If, in making the grand tour of the continent one goes first to Bolivia and visits Chile by way of the railroad from La Paz instead of going directly from Argentina over the transandean road or by steamer through the Strait of Magellan, one comes to the end of the trip at this very port of Antofagasta, which lies basking in the tropical sun on a strip of coast at the foot of a low table-land, seven hundred miles north of Valparaiso, in the heart of the rainless desert. It is very different, this region, from the bleak plateau up the twelve-thousand-foot slope, with its llama trains and poncho-clad natives. Antofagasta has a population of about 20,000, good broad streets, and a very businesslike appearance. It is a city that looks like one of our Western mining towns, and impresses one at first glance with its evidences of a more vigorous and ambitious civilization. There is a large oficina for the preparation of nitrate, steam tramcar lines, smelters for the treatment of copper and silver ores, long rows of barracks for the housing of the laborers, corrugated iron warehouses, crowds of ships in the offing taking on cargoes of nitrate and metals or unloading supplies; yet there are a plaza and promenade and hotels, and most of the residences of the officers of the companies are decidedly attractive.
For, in addition to being a nitrate and mining port, this is one of the principal gateways through which Bolivia’s commodities still come and her own products are sent out, and is the distributing center for the Chilean province besides, where the land is so barren that the inhabitants are dependent on the outside world for almost everything. There was a time when even water had to be imported into the city itself—it used to be said that they drank champagne because water was too expensive—but not long ago a conduit was constructed and now it is piped from the mountains, 250 miles away; and they have even brought soil from the south with which to make gardens to adorn their plaza and promenade and the grounds near the club where the Britishers have their tennis courts and five o’clock teas. It is said that of the $127,000,000 invested in the hundred or more oficinas generally throughout the region, $53,500,000 are English, $52,500,000 Chilean, and the rest German; so here, of course, as in the greater port of Iquique in the Province of Tarapacá, a large proportion of the people, other than the laboring class, is English, and certain it is that the brisk, clean-cut Anglo-Saxon is very much in evidence, both in town and out along the plants lining the railroad.
II
As Antofagasta is not connected with Valparaiso by railroad, the only practicable way of getting there is by steamer. This is rather unfortunate for the tourist, because, although the accommodations are comfortable enough, the progress is slower and what is to be seen along the coast is nowhere near as interesting and attractive as in the central valley. Except at widely separated intervals, where the hills part at the mouths of the few shallow rivers or about the bays, the shore all the way down is dominated by steep, rocky cliffs, so high, when the ship’s course is near the coast, as to conceal the country behind. The only signs of life are where little ports, usually mere clusters of tin-roofed huts, are huddled on the beach, sometimes with a railroad climbing up the cliffs and back into the mining country beyond. Occasionally there is a city, such as La Serena; but, unless one has plenty of time to spare, these do not repay a stopover until the next boat.
Valparaiso (Vale of Paradise) is built at the foot of a mountain ridge, divided by deep ravines into nineteen separate cerros, or hills, that slope down to a wide bay, opening into the sea on the north. Encircling the beach is an embankment of masonry, called the Malecon, which considerably broadens the water front and serves as a protection—though there have been occasions when it has not proven a very effective one—from the heavy seas that are driven in by the “northers” during the two stormy winter months. The principal streets run parallel with the embankment and increase in number in the sections where the cerros recede, diminishing again where they extend almost to the water’s edge. In one section, away around near the end, there is scarcely room enough for the tracks of the railroad that connects the city with its beautiful, fashionable suburb, Viña del Mar. Many have their homes on the terraced sides and tops of the cerros, which are connected one with another by handsome bridges and made accessible from the streets below by inclined railways and elevators, so that, viewed from the entrance to the bay, the city has the appearance of a huge amphitheater.
