The first view is of wide streets running back to forest-clad hills which are almost lost in the snow clouds. Everything about the town is brisk and bright. Ashore the snow crunches under our feet, and we have the buoyant feeling of the Hudson’s Bay trapper. There is a Chilean cruiser in the bay, and German, English, French, and Spanish ships. Even rarer is one bearing the American flag. There are hotels, gasthauses, posadas, and other signs which tell in many languages of sailors’ lodging-houses. The mingling of many tongues is also heard, for the sailors are ashore.
Punta Arenas has very good wharves and warehouses, substantial bank buildings, some private residences that look like Swiss chalets, and a somewhat pretentious plaza in which on this day the fountain has become a beautiful ice crystal. The town also has sailors’ bar-rooms. There is a new church, and a few vacant lots are left in the business section. A troop of urchins come chattering from school, leap into the snow-drift, and pelt the passers-by, the universal privilege of boyhood. Though it is Winter the women are bareheaded, or most of them are, and the black alpaca shawls thrown carelessly over their shoulders do not indicate that the cold is penetrating. The men wear vicuña robes like blankets, or many of them have the skins made up into overcoats. The steamer has brought the fortnightly mail, and every one gathers at the post-office waiting for letters. The talk is of new sheep companies and gold washings in Tierra del Fuego.
Punta Arenas has no custom house. It is a free port,—a very wise policy considering that its trade is of an international character, selling to the passing ships and buying from them only such articles as are needed for local consumption. The commercial movement reaches $2,250,000 per year, the exports exceeding the imports by $250,000. The export commerce is of wool, hides, tallow, ostrich feathers, foxskins, guanaco and vicuña rugs. The imports are alcohol for the Patagonian Indians, cereals, and general merchandise. The best fur store is kept by a Russian woman. The town is the seat of the territorial government of Magellans, and is the official residence of the Governor. There is also an army barracks and a weather bureau office. It is a station of the Chilean navy, which has rendered much service to navigation in the hydrographic work of the Straits. Punta Arenas has its daily newspaper, filled with shipping intelligence and containing cable news which is transmitted by land wire from Buenos Ayres. Wireless telegraphy finds it a convenient station.
Punta Arenas thinks it has a cloud on its future. This is the Panama Canal. It now is an important coaling-station, the coal being brought both from Australia and from Newcastle, and it has a good business in supplying passing vessels. Some of this trade will be lost when the Hamburg and the New York ships which follow this route to San Francisco are able to take the shorter course through the waterway. But by that time the improvements which the Chilean government is making in the navigation of the Straits, and the natural development of trade in the far southern regions will have more than compensated for the diminution from the diversion of the through ocean traffic to other channels. As the centre of the sheep industry of Tierra del Fuego and of the Chilean mainland, the southernmost town has a stable future.
CHAPTER XIII
LIFE IN THE CHILEAN CAPITAL
Railway along Aconcagua River Valley—Project of Wheelright, the Yankee—Santiago’s Craggy Height of Santa Lucia—A Walk along the Alameda—Historic and Other Statues—The Capital a Fanlike City—Public Edifices—Dwellings of the Poor—Impression of the People at the Celebration of Corpus Christi—Some Notes on the Climate—Habits and Customs—“The Morning for Sleep”—Independence of Chilean Women—Sunday for Society—Fondness for Athletic Sports—Newspapers an Institution of the Country.
IN places the river Aconcagua is like the Platte of Nebraska, which is famous for spreading out so that it is all bed and no depth. Yet the stream is more picturesque than the flat top of Mt. Aconcagua, 22,425 feet high, for the monarch of the snow-covered Cordilleras lacks the majesty of the apex peaks, which are 2,000 or 3,000 feet lower. The railroad creeps along the valley from Valparaiso, cuts across the ravines and transverse spurs into a narrow pass, following the watercourse and clinging to the mountain-side like the rim of a wheel. The vegetation is both temperate and tropical. In making the journey on a June day I passed from the balminess of perpetual Spring to the chill of Winter, but Nature was not stern and there was no bleakness. A little back from the seacoast were short and stocky palms, fields carpeted with yellow cowslips, milk-white nut trees, green willows, silver poplars, young apple orchards side by side with orange groves, firs, and the taller forest trees.
Scene on the Aconcagua River