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.