The city has a population of nearly 250,000, but, as some one else has remarked, “As the principal port of the west coast, and, in a way, the ‘downtown’ for the capital and the rest of Chile, Valparaiso seems more important than its mere population would indicate, and, although the newspapers and street signs are in Spanish and Spanish is the language generally spoken, it has little of the look of the old Spanish-American town.” A large element of the population is foreign. The Germans are said to have the largest colony and the Italians and French to come next in order. These are mostly retail merchants of the better class; but it is here also that the men live who design and control the vast nitrate and mining enterprises in the north and the capitalists who finance the big industrial projects and railway development, the exporters and importers, bankers, brokers, and insurance men, and among these the ten or twelve thousand English in the city predominate. The better-educated class of Chileans speak English as well as Spanish and French. The French have almost a monopoly of the retail trade having to do with fashionable apparel and luxuries, for Paris has always been the Mecca of the smart set here and in Santiago, just as it has in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.
Although there are parts of the city that still retain something of the old-world aspect, the buildings generally are modern—many of them new, since it had to be largely rebuilt after the great earthquake in 1906, which was relatively as disastrous there as the one in San Francisco of the same year was to our principal Pacific port. There are few tall buildings and no skyscrapers, yet the main business street, the Calle Victoria, which parallels the Malecon almost the entire length, presents an array of government buildings, banks, hotels, theaters, cafés, retail shops, and office buildings larger and more substantial and elaborate than can be seen almost anywhere in cities of that size. The shops are of good size, and leave nothing to be desired in the way of assortment and quality of their stocks. Probably the most attractive of all the streets is the Avenida Brazil, which is at once a shaded boulevard, business thoroughfare, and fashionable promenade. There are trolley cars—with women conductors—and arc lights, libraries, first-class educational institutions, beautiful parks and plazas where they have public band concerts in the evenings, attractive residence districts, and near by, at Viña del Mar, there are sea bathing, tennis, racing, football, golf, country clubs, and a first-class hotel for those who are not so fortunate as to have their own houses. Only about sixty miles away (though it is farther by the railroad, which has to make a détour to get through the coast range) is the capital, Santiago, the real metropolis of the country.
“Santiago, the Andean city of the snow white crown,” as Marie Robinson Wright was moved to describe it—
“Is unique in the charm of her unconventional beauty and the rugged splendor of her surroundings. Like a queen in the giant castle that nature has given her, with walls of the imperishable granites of the Cordilleras and towers reaching to the skies, she seems created for the homage of those who gaze upon her. Her face is toward the sunset, as if in expectation of the high destiny that awaits this land of promise in the golden west of South America; and, from the snowy peaks behind her, marked clear against the blue sky, to the farthest limit westward, bordered by the boundless Pacific, there is no alien territory to limit the prospect of her fair domain. Her jewels, rare and resplendent, are the rich emerald of the Andean valleys, the matchless sapphire of Andean skies, the pure diamonds of Andean streams. Her royal robes are woven of the marvelous purple and gold of Andean sunsets, unrivaled in brilliancy, and imparting to her gracious beauty the glow of infinite loveliness, as they envelop her utterly, catching even the snowy peaks of her sovereign diadem in their magic folds.”
Nor is this in the least overdrawn. No city could be more delightfully situated. It lies in the great central valley, on a plateau forty miles long and about twenty wide, nearly two thousand feet above the level of the sea, where the climate is as perfect as that in the Pyrenees, and is almost completely enclosed by a magnificent border of mountains. Luzerne and other show places in Switzerland are mere miniatures compared with it. The level portion of the ground is highly cultivated with all sorts of fruits and crops that grow in the temperate zone and is divided into large haciendas or plantations, nearly all with fine cattle and horse-breeding farms attached, and princely mansions as of feudal lords, and there are splendid avenues of giant eucalyptus along the roads and separating the fields. In the heart of the city itself is a hill called El Cerro de Santa Lucia, that rises to a height of three hundred feet and is half as big around as Central Park in New York, a spot which such a connoisseur as William E. Curtis declared he had “long held to be the prettiest place in the world.” The summit is reached by a number of winding driveways and walks, lined with trees, flowering shrubs and overhanging vines and flanked by battlemented walls and towers, picturesque beyond description; there are terraces ornamented with flower beds and fountains, and grottos, balconies, and rustic seats; all along, at intervals, are kiosks for music and refreshments; half way up is a theater where light opera and vaudeville performances are given both afternoons and evenings; a little farther on is a restaurant that is a favorite resort for breakfasting and dining out, and, best of all, from the summit there is a glorious view of the whole country around.