Provincial Capitol Building, Antofagasta
The best hotel in Antofagasta is that named the Francia y Inglaterra of Nowick and Dutrey; the Grand and the Belmont are also good. On Sunday Antofagasta is drier than a powder horn; at least it is supposed to be. But like in most towns where unwelcome laws are imposed on the people, they are made to be broken. I judged this to be the case here from the number of Sunday "drunks" that I saw being led off to jail, or else encumbering the sidewalks of the suburbs by reclining on them in a horizontal position. The lid goes on promptly at five o'clock Saturday afternoon and the clamp is not taken off until eight o'clock Monday morning. For violations of the liquor law the names of those men arrested for being drunk during this period of drought are published in the Monday newspapers and stiff fines are imposed upon the vendors of liquid refreshments that contain an alcoholic percentage. On Sunday, April 30, 1916, 120 saloon proprietors were fined for selling drinks. The Quinta Casale proprietor was fined 1000 pesos (about $200.00), the proprietor of the Hotel Maury was fined 500 pesos and another saloon-keeper the same amount. One Saturday night during this enforcement while I was a guest at the Hotel Francia y Inglaterra, the three mozos of the second floor of the hotel got hold of a case of Guinness' stout to which they proceeded to make short shift of. In their inebriated condition they started a fight which at first was as near to the Marquis of Queensbury rules as a triangular affair of its kind could be. It soon developed into a rough and tumble and all the participants were put hors de combat. This occurred during the dinner hour and the unedifying expletives used which generally accompany such a fracas were audible to the diners much to the mortification of Nowick and Dutrey. One of the combatants repaired home where he attempted to assail his better half with his fist; she retaliated by seizing a chair and breaking his head. I related this affair to a North American, a Mr. Rowe, a resident of Antofagasta. Rowe then told me that a year previous in La Paz, Bolivia, he was stopping at the Hotel Guibert. Mr. Guibert did him a trick that angered him, so he in turn filled up all the servants of Guibert's hotel to get even. For a whole day there was no service at the Hotel Guibert for all the domestics from the manager to the cook were roaring drunk and all the guests were forced to seek other quarters.
One of the famous characters of Northern Chile and Bolivia was a brutal bully named McAdoo who was continuously quarreling with everybody. He died in 1915, and on his tombstone in Antofagasta his acquaintances had the inscription carved: "May he rest in peace."
Street in Antofagasta
In 1916 the Antofagasta public was indignant at the way some of its indigent dead were handled. When an unknown man or a pauper died, he was dumped into a sack and a carter was hired to carry the bundle to the cemetery. These carts are two-wheeled open affairs. If the cemetery happened to be closed, the carter was apt to drop his unwholesome burden anywhere. Two or three of these lichs were found tied up in sacks in different parts of the city during my sojourn in Antofagasta, which perpetration was severely excoriated by the newspapers. Speaking of it to Captain Rowlands of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company's steamship Guatemala, he related to me an incident which happened on his ship.
A man died of bubonic plague in one of the nitrate ports but before dying he told a relative that he wished to be buried in Santiago. This relative was returning to that city so he tied the corpse in a sack and carried it on shipboard. As the lower-class Chilenos all carry their possessions in burlap sacks slung across their backs while traveling, he managed to get his burden on board unnoticed. He stowed it underneath his berth, but the odor was such that he could not sleep so he made friends with the bartender and hired him to hide it until the ship reached Valparaiso. The bartender placed the cadaver underneath the sink in the service bar. The next day Captain Rowlands smelt a stench while he was making the inspection, and opening the door of the sink discovered the body, which he had thrown overboard. The frightened bartender owned up to his part of the transaction but the passenger, the relative of the defunct when taken to task retaliated by threatening the captain with arrest upon the ship's arrival at Valparaiso. Rowlands told him that he could start anything he wanted to, but if any arresting was to be done, it would be the passenger who would be arrested for breaking Chile's sanitary law.
The harbor of Antofagasta is never quiet owing to a heavy swell and a project is now on hand to build a breakwater. I boarded the Guatemala at that port with a ticket for Iquique. It had been over three years since I was a passenger on that boat and the great improvement on it was marvelous. In 1913 the food, service, and filth on it were so abominable, combined with the slipshod actions of the officers, that I made up my mind never to embark upon it again. Since Captain Rowlands has been its skipper everything has changed, and it is now one of the cleanest and most comfortable steamers on the coast. The food cannot be beaten. One of the passengers on board I found to be Angel Larrain, the efficient but villainous looking bearded roustabout whom Prat and I had delegated to bring our baggage to Lima upon consideration of his passage.
The morning after leaving Antofagasta we arrived at Gatico, a copper port, where the mountains came down to the ocean. About a league south of it was seen the small village of Copoapa on a narrow sandy plain at the foot of the barren cliffs. Gatico and Tocopilla are the only towns on the Pacific Coast of South America where copper is found near to the ocean. There is a smelter at Gatico and it is up a canyon here that run the wires of the electrical power plant at Tocopilla to the Chuquicamata mines.