View of Arica
Ashore are a handsome little plaza with an elliptical enclosed plot of shrubbery in the centre, blue morning-glories and purple vine trees. Lieutenant Commander de Faramond, the French naval officer who went ashore with me, stopped to look at the flowers a moment. “Aha!” he remarked, “they have the fever here. This is the purple fever flower of Algiers. Wherever it grows you find sickness.” Later I made inquiries and learned that he was correct. Arica, while a most charming spot, is peculiarly subject to malarial influences.
But a walk through the town deepens the pleasing impression. There is a well-built custom house, the sloping cobble-paved streets are clean, and the dwellings are very attractive. The latter are neat one-story structures. Some are blue as to exterior, some subdued green, others brown or orange,—a real prismatic blending. Most of them have arbor-arched entrances, and the passing view of the interior is delightful. The church is the biggest building, and at a distance it is not unattractive, though it does not improve architecturally on near approach. Glimpses of native life are afforded by the Indian women coming in from the country. Some of them are mounted astride their donkeys, while the panniers, or baskets which contain their merchandise, almost smother them. Others trudge along by the sides of their animals. The buildings in Arica are of galvanized or corrugated iron. They are of one story, so that they will not be shaken down by the earthquakes.
Arica’s history has been a memorable one. Sir Francis Drake and his sea-hawks from the Golden Hind who touched there in 1579, found a collection of a score of Indian huts. The earthquake record begins in 1605. The most celebrated of these convulsions of Nature was that of 1868, when the United States frigate Wateree was carried a mile inland by the tidal wave, and left there to become the dwelling of a number of Indian families, until another earthquake and tidal wave drew it back toward the beach without harm to the inmates. The companion ship, the Fredonia was destroyed.
Commerce passes through Arica chiefly for Bolivia. Mules and burros transport the freight from the railway terminus at Tacna into the interior. The imports are mining-supplies and miscellaneous merchandise. The exports are saltpetre, salt, sulphur, and some minerals. There is a shop on shore in which are sold the noted vicuña rugs. These are brought down from Bolivia. The skins of the guanaco, much coarser, are vended to unwary buyers for vicuñas. For several years the annual commerce of the port at the maximum was $1,000,000, but it will grow rapidly.
The railroad from Arica to Tacna is of the standard gauge and 39 miles long. It was among the first constructed in South America, the concession having been granted by the Peruvian government in 1851 and the line completed six years later. The aspiration then was to continue it over the pampas along the route followed by the ancient highway of the Incas and across the igneous Cordillera of Tacora to La Paz in Bolivia. A waiting of half a century was necessary before the project could be considered as tangible, but by the terms of the treaty negotiated between the Bolivian and the Chilean governments in October, 1904, it approached realization. The distance from Tacna to La Paz is about 300 miles, but the Corocoro copper mines, which will furnish much of the traffic, are 60 miles nearer to Tacna. The freight carried over this route by pack animals—mules, burros, and llamas—of recent years has not exceeded 20,000 tons annually, but in the earlier years the quantity was much larger.
When the railway from Tacna to Corocoro and La Paz is completed, the commercial importance of Arica as a West Coast seaport will be greatly enhanced. This railroad will be an artery of commerce which will bring the heart of Bolivia to the Pacific, for it will lead to and from the most populous and most productive regions of that country by the shortest and most direct route. The line will be finished long before the Panama Canal is opened, but the result will be the same. Arica is 2,200 miles from Panama, relatively 4,200 miles from New York, and less than 3,600 miles from New Orleans. To New York around Cape Horn and Pernambuco is approximately 9,500 miles. From Arica to Liverpool via Panama is 6,900 miles; by way of the Straits of Magellan is 10,400 miles. Can a doubt be entertained as to the course of the commerce which will flow without ebb through the future great port of Arica?
The afternoon on which we left Arica we had a rare privilege. It was the sunlit view of the snow-cap of the distant Mt. Tacora in Bolivia. The summit is 19,000 feet above sea-level. Though the other snow-ridges often are seen, Tacora rarely shows her ghostly face. In the late afternoon the azure mist gathered over the plain and lower mountain range; the shadows fell on the shell-like hillsides; the sun glistened on the chalky, beetling bowlders; the brown cliffs became browner; the faintest suggestion of twilight hovered for a moment; the snow-caps disappeared, and it was night and we were steaming out of the bay.
From Arica south the cliffs rise from the sea almost perpendicularly. In the morning Pisagua is sighted. This is a centre of the nitrate industry and of what remains of the guano traffic. Colonel North, the hotel-keeper who became the nitrate king, had his beginnings as a captain of industry here. The mountains come down to the sea in parallel ridges. Pisagua is like a little Pennsylvania mining-town, except that it seems likely to slide into the sea. A fearful visitation of fire and plague depopulated it in 1905.
Double-header engines drawing short trains climb the steep walls as though they were going up a ladder. After a time they wind their way to the nitrate plains and then across the dreary desert to Iquique. There is not much to be seen on the railway route, and travellers prefer to keep the ship along the sheer cliffs till Iquique is sighted through the masts of the sailing-vessels which are clustered in the harbor waiting for their cargo. Sometimes a hundred of these are gathered.