Across the city from Santa Lucia to the Central Railroad depot, an avenue called the Alameda de las Delicias extends for a distance of three miles. It is three hundred and fifty feet wide and all down the center is a beautiful park containing statues and monuments to Chile’s heroes. It is her hall of fame, not shut in by four walls, but placed in the midst of this most frequented of her promenades, among the trees and flowers and the fountains and lakes, where “the stories told in marble and bronze may inspire the multitude to patriotism and courage;” and, facing the driveways along the sides, are many of the handsomest of the residences. The old center of the city is marked by the famous Plaza de Armas, with a marble monument representing South America receiving her baptism of fire in the war of independence. On one side are the Cathedral and Bishop’s Palace, on another the splendid Municipal and Intendencia Buildings, low and massive, and Government Telegraph Office; on another, two long series of shops opening out on fine arcades that extend the whole length of the sidewalks from corner to corner.
Opposite the Plaza O’Higgins, a few blocks away, is the Congressional Palace, which occupies the whole square and is one of the largest and handsomest buildings in South America. In architectural design it looks somewhat like the Senate and House wings of our Capitol at Washington, only of course it is much larger than either mere wing; and in the same district is the Casa de Moneda (the Mint), in which the President and Cabinet have their offices, a massive structure as big as our Washington Treasury, and the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts.
It is around the plaza that society takes its customary stroll in the evenings and the dusky-eyed, black-haired señoritas, according to the Latin custom, flirt as much as they dare with the young exquisites, who frankly and boldly admire with glances more eloquent than words. Writing of this custom, which would not be tolerated in our cities, Arthur Ruhl says that—
“They are dapper and very confident young men” (these oglers), “combining in their demeanor the gallantry of their Spanish inheritance with a certain bumptiousness rather characteristically Chilean. They stare at those who pass—some in mantos, some in French dresses with Paris hats—and in Spanish murmur, half audibly, such observations as, ‘I like the blonde best,’ or ‘Give me the little one.’ And, as they still retain some of that simplicity which in the interior causes a stranger to be watched as though he were a camel or a calliope, they will stare even at the gringo, comment on the cut of his clothes or facetiously compare his blunt walking boots with their long, thin ones. They are rather irritating sometimes, especially the young officers in their smart German uniforms, and one dreams of home and a Broadway policeman marching down upon them leisurely with a night-stick and fanning them away.”
Though why he should have mentioned a “blonde” in illustrating their comments, one must wonder. Maybe it was because there are so few. As a rule their hair and eyes, if not black, are a dark, rich brown, and their complexion of the clear, cream-tinted, brunette type. “But,” he continues—
“The young women do not mind it at all.... And you will not make yourself at all popular by sympathizing, for they would only laugh and say: ‘Oh, they’re all right. That’s only their way of beginning. They’re quite sensible and nice when you come to know them.’ There are ways and ways, and in South America a girl who may not receive a formal call from a man without having her mother and half the family in the room at the same time may blandly listen to repartee that would make our maidens gasp for breath.... It is at dusk, particularly if the band is playing, or if it is Sunday, that the promenade begins round the Plaza—a row of spectators on the inside benches, on the outside young idlers and officers two or three deep—between two shuffling concentric circles, in one of which are the men, in the other the shrinking señoritas, two by two, or hanging on the arm of a protector. Every man who can sport a top-hat and a pair of saffron gloves, if it is Sunday, and all the women except the very austere ones, gather here and circle round in that armed neutrality of the sexes which is the tradition of their blood.”
In general style Santiago is not as modern as Valparaiso, though it is far more interesting and attractive, and is not behind in public utilities, educational facilities, and energy—or in the attractiveness of their street-car service, for here, too, the conductors are neatly uniformed women, lots of them young and good-looking. Many of the more pretentious residences are old family mansions of the Moorish, characteristically Spanish colonial type and, therefore, charming to a stranger from the north. Most of them are like those described in the chapter on Uruguay—built around a large square central court or patio, filled with flower-beds and palms and with galleries around the sides onto which the rooms of the upper stories open. These galleries serve the same purpose as our interior hallways. They are usually supported by substantial but graceful stone arches and piers, and are reached by handsome stairways, also of stone, leading up from the court. Very often there is a fountain and sometimes statuary, and through the big gateways when the ponderous iron-studded doors happen to be open, delicious glimpses may be caught in passing. The windows opening on the streets are usually heavily barred, and the outer walls are in many cases frescoed and tinted and ornamented with wreaths and vases of stucco. Some few of the great houses are massive stone affairs of modern construction that resemble the mansions on the fashionable residence streets of our principal northern cities.
Like all the greater South American towns, Santiago has her museums, libraries, magnificent municipal theater and places of popular amusement; and she has her clubs and racecourse and public gatherings of the fashionables, who are as elegantly dressed and smart-looking as those of Buenos Aires—though she still has her religious processions too on the great feast days, and all the ladies still wear their black, shroudlike mantos to church. Disfiguring and funereal as it is, this is an observance that is still insisted on by the priests. In short, though differing from our capitals in many respects, this greatest city in Chile is obviously a metropolis and offers opportunities for sightseeing and amusements of every description that few cities in the world can surpass. And, as in Lima, there is an aristocracy here, descended directly from the old Conquistadore stock, that has retained its wealth and power in the land through all the vicissitudes of both the colonial and republican régimes.
III
The long series of groups of islands beginning with Chiloé, about two-thirds of the way down the coast, is said to be nothing more than a partly submerged section of the Western Cordillera. Above the surface of the water, for a distance of about eighty miles, they still have an average elevation of about two thousand feet. Embraced in the Chonos Archipelago, between Chiloé and the Taytao Peninsula, are more than a thousand small islands, rocks, and reefs, and then come the large islands of Wellington, Madre de Dios, Chatham, Hanover, Queen Adelaide, King William’s Land, etc., each fringed by groups of little ones and all following the mainland in a graceful curve and separated from it by the Messier, Sarmiento, and Smyth Channels, which, together, extend for three hundred and sixty miles, from the Penas Gulf to the Strait of Magellan. As the steamer glides through, at times so straight are they and such is the uniformity of the shore line on either side, one fancies one’s self in a wide river in the interior of the continent; at others, when openings among the islands appear and the water stretches for miles toward the sea or far into the recesses of the Cordillera, it seems more like a great lake.