many of them new, since it had to be largely rebuilt after the great earthquake in 1906, which was relatively as disastrous there as the one in San Francisco of the same year was to our principal Pacific port. There are few tall buildings and no skyscrapers, yet the main business street, the Calle Victoria, which parallels the Malecon almost the entire length, presents an array of government buildings, banks, hotels, theaters, cafÉs, retail shops, and office buildings larger and more substantial and elaborate than can be seen almost anywhere in cities of that size. The shops are of good size, and leave nothing to be desired in the way of assortment and quality of their stocks. Probably the most attractive of all the streets is the Avenida Brazil, which is at once a shaded boulevard, business thoroughfare, and fashionable promenade. There are trolley cars—with women conductors—and arc lights, libraries, first-class educational institutions, beautiful parks and plazas where they have public band concerts in the evenings, attractive residence districts, and near by, at ViÑa del Mar, there are sea bathing, tennis, racing, football, golf, country clubs, and a first-class hotel for those who are not so fortunate as to have their own houses. Only about sixty miles away (though it is farther by the railroad, which has to make a dÉtour to get through the coast range) is the capital, Santiago, the real metropolis of the country.

“Santiago, the Andean city of the snow white crown,” as Marie Robinson Wright was moved to describe it—

“Is unique in the charm of her unconventional beauty and the rugged splendor of her surroundings. Like a queen in the giant castle that nature has given her, with walls of the imperishable granites of the Cordilleras and towers reaching to the skies, she seems created for the homage of those who gaze upon her. Her face is toward the sunset, as if in expectation of the high destiny that awaits this land of promise in the golden west of South America; and, from the snowy peaks behind her, marked clear against the blue sky, to the farthest limit westward, bordered by the boundless Pacific, there is no alien territory to limit the prospect of her fair domain. Her jewels, rare and resplendent, are the rich emerald of the Andean valleys, the matchless sapphire of Andean skies, the pure diamonds of Andean streams. Her royal robes are woven of the marvelous purple and gold of Andean sunsets, unrivaled in brilliancy, and imparting to her gracious beauty the glow of infinite loveliness, as they envelop her utterly, catching even the snowy peaks of her sovereign diadem in their magic folds.”

Nor is this in the least overdrawn. No city could be more delightfully situated. It lies in the great central valley, on a plateau forty miles long and about twenty wide, nearly two thousand feet above the level of the sea, where the climate is as perfect as that in the Pyrenees, and is almost completely enclosed by a magnificent border of mountains. Luzerne and other show places in Switzerland are mere miniatures compared with it. The level portion of the ground is highly cultivated with all sorts of fruits and crops that grow in the temperate zone and is divided into large haciendas or plantations, nearly all with fine cattle and horse-breeding farms attached, and princely mansions as of feudal lords, and there are splendid avenues of giant eucalyptus along the roads and separating the fields. In the heart of the city itself is a hill called El Cerro de Santa Lucia, that rises to a height of three hundred feet and is half as big around as Central Park in New York, a spot which such a connoisseur as William E. Curtis declared he had “long held to be the prettiest place in the world.” The summit is reached by a number of winding driveways and walks, lined with trees, flowering shrubs and overhanging vines and flanked by battlemented walls and towers, picturesque beyond description; there are terraces ornamented with flower beds and fountains, and grottos, balconies, and rustic seats; all along, at intervals, are kiosks for music and refreshments; half way up is a theater where light opera and vaudeville performances are given both afternoons and evenings; a little farther on is a restaurant that is a favorite resort for breakfasting and dining out, and, best of all, from the summit there is a glorious view of the whole country around.

Across the city from Santa Lucia to the Central Railroad depot, an avenue called the Alameda de las Delicias extends for a distance of three miles. It is three hundred and fifty feet wide and all down the center is a beautiful park containing statues and monuments to Chile’s heroes. It is her hall of fame, not shut in by four walls, but placed in the midst of this most frequented of her promenades, among the trees and flowers and the fountains and lakes, where “the stories told in marble and bronze may inspire the multitude to patriotism and courage;” and, facing the driveways along the sides, are many of the handsomest of the residences. The old center of the city is marked by the famous Plaza de Armas, with a marble monument representing South America receiving her baptism of fire in the war of independence. On one side are the Cathedral and Bishop’s Palace, on another the splendid Municipal and Intendencia Buildings, low and massive, and Government Telegraph Office; on another, two long series of shops opening out on fine arcades that extend the whole length of the sidewalks from corner to corner.

Opposite the Plaza O’Higgins, a few blocks away, is the Congressional Palace, which occupies the whole square and is one of the largest and handsomest buildings in South America. In architectural design it looks somewhat like the Senate and House wings of our Capitol at Washington, only of course it is much larger than either mere wing; and in the same district is the Casa de Moneda (the Mint), in which the President and Cabinet have their offices, a massive structure as big as our Washington Treasury, and the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts.

