This is a veritable land mountain. It rises abruptly about 200 feet from the floor of the Mapocho Valley, the latter being as flat as a table top. Its area in size of a few city blocks has been transformed into a park. From the summit the vista is superb.
The city of Santiago is compactly and massively built within the small area which constitutes that part of terrain included within the city limits. The streets are invariably straight, forming square and rectangular blocks of houses whose average height of two stories forms an even sky line. Although there are several different styles of architecture prevailing in the residences, the old Spanish type predominating, yet there is a great and unmistakable similarity as to the appearance of the streets. The business section is a direct contradiction to the residential part in so far that it is modern and is becoming more so. Here the buildings are three and four stories in height and a look down either of the streets that are named Ahumada and Estado leaves an impression of Vienna although it is a concrete instead of a stone one. In several other parts of the city this similarity is present for the long fronts of divers beneficial societies and the towers of churches and convents present a scene very much like that of the Austrian capital.
The population of Santiago is slightly over four hundred thousand. The growth of the city as well as of the other towns of the central valley is imperceptible. It has been this way for ages. There is little immigration to Chile, and that which does come in, goes either to the northern or southern provinces of the republic where labor conditions are better. With the exception of the business section, Santiago is an extremely reserved, conservative, and quiet old place. It can also be called serious. After nine o'clock at night, even on the Ahumada, all is quiet, a pleasant contrast to the din and racket of Buenos Aires, which murders the darkness, making sleep impossible. There is but little gayety about the Chilean metropolis; the aristocracy of the city, which can boast of the purest white blood of any American capital, form a society into which a foreigner, no matter how prominent his antecedents are, is seldom admitted. This dignified aristocracy constitute the brains of the country and control the politics. Prominent in the affairs of state, finance, and daily doings are the names Vergara, Edwards, Sanfuentes, Subercaseaux, Sotomayor, Balmaceda, Montt, Tocornal, and Luco. Their mansions, the pride of Chile, are not located on show places like the Alameda or in what we would call the fashionable suburbs, but are situated on those downtown streets which fringe the business section. Their stateliness seems to exhale an air of their own. Excepting Buenos Aires no South American city has as fine a collection of private residences.
General View of Santiago from Santa Lucia Hill
Alameda, Santiago