Panama to Patagonia

by Charles M. Pepper

There is really no harbor, and scarcely what can be called docks, for the vessels must anchor outside and the rude breakwater is hardly more than a pretence. To get ashore the reef has to be crossed in a small boat. Upsets are frequent, and fatalities are not unknown.

Iquique is a fragile city of frame and corrugated iron buildings. In the plaza are a reasonably tasteful monument and a pretty municipal building. There is a brown wooden church with a wooden effigy of the crucified Saviour, which is far from attractive to look at. The town has a population of 40,000. Iquique has a history which surpasses that of the bonanza mountain towns of the West in swiftness, for in the first days of the saltpetre riches nothing was allowed to be slow. It is more staid and sedate now, but the Englishmen—younger sons and some of the earlier generation—do not let life become too dull. They are terrific brandy and whiskey drinkers, showing a nice discrimination in not exhausting the wealth of the nitrate beds by taking too much soda with their brandy. There is a Country Club and a convenient café at Camache, just out of the town proper. An American missionary school is maintained by the Methodist Episcopal denomination. When I was in Iquique, besides the school instructors there were only two Americans. One was a mining prospector, and the other was waiting for something to turn up. But North American enterprise was threatening to invade the nitrate industry.

The municipal administration of Iquique under the Chilean authorities is excellent; that is the common testimony of all foreigners. The population which has to be dealt with is a rough and ready one; the nitrate laborers are like the miners in their rude independence, and the longshoremen and harbor workers are as burly and aggressive as the same class in the United States.

In commercial importance Iquique ranks with the leading ports of the Pacific, all due to the nitrate trade. Its saltpetre shipments about equal those of all the other coast towns, and are valued at from $28,000,000 to $30,000,000 annually. In a single year the ships entering the port, many of them sailing-vessels, aggregate from 850 to 1,200, with a tonnage varying from 1,250,000 to 1,800,000. As the nitrate beds are being worked on a more extensive scale, it is safe to assume that almost any given year in the future will disclose the presence of not fewer than 1,200 vessels in the roadstead. Since the industry is largely in British hands, the English flag is by far the most common, though the German ensign is seen with growing frequency.

It is not probable that the Panama Canal will have a marked influence, either beneficial or detrimental, on Iquique. What nitrate freight may exist by the time the waterway is ready for traffic will be governed by the conditions that obtain to-day. The saltpetre fertilizers form a bulky cargo. Part of the profits of the ocean carrying-trade lies in transporting coal from Australia or Newcastle to the Chilean coast and then taking on the nitrates. That brought from England scarcely would find it profitable to pay the Canal tolls. Nor would the distance be shortened sufficiently to secure an advantage for the nitrates as return cargo. Their ocean route, in the future as in the past, is through the Straits of Magellan or around Cape Horn, and Iquique remains an unimpaired port so long as the nitrate beds are unexhausted. Some shipments may be through the waterway direct to Charleston, to mix with the phosphates and thus fertilize the Southern cotton fields.

At various times projects have been agitated for extending the nitrate railways in a manner to form a through line into Bolivia, but the preference given by the Chilean government to the Arica route seems to end the probability of such an enterprise. In view of the raw materials right at hand, it is surprising that neither native nor foreign capital has established manufactories of explosives.

Twenty-four hundred miles from Panama, geographically on the Tropic of Capricorn, is Antofagasta, a fair sort of town, with regular streets, rectangular warehouses, and a graveyard on the hillside. Its pride is the plaza, which has been coaxed from unwilling Nature and made to bear evidences of grass and trees. It is the starting-point of the two-foot six-inch gauge railway which runs 575 miles up into the interior of Bolivia, and brings the mining products down to the shore. The railway pays a 6 per cent annual dividend, and is said to earn more. The gross receipts are about $9,000,000 per year. Antofagasta is a shipping-point for the nitrates as well as for bullion and ores. The nitrate shipments are increasing rapidly, and promise to rival Iquique. The harbor is a wretched roadstead. To get ashore it is necessary to brave a lashing, dangerous surf. The Chilean government is promising extensive improvements. They are badly needed. When made, they will enhance the commercial importance of Antofagasta. The foreign vessels entering and clearing annually have a tonnage of 1,000,000.

Antofagasta is the centre of the chief copper-producing district of northern Chile, and also it is the outlet of Bolivian tin, silver, and copper. The reduction works built by the Huanchaca Company of Bolivia are located near here, and a large quantity of the ores are transported to these works to be treated. It always will be their outlet, but in the future Antofagasta will have sharper competition than at present with Arica and Mollendo, as the shipping-port of Bolivian products. The Canal will be of some benefit in lessening ocean freights, more particularly for the general merchandise imported.

Below Antofagasta is Taltal, a passably well-sheltered nitrate shipping-port. Then the coast toward Chañaral begins to vary; the mountains are lower, more broken and jagged, with more cross ranges. Chañaral has copper-smelting works.

Caldera is a small town, with substantial warehouses, fronting on a big, fine bay. It has a Panama potency, for it is the beginning of the Copiapo Railway that in time will cross the Andes and make the plains of northwestern Argentina tributary to the Pacific. This trans-Andine route was the dream of William Wheelright, the Yankee pioneer railroader of Chile and the Argentine Republic, often called the father of public works in South America. The passes are low and easily traversed, as compared with those farther south. The gradual extension of population in the northwestern provinces of Argentina, the increase in the areas under cultivation, are followed—or, better said, are preceded—by railroad extensions. A few years will bring her lines to the boundary of the Andes. In the meantime the Chilean government is encouraging the prolongation of the railway from Copiapo to the dividing line of the Cordilleras. The time cannot be far distant when Tucuman, the railway cross-roads of northern Argentina, will have rail communication with the West Coast at Caldera, and an extensive district will be weighing the comparative advantages of the Atlantic transport and the Pacific and Panama transport for its agricultural products and the merchandise brought to the people who grow those products for export.