It is possible to make the trip from Santiago to Pisagua, one of the northernmost ports of Chile by rail. Through trains run only as far as Iquique. It takes four days this way from Santiago to Iquique which includes a stop of one and a half hours at Illapel, a half hour's stop at La Serena, two and a half hours at Vallenar, one and a half hours at Copiapó, nine hours at Catalina, and four hours at Baquedano. Nineteen and a half hours are wasted at these stations yet the travel consumes less time than that by ocean steamer from Valparaiso to Iquique. I think that I am the first North American not officially connected with the railroad that made the trip as far as Antofagasta. The through train runs every Friday, and after the first day out the journey is most tedious and enervating, hot and dusty with vistas of the most desolate desert imaginable. I broke the journey at Copiapó, continuing thence by local trains.
The Northern Longitudinal Railway begins at the town of La Calera which is on the Santiago-Valparaiso Railroad. As far as Copiapó it is a narrow gauge but after leaving that town it has three rails for some distance in order to carry both broad gauge and narrow gauge traffic. The original railroads of Chile which ran from the interior to the coast towns were all broad gauge and as it is cheaper to lay another rail inside the already existing two rails to accommodate narrow gauge traffic than to lay a new roadbed this triple rail phenomenon is met with in many places in Northern Chile. The train composed of two sleepers and other coaches leaves La Calera upon the arrival of the Santiago-Valparaiso express. To reach La Calera from San Felipe I was obliged to change cars at Llai-Llai midway between Santiago and Valparaiso. The first day's ride is interesting, although the country is sparsely populated and semi-arid. It is a continuous slowly winding up the canyons, passing through tunnels at the Coast Range summits, and a mad race around curves down other canyons. The first summit is reached an hour after leaving La Calera; the train goes through a tunnel under the pass of Palos Quemados and enters the Valley of La Ligua. This is followed upward to Cabildo where the river is crossed. Then by means of sharp zigzags another summit is reached and we descend into the fertile but narrow Valley of Petorca. The small city of Petorca lies about fifteen miles up the river of the same name beyond where we turn up the Estero de las Palmas (Palm Creek). This brook gets its name from the great abundance of palms which grow wild all over the sides of the mountains at its source. There are several of these palmares in Chile, which are botanical freaks for this particular mountain specie is found in their natural state nowhere else in South America. The largest of these palmares is that of Ocoa near La Calera; another one is at Concon, at the mouth of the Aconcagua River. They are valuable for their honey. A hole is drilled into the tree near its base, a tube is inserted and the sap is extracted which is made into honey.
Ocoa
Across the mountains north of the Estero de las Palmas is the mournful desolate mountain pocket of Tilama, the headwaters of the Quilimari River. The Indians hereabouts weave rugs, blankets, and table-cloths of a fine durable texture which are in great demand. They are red with white flower designs. The Tilama ridge is crossed and finally two more, one to the Pupio River and one to the Choapa River before darkness sets in.
The Choapa is a fertile valley and the river of the same name forms the boundary line between the provinces of Aconcagua and Choapa. The Province of Choapa was created by an Act of Congress in December 1915, and to define it a large area of land was taken from the southern part of the Province of Coquimbo. Up to the time of this writing (1918) the limits of its various departments have not been defined. Illapel, the new capital, on a river of the same name was reached about 8 P.M. It has a population of about five thousand inhabitants and is filled with life owing to its sudden acquisition of importance. Salamanca and Combarbalá are the only other towns worthy of mention in the new province. Los Vilos in the Province of Aconcagua is the seaport of Illapel with which it is connected by railroad. I took a walk up the main street of Illapel. It is an old-fashioned town, very long and narrow. Its houses, mostly one story in height, are painted white. The streets were crowded and a band was playing.
I awoke the next morning at Ovalle, a growing stock town in the southern part of the Province of Coquimbo. It had by the census of 1907, 6998 inhabitants but I understand that it has increased considerably in population since then. It lies on the Limari River just below the junctions of the Grande and the Hurtado rivers which uniting form the Limari. For its port it has Tongoi on the bay of the same name to which place it is connected by rail, but now much of the freight goes to Coquimbo. At Coquimbo, which was reached a couple of hours later, I obtained my first unhindered view of the Pacific Ocean on this South American trip. From Ancud on the Island of Chiloé, I could look across the great expanse of bay to the headlands which formed the promontories beyond which the ocean was, but owing to the rain the ocean proper there was invisible. Coquimbo is a busy and dirty port of 12,106 inhabitants and has no attractions such as possesses the eight miles distant city of La Serena, the capital of the Province of Coquimbo.
La Serena is named in honor of the last viceroy of Peru. His name means serene. The city is also serene. It is one of the oldest towns in Chile, has 15,966 inhabitants and is admirably situated on a height of land overlooking the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Elqui River to the north. It is a quiet town of handsome buildings and is the residence of many retired men of wealth and of intellectuals. In this respect it can be compared with Paraná in Argentina and Graz in Austria. Its population has decreased slightly in recent years yet the city is stable and will always remain so. Its only industry is the Floto Brewery. To any Michiganders reading this book, I wish to call attention to the fact that it was visited in 1906 by Hon. Chase S. Osborn. The level country about La Serena and Coquimbo and the neighboring valleys are fertile and well-watered. Fields are given up to the cultivation of grain and vineyards abound. A native fruit named the pepina, akin to the papaya is grown and from it a soft drink is made which although palatable is rather insipid. About twenty miles south of the city among the foothills is the mineral spring of Andacollo famed locally, while thirty miles north of La Serena are the newly opened iron mines of La Higuera, controlled by North American capital.
After leaving La Serena, the all-day ride northward to Vallenar is for the main part uninteresting although it has a recompense in the wild mountain scenery when the train winds up the canyon known as the Quebrada del Potrerillos. At nine o'clock at night, Vallenar the second city of the Province of Atacama was arrived at. The train was scheduled to remain here for two and a half hours but there was some trouble with the locomotive which kept us here all night and part of the next morning. It happened that a telegram had to be sent to Coquimbo for an extra locomotive to be sent up to Vallenar.