It is around the plaza that society takes its customary stroll in the evenings and the dusky-eyed, black-haired seÑoritas, according to the Latin custom, flirt as much as they dare with the young exquisites, who frankly and boldly admire with glances more eloquent than words. Writing of this custom, which would not be tolerated in our cities, Arthur Ruhl says that—

“They are dapper and very confident young men” (these oglers), “combining in their demeanor the gallantry of their Spanish inheritance with a certain bumptiousness rather characteristically Chilean. They stare at those who pass—some in mantos, some in French dresses with Paris hats—and in Spanish murmur, half audibly, such observations as, ‘I like the blonde best,’ or ‘Give me the little one.’ And, as they still retain some of that simplicity which in the interior causes a stranger to be watched as though he were a camel or a calliope, they will stare even at the gringo, comment on the cut of his clothes or facetiously compare his blunt walking boots with their long, thin ones. They are rather irritating sometimes, especially the young officers in their smart German uniforms, and one dreams of home and a Broadway policeman marching down upon them leisurely with a night-stick and fanning them away.”

Though why he should have mentioned a “blonde” in illustrating their comments, one must wonder. Maybe it was because there are so few. As a rule their hair and eyes, if not black, are a dark, rich brown, and their complexion of the clear, cream-tinted, brunette type. “But,” he continues—

“The young women do not mind it at all.... And you will not make yourself at all popular by sympathizing, for they would only laugh and say: ‘Oh, they’re all right. That’s only their way of beginning. They’re quite sensible and nice when you come to know them.’ There are ways and ways, and in South America a girl who may not receive a formal call from a man without having her mother and half the family in the room at the same time may blandly listen to repartee that would make our maidens gasp for breath.... It is at dusk, particularly if the band is playing, or if it is Sunday, that the promenade begins round the Plaza—a row of spectators on the inside benches, on the outside young idlers and officers two or three deep—between two shuffling concentric circles, in one of which are the men, in the other the shrinking seÑoritas, two by two, or hanging on the arm of a protector. Every man who can sport a top-hat and a pair of saffron gloves, if it is Sunday, and all the women except the very austere ones, gather here and circle round in that armed neutrality of the sexes which is the tradition of their blood.”

In general style Santiago is not as modern as Valparaiso, though it is far more interesting and attractive, and is not behind in public utilities, educational facilities, and energy—or in the attractiveness of their street-car service, for here, too, the conductors are neatly uniformed women, lots of them young and good-looking. Many of the more pretentious residences are old family mansions of the Moorish, characteristically Spanish colonial type and, therefore, charming to a stranger from the north. Most of them are like those described in the chapter on Uruguay—built around a large square central court or patio, filled with flower-beds and palms and with galleries around the sides onto which the rooms of the upper stories open. These galleries serve the same purpose as our interior hallways. They are usually supported by substantial but graceful stone arches and piers, and are reached by handsome stairways, also of stone, leading up from the court. Very often there is a fountain and sometimes statuary, and through the big gateways when the ponderous iron-studded doors happen to be open, delicious glimpses may be caught in passing. The windows opening on the streets are usually heavily barred, and the outer walls are in many cases frescoed and tinted and ornamented with wreaths and vases of stucco. Some few of the great houses are massive stone affairs of modern construction that resemble the mansions on the fashionable residence streets of our principal northern cities.

Like all the greater South American towns, Santiago has her museums, libraries, magnificent municipal theater and places of popular amusement; and she has her clubs and racecourse and public gatherings of the fashionables, who are as elegantly dressed and smart-looking as those of Buenos Aires—though she still has her religious processions too on the great feast days, and all the ladies still wear their black, shroudlike mantos to church. Disfiguring and funereal as it is, this is an observance that is still insisted on by the priests. In short, though differing from our capitals in many respects, this greatest city in Chile is obviously a metropolis and offers opportunities for sightseeing and amusements of every description that few cities in the world can surpass. And, as in Lima, there is an aristocracy here, descended directly from the old Conquistadore stock, that has retained its wealth and power in the land through all the vicissitudes of both the colonial and republican rÉgimes.

III

The long series of groups of islands beginning with ChiloÉ, about two-thirds of the way down the coast, is said to be nothing more than a partly submerged section of the Western Cordillera. Above the surface of the water, for a distance of about eighty miles, they still have an average elevation of about two thousand feet. Embraced in the Chonos Archipelago, between ChiloÉ and the Taytao Peninsula, are more than a thousand small islands, rocks, and reefs, and then come the large islands of Wellington, Madre de Dios, Chatham, Hanover, Queen Adelaide, King William’s Land, etc., each fringed by groups of little ones and all following the mainland in a graceful curve and separated from it by the Messier, Sarmiento, and Smyth Channels, which, together, extend for three hundred and sixty miles, from the Penas Gulf to the Strait of Magellan. As the steamer glides through, at times so straight are they and such is the uniformity of the shore line on either side, one fancies one’s self in a wide river in the interior of the continent; at others, when openings among the islands appear and the water stretches for miles toward the sea or far into the recesses of the Cordillera, it seems more like a great lake.

