It was Jack Hampton speaking, and he leaned on the rail of a coastwise steamer, as she came to anchor in the open roadstead of Valparaiso.
“I wonder what lies ahead,” said Frank Merrick, leaning beside him. “We ought to get some adventure out of this, besides mere civilized travel.”
Even Bob Temple, the most matter-of-fact of the three chums known as the Radio Boys, felt his imagination stirred.
“Remember what that commercial traveler said last night,” he interposed. “I mean, about the old days of the Spanish Conquest of South America? He certainly was filled with stories of treasure, of Inca treasure, wasn’t he?”
The other boys nodded, their eyes shining. Indeed, Juan Lopez, the young commercial traveler, who had taken a fancy to the boys, had told them glittering stories as they sat on deck under the Moon. Then they fell silent, their eyes on the strange scenes about them.
Although a great world port, and second only to San Francisco in importance on the Pacific Coast of the Western Hemisphere, Valparaiso is not a harbor as harbors go, lying open to the sea. Great numbers of ships lay about them offshore, freighters from all the world. And tugs and lighters kept coming and going in a continuous bustle between ships and shore.
As their train for Santiago, whither Mr. Hampton was bound on business, would leave in an hour, there was little time for sightseeing. Mr. Hampton, who knew the South American cities from former visits, on one of which he had taken Jack with him, assured them there was little in Valparaiso of historic or picturesque interest.
Nevertheless, the boys kept their eyes open during the trip through the narrow but noisy bustling business quarter which occupies the flats between the shore line and the thousand-foot cliffs behind upon which residential Valparaiso is situated. Ascensors took them up the sheer cliffs, and then followed a four-hour journey by train to Santiago.
They were expected, and at the Santiago station they were met by a family carriage which carried them to the home of Senor Don Ernesto de Avilar, with whom Mr. Hampton had come to transact business. With true Spanish hospitality, the latter on receiving word of his coming, had written urgently that he do not stop to a hotel, but bring the three boys with him as guests.
The way to the mansion of Senor de Avilar lay along the Alameda, a boulevard 600 feet wide, which formerly had been the bed of the Mapocho River, and as they bowled along the boys exclaimed time and again at the wonderful beauty of the surroundings and of the handsome residences. Frank and Bob, who were undergoing great changes in their preconceived notions of South America as a land of ruins and half-breeds, were especially astonished. Jack, who had been in this part of the world before, grinned with satisfaction.