After the main valley is left and the gorge entered, it is a steady, curved climb to Llai-Llai. The place is an eating-station, and a very good one too. The name is Indian and not Welsh. Though it was midwinter, the breath of the tropics lingered and the dews had freshened the vines and trees. The railway splits at this point, one branch going south to Santiago and another straight on to Los Andes, where the mule-path leads across the cumbre, or summit, but where in a few years the big spiral tunnel will complete the through rail connection via the Uspallata Pass between Valparaiso and Buenos Ayres. In this region I had glimpses of vineyards, of pretty farms, and of pasturing cattle and sheep. The valley below is an agricultural Arcadia. Coming out of the gorge in the wildest part, the beauties of the scenery were temporarily lost, for a big, staring coffin sign greeted my eye. Sometimes the Chileans call themselves the English of South America; sometimes the Yankees. The advertiser’s art here is both English and Yankee—it stops at nothing.
View of Los Andes
But the snow-peaks, the overhanging vaporous milky masses on the summit, and the darker purple masses on the mountain-sides, make it possible to forget the coffin man and his wares, though his sign at first jars the æsthetic sensibilities so disagreeably.
Railroad travel is comfortable on the line from Valparaiso to the capital. There are Pullman cars and other conveniences. But though it is midwinter, the cars are not heated. Every one unrolls blankets and robes. The women settle back to a nap or a little gossip. The men light their cigars, and between the intervals of newspaper reading, talk politics and the weather. Two or three peruse French novels. The five hours consumed in the journey pass quickly.
This railroad was projected by William Wheelright. The opposition the enterprise met in the Chilean Congress reads like a chapter of George Stephenson’s struggles with the English Parliament. Wheelright carried the line as far as Llai-Llai. Then came a long wait, till Henry Meiggs arrived in the first flush of his exile, and with his extraordinary mental activities thirsting for a field for their employment. For ten years the government had been deciding to have the remaining sections of the railway completed “to-morrow.” It was in 1861 that they made the contract. They had no idea of quick work. Meiggs, shrewd California Yankee, got a clause inserted giving a premium if Section A should be finished within one year instead of three years, and so forth. Then he built the railroad in the shortest period and collected the largest premium. The authorities, wondering, paid, but allowed no rush clauses in subsequent contracts.
Few big cities can boast the possession of a craggy mountain. Santiago has such a treasure in Santa Lucia, an alluvial outcropping, isolated, and apparently not kin to the granite spur of San Cristobal near by. After waiting many years, the municipality converted it from a sterile mass of rugged rock into a park with drives and gardens, serpentine paths, statues, terraces, parapets, bowers, grottoes, basins, cascades, and aquariums. There is a statue to Pedro Valdivia, the first of the Spanish conquerors, whose conquering career was ended by the unconquerable Araucanians, and a chapel and monument to the public-spirited Archbishop Vicuña. A theatre, a café, and some other structures also have been erected. Their value in beautifying the mountain is not great, yet art and advertising have not been allowed altogether to spoil Nature.
Santa Lucia is Santiago’s crown jewel, her Kohinoor. Every day during my stay I went to walk there, often through the clouds, but always with a freshened sense of enjoyment. The approach is like Chapultepec in the City of Mexico, but this isolated mountain mass, while less extensive, is more dominating than Mexico’s pride. Though it does not afford the splendid sight of two volcanic snow-clad peaks, as Chapultepec does in the vista of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, yet the circular snow profile of the Andes through the violet mist is an always pleasing vision.
The Roman Aqueduct on Santa Lucia, Santiago