Vol. I. To face p. 288.
It would not be possible here to dwell on the other great mines of Bolivia.[41] The mines of Huanchaca, with their great installation and considerable population, form a community of themselves, and have produced literally thousands of tons of silver. In winter, buried in snow, the place looks like a town of Northern Europe or Canada. The ores are first sorted by women, who are expert sorters of the grey argentiferous copper ores of the main lode. At times of late years nearly half a million pounds sterling have been distributed among the European shareholders of this important concern. Sometimes in a single month as much as seven tons of silver have been produced.
Silver to-day is less important than tin, however, which has become the principal article of Bolivian export, wrested from the bleakest places here in the Andes, as is the copper of Chile.
We have visited, in the Cordillera of South America, the highest inhabited places on the face of the globe.
But south of Bolivia the Andes no longer offers a place for the homes of mankind, for towns and populations, such as Nature has provided in those vast regions we have traversed. The Cordillera becomes a single chain or ridge, without intermediate valleys or plateaux, and so continues for an enormous distance, lowering its elevation by degrees towards the frigid regions of the southern extremity of the continent, where its glaciers veritably run down into the bosom of the ocean. Perhaps the Cordillera has sunk here, as its "drowned" valleys—the fiords of the south seem to indicate—sunk, split and shattered as if Nature had done enough in this vast range running half across the globe.
If, however, the Chilean Cordillera does not offer an abiding place for man, it nevertheless is the source of his comfort and wealth, for the streams which flow from its summits irrigate the fields and vineyards of Chile's fruitful vales and Argentina's productive plains, bringing to being corn, wine and oil, and other things which make glad the heart of man.
The Andes form the dividing-line between Chile and Argentina. The water-parting was adopted as the boundary under the arbitration of King Edward of Britain. A remarkable monument has been erected in Uspallata Pass, a token that these two nations will enter into conflict no more; a great bronze statue of Christ, on a huge pedestal—El Cristo de los Andes—standing solitary and majestic amid the eternal snows, looking out over the high places of the mighty Cordillera.