Through South America

by Harry Weston Van Dyke

The next great division of the range is defined on the north by the Maipo Pass and by Las Demas Pass on the south. Its principal heights are between 16,000 and 17,000 feet. From Las Demas on, few are over 10,000 feet, and, beyond Copahue, near the source of the Bio-bio River, the average is about 9000. Beyond the volcano Tronador (the Thunderer), in the latitude of Lake Llanquihue, and as far as Lake Buenos Aires, it consists of a series of Swisslike mountains, still decreasing in height, but with an occasional high peak, such as San Valentín (12,720 feet), and glaciers growing ever larger and more numerous. San Valentín towers in the midst of an elevated ice field eighty miles long and thirty wide and sends down two great glacial streams, one to the south and the other into the San Rafael Lake, where the ice glides along the bottom until it breaks into fragments that drift away in the channel of Morelada. All these places can now be reached by railroad or steamer.

No conception of the Chilean country as a whole can be formed, however, unless it is understood that it is naturally divided into zones, as characteristically dissimilar as are the various grand divisions of the United States. For instance, there is the Magellan and Fuegian region, where, to the east of the mountain ranges, the great Argentine pampa extends clear down through Tierra del Fuego, and where, as the climate is too rigorous to invite agricultural pursuits, the principal industry, and the only important one, aside from a small amount of lumbering and gold mining, is the raising of herds of sheep and cattle. With the exception of the ranchers and the ten or twelve thousand people of Punta Arenas—which is the only port of call in these parts, and is, therefore, the distributing and shipping point for all the enormous expanse of country round about, including the southern section of Argentine Patagonia—the inhabitants are of the lower order of Indians and live in the forests, supporting themselves by hunting and fishing, just as they did before they ever saw or heard of a white man.

Then there is the island, lake, and forest region between Smyth Channel, say, and Valdivia. In the southern part, the principal industries are lumbering and fishing, but in the north, especially in the Province of Chiloé (both the island and mainland) and in Llanquihue, there are also wheat and barley fields, and the fruit, dairy, and cattle-raising industries rank ahead of the timber and fishing, though in Chiloé this last is among the most important. The inhabitants are mostly immigrants, mestizos, and Indians, though of a better and far more amenable class than the races farther south. Most of them are descendants of those famous Araucanians, whom it took nearly four hundred years to subdue. Here, throughout nearly the whole of the country, in the uplands as well as near the coast, is the towering alerce (the Chilean pine), often two hundred feet high, sometimes two hundred and fifty, which has a superb white trunk, varying from ten to fifteen feet in diameter, according to height—the rival of the California giant redwoods—and here is the dingue, that resembles the mighty German oak, and supplies wood for railroad cars, carriages, casks, and ship-building, of wonderful toughness and durability. There are cypress, walnut, cedar, ash, beech, and others excellent for general building and cabinet purposes, too, and other species of value for their barks.

Then, from Valdivia north through the Province of Coquimbo, comes the great central valley, which is excelled by few, if any, of the temperate agricultural regions of the world. It is here, of course, that the principal centers of population are located—Valparaiso, the most important seaport south of San Francisco, and Santiago, the capital, and the ports of Concepción and La Serena, or Coquimbo. In this region all the cereals, fruits, and vegetables are produced in abundance. There are immense vineyards and sugar-beet and tobacco plantations, stock and dairy farms, copper, silver, and coal mines, and factories of almost every description.

North of Coquimbo are the desert provinces of Atacama, Antofagasta, Tarapacá, and Tacna, where the rain so seldom falls that no useful vegetation can thrive except in a few places where irrigation is possible, yet which are the chief source of Chile’s revenue and wealth. These constitute the fourth, or almost exclusively mineral zone, and, aside from their gold and silver and copper, contain the famous nitrate of soda beds, the only known extensive deposit of the kind in the world, though here they are found thickly scattered over a strip four hundred and sixty miles long, averaging about three miles in width. Every year more than 2,000,000 tons (in 1910 it was 2,367,000 tons, worth $86,018,000) are exported to fertilize the fields and make the gunpowder of Europe and the United States, to say nothing of the iodine and other by-products extracted in the process of preparation. “Plants make use of nitrogen only when it is present in the soil in the form of nitrates,” says the Pan American Bulletin (Review Number, August, 1911)—

“And nitrate of soda is the only fertilizer that contains this food in a suitable and available form. The manner of using it, once it is applied, is the subject of technical, agricultural chemistry, but every year it is better understood and results are more satisfactory. On the first discovery of the value of nitrate, it was scattered promiscuously in the soil in its crude form, just as it was taken from the beds in Chile. As the industry advanced, it was found that it was more economical to export a purer mineral, and that, also, the purer the mineral, the more plant nourishment it offered, provided that the need of the plant was carefully investigated. The results have been a more highly developed agriculture and the saving of certain by-products, of which iodine is one, the profit from which aids the manufacture. Another use for nitrate is in the manufacture of nitric acid, and, ultimately, of many kinds of explosives....

