Progressive Chile

by Robert E. Mansfield

RIVERS AND WATERWAYS.

The rivers in Chile all have their source in the Andes and empty into the Pacific. Unvexed by fretting wheels of commerce, they flow peacefully on from mountains to the sea. The distance being short and the declivity great, the current of the streams is swift, affording excellent power for manufacturing purposes. Sometimes in the rainy season, when the rivers are flushed from excessive rains, or in summer when their waters are augmented by melting snows, they become raging torrents, sweeping everything before them, frequently causing much loss of life and great damage to property. Among the more important rivers in Chile are the Aconcagua, Mapocho, Maipo, Cachapoal, Tinguiririca, Teno, Lontue, Mataquito, Rapel, Claro, Maule, Nuble, and Bio Bio. Some of these rivers are navigable for light-draft vessels for a short distance from the sea, but the winding course of the streams, irregular depth of water and the swift current make traffic unsafe, impracticable and unprofitable. The most peculiar and complicated river system on the continent is formed by the converging of the numerous streams that empty into the bay of Corral, near Valdivia. In some places as many as four rivers converge at one point. The scenery along these rivers presents a panorama of constantly changing views. Wooded hills rise abruptly along the banks, and in many places trees lean out over the streams, in the crystal waters of which are reflected their inverted images. Islands, overrun with creepers and brilliant with the scarlet bloom of coiphues and fuchsias, and the yellow hues of goldenrod, are some of the features of the picturesque scenery along this peculiar river system.

The fact that the rivers of Chile afford practically no transportation facilities is a matter of little commercial importance, because of the narrow territorial limits of the country from east to west, the general course of all the streams. As a compensation for this lack of natural transportation routes to the interior, the coast of southern Chile is a succession of bays, sounds, gulfs and channels, including the historic Straits of Magellan, which separate Tierra del Fuego from the mainland, and Smyth’s Channel, dangerous to navigate because of the swift currents flowing through the narrow, tortuous ways. In many places along the coast the descent of the shore is so abrupt that heavy-draft vessels are enabled to pass within a few yards of the embankments, and directly under overhanging trees. This southern archipelago, with its hundreds of islands, presents a panorama of scenes peculiarly picturesque and interesting. Among the more important islands of the coast are Chiloe, the original habitat of the potato, Wellington, Hanover, Queen Adelaide, St. Ines, and Desolation, so-called because of the lack of vegetation and desolate aspect of this long narrow strip of land lying at the western entrance to the Straits of Magellan. In some of the narrow channels separating the islands from the mainland and from each other, the currents are so swift, the waters so disturbed and the storms so fierce in certain seasons, that the sea seems a boiling, seething caldron, terrifying to passengers and mariners on passing ships. But those dangerous passages add a fascinating feature to the scenic effects of the most picturesque portion of the coast country.

The Straits of Magellan are a wise and beneficent provision of nature, forming a great canal or natural transportation route across the southern portion of the continent, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Ships pass through the Straits instead of around Cape Horn, one of the most dangerous seas in the world to navigate. The Andean range of mountains, extending from the Arctic Ocean, and stretching its vast, rugged length across the two Americas, ends at the Straits, Mount Victoria, a massive pile of gleaming ice and snow, being the last link in the jagged chain. South of the Straits is Tierra del Fuego, “Land of Fire,” the hills and mountains of which, including the great pyramidal cone of Mount Sarmiento, perpetually covered with a mantle of snow, stretch away hundreds of miles to Cape Horn, the most southern point of the Continent.

The scenery as well as the topographical and geographical conditions of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, in fact all the southern archipelago, are different from those in the arctic regions. There is more vegetation and a greater variety of scenery than in the coast countries of a corresponding latitude north. There are the beauties of the Thousand Islands, and Darwin, in describing a voyage through the Straits, compared the glaciers of Tierra del Fuego to a thousand frozen Niagaras. All the beautiful tints and combinations of coloring to be found in lakes Como and Lucerne, of the Mediterranean and the bay of Naples, are equaled, if not surpassed by, the hues reflected in the deep waters of those channels. Huge glaciers crowding down into the sea; giant rocks, rising like sheer walls of masonry for thousands of feet above the water, sometimes ending in shapes resembling church pinnacles and cathedral domes; mountains, whose forest-fringed bases are washed by the sea, their snow-mantled heads in the clouds; islands, frosted with snow and bejeweled with ice, in which is mingled the hues of gray-green moss and verdant vegetation; numerous winding, tortuous water-ways, dividing the islands from each other and separating them from the mainland, are some of the features of the panoramic view of coast-line, mountains and islands, presented in a landscape that is wonderfully picturesque and prepossessing. When storms sweep through these narrow channels, driving seas mountain-high against rocky shores, increasing the force of natural currents, obscuring the view with a shroud of snow and sleet and mist, a wild aspect is added to the scene. Mountains and islands rise ghostlike out of the water, their forms dimly outlined against the angry sky; and the din of booming seas and swiftly rushing waters adds terrifying confusion to the dangers of navigation.

In Patagonia the Andes differ in many of the essential features of their geographical conformation from that magnificent mountain system which further north is the pride and despair of the western countries of South America. The grand simplicity of structure in the northern system, the magnificent continuity and lofty grandeur of its main ranges, the altitude of its dominating peaks, its terrible and forbidding wastes of desolate and highly elevated table-land are wanting in the mountain masses of the far south. The topographical condition of the Patagonian country represents an immense system of ancient lake beds, and sea inlets separated and divided by groups of mountain peaks, sometimes piled upon a massive pedestal of crystalline rock, sometimes strung out in jagged lines of sierra or ridge, fringed with moraines or terraces, shaped and reshaped by the ice-agency of more than one glacial period; mountains which have been split again and again by stupendous volcanic action, and enormous masses of volcanic deposits.