The fjordlike formations recall the more celebrated channel off the coast of Norway leading to the North Cape. Indeed, it is generally agreed by those who have seen both that there is little to choose between them, for, in both, the indentations and mountains of the coast and islands are similar in character; if there is less variety in the Chilean one, if the rainstorms are more frequent, to compensate for it there is a much greater and more attractive wealth of vegetation. From the water’s edge to a height of fourteen or fifteen hundred feet, the slopes, and even the smaller islands, are covered with an unbroken mantle of beautiful, dense, green forest that presents an astonishing contrast, in this inhospitable region, to the bleak, gray rocks and bluish-tinted ice sheets above and the pure white snow caps on the summits beyond.

In the country from Valdivia south to Smyth Channel, many of the trees, particularly in the ravines and sheltered places, are tall and shapely and their trunks and lower branches are incrusted with mosses and entwined with flowering creepers and vines, many with a sort of mistletoe that has clusters of dark-red blossoms; one of the creepers, called angel’s hair, is delicate and filmy and hangs from the branches like threads of lace, and there is an undergrowth of ferns and shrubs and bamboo. These last often shoot up as far as the tops of the trees and seem to mat them together so that they form arbors over the pathways between. Farther south and in the region of the Strait, these woods lose something of their mysterious beauty; here they are composed principally of antarctic beech, gnarled and bent by the winds, and the thicketlike undergrowth is somber and forbidding.

Emerging from the channel, for the first time the steamer encounters heavy rollers, which come dashing in through the broad gateway to the Pacific, not far to the west. Here, even in summer, it is seldom that there is neither storm nor fog, but, when it is clear enough, one can see the tempest-torn promontory of Cape Pillar, at the end of Desolation Island, the southwestern portal of the Strait. Eastward the conditions improve; the water grows smooth again and the clouds are usually lifted above the lower mountain tops; the scenery grows still more impressive than in the channel—only it is solemnly impressive now—at least, so it strikes most travelers. The Strait is much wider; the steamer is far enough away from the shore to enable one to see above the shoulders of the mountains to their summits, yet not so far that the distance renders them too indistinct; the water is steel gray, the bases and buttresses of the mountains take on a shade of purple, the summits seem whiter than ever, and over all, except during the comparatively rare intervals when the sun shines, are leaden clouds. In the center of the Strait, where the continent proper comes to a wedge-shaped point known as Cape Froward, and up to the eastern arm, only a few miles away, lies Punta Arenas, the southernmost city in the world.

In the jumble of ranges forming the transmagellan continuation of the great Cordillera of the Andes, the most important is that named after the scientist, Charles Darwin, who was the first to explore it, on the long western arm of the Island of Tierra del Fuego. The highest and most conspicuous happens to be the nearest to this remarkable port, and, as no better idea of the region in general could be conveyed, it seems to me, I quote from the story of a visit to Mt. Sarmiento, made by Sir Martin Conway the same summer he climbed Aconcagua, rather than attempt a description myself. He says:

“The sun was shining quite hotly and the ice was almost dazzlingly brilliant. After scrambling with difficulty onto the glacier and wandering about the moraine area, we returned toward the shore, finding an exit through the forest at a much narrower place. The air was cool, the sun bright; there were little puffs of breeze; it was the very perfection of a day for active open-air life. Yet the clouds still hung stationary on the summit of Sarmiento. We lay awhile on the shore beside the rippling waters; then rowed away in hopes of seeing our mountain’s misty veil lifted if only for a moment. The long, late midsummer sunset was at hand. A tender pink light, far fainter than the rich radiance of the Alpine glow, lay upon the surface of the glacier and empurpled its crevasses; it permeated the mist aloft. The cruel rocks, incrusted with ice, and the roof of the final precipice, with its steep ridges and icy couloirs, were all that could be seen. The graceful, ice-rounded foundation rocks of this and all the other mountains around slope up to the cliff and jagged arÊtes above and make each peak beautiful with contrasted forms, massive, yet suave of outline beneath, splintered and aspiring above. In one direction we looked along the channel of our approach, in another, for twenty miles or so, along Cockburn Channel, with a fine range of snowy peaks beside it, prolonging Sarmiento’s western range.

“The water was absolutely still; we floated with oars drawn in. Looking once more aloft, I found the mist grown thinner. The pink light crept higher and higher as the cloud dissolved. Suddenly—so suddenly that all who saw it cried out—far above this cloud, surprisingly, incredibly high, appeared a point of light like a glowing coal drawn from a furnace. The fiery glow crept down and down as though driving the mist away, till there stood before us, as it were, a mighty pillar of fire, with a wreath of mist around the base, and, down through all the wonderful pink wall and cataract of ice to the black forest and reflecting water. We had seen the final peak now—a tower of ice-crusted rock, utterly inaccessible from the western side. A little while later, the fair couloir had faded away, mists had gathered and night was coming on apace. We rowed away for the steamer, but had not gone very far before a faint silver point appeared above the mist where the glowing tower had stood. The cloud curtain rolled slowly down again and all the summit crest was revealed, cold and pure. Then the southwest ridge appeared, and finally the entire mountain, like a pale ghost, illuminated by some unearthly light. A moment later the clouds rolled together once more and solid night came on; we hastened to the steamer for warmth, food, and sleep.”

PUNTA ARENAS, THE SOUTHERNMOST CITY ON THE GLOBE.