“Saltpeter, or nitrate of soda, is found mixed with other substances. The beds contain four layers of material, the next lowest being that of the nitrate itself. Above this are the chuca, on the surface, which is nothing more than the accumulation of ages; the costra beneath, a harder and older mass, but still a somewhat worthless débris; the caliche, the real nitrate of soda, and, finally, the stratum of bed rock called gova. To obtain the nitrate, a shaft is sunk to the gova, on which powder is placed and exploded; the overlying mass is thrown up and the caliche containing the nitrate scattered over the ground. This is then collected and taken to the refining works for preparation into refined or almost pure nitrate of soda, ready for export. In the oficinas” (refining works) “machinery of the most economical and effective pattern is used, and the methods of refining the salt are according to the best researches of industrial chemistry. The same is true of the facilities for transportation to the steamer. Many small but well-equipped railways are in operation in the fields, and they carry the product to the coast towns, from which they are finally shipped abroad.... Great Britain takes about forty per cent., Germany and the United States each about twenty per cent., France about ten per cent., and the remainder goes to such far-away places as Egypt, Japan, the Hawaiian Islands, and Australia. In fact, without nitrate the great agricultural producers cannot advance.”

And it is well for Chile that these nitrate deposits have proven of such great value—they were acquired only at the cost of a long and expensive war. Formerly the Province of Antofagasta belonged to Bolivia and the Provinces of Tarapacá and Tacna to Peru. The dividing line between Chile and Bolivia, it appears, had always been a bone of contention, and, in 1866, while these republics were allied in a war with Spain, a treaty had been entered into between them, fixing a boundary and agreeing that the citizens of either should have the right to engage in mining operations in the territory of the other, and export the products free of all taxation, within a certain limited area. It appears also that in 1870 Bolivia, for a money consideration, granted to a company composed of Chileans and Englishmen the right to work the nitrate beds both in and north of the treaty area, also to construct a mole at the port of Antofagasta and a road to Carácoles, where rich silver mines had been discovered. The mole was constructed and not only a road but a railroad, and the company is said to have invested heavily in various plants for the preparation of the nitrate and the reduction of the silver ore. As a result, as it was contended, it was Chilean and British capital, and principally Chilean energy and labor that developed the wealth of the region.

It further appears that, in 1873, Bolivia and Peru had entered into a secret alliance, by the terms of which each was to protect the others independence and territorial integrity from foreign aggression, and that in 1874 another treaty between Chile and Bolivia was negotiated, having in view the settlement of certain differences, but which the Bolivian Congress had refused to ratify except on condition that an export duty on nitrates should thereafter be paid. Chile remonstrated, contending that such a tax would be in violation of the treaty of 1866. Bolivia, it was charged, sought to impose it nevertheless and seized the property of the Chileno-British company on default in payment. The situation having thus become acute, Chile sent a fleet to protect the interests of her citizens and blockaded the port of Antofagasta. At this stage Peru, doubly concerned because of her secret alliance and because Chileans had acquired rights in her own nitrate fields in Tarapacá, offered her services as mediator, but no agreement could be reached and she became involved in the dispute herself, and, because of her more accessible situation, it fell to her lot to bear the chief burden of the defence in the war that followed.

In spite of the heroic sacrifices of her officers and the desperate courage with which her soldiers fought, especially toward the last, in nearly every battle, on both land and sea, the Chileans were successful, and at last, when they had taken Lima itself and made their victory complete, the provinces in question were ceded to her provisionally and have been developed to their present importance under her protection. The half-breed descendants of the Aymaras and Incas, of which the rank and file of the Peruvian and Bolivian armies were composed, were no match for the virile roto, in whose veins flowed the fiery blood of the Basque and Biscayan pioneers, mingled with that of the spirited, warlike aborigines of Chile.