Mapocho River near Santiago
There was a German immigration to Chile in 1848, and another one in 1866. Both of these exoduses were due to the oppression of the military system in the old country and it is safe to surmise that there will be another such exodus to Chile at the end of the present war. I have read statements that one quarter of Chile's population is either German or of direct German extraction. This seems to be an exaggeration, although I believe that one fourth of the population has some German blood.
The Grand Hotel, which is on Calle Huerfanos, not far from the main business section is the only first-class hotel in Santiago. It is owned by Emil Kehle, an American. He and his sister have the Hotel Royal in Valparaiso which is the best hotel in that port. This Grand Hotel which is comfortable has good rooms, and board and is homelike in atmosphere. I liked it so well that in the spring of 1916, I stopped there two months. The Willard party, which was the family of our ambassador to Spain, and Kermit Roosevelt, arrived in Santiago while I was there and likewise stopped at Mr. Kehle's hostelry.
On my trip to Santiago in 1915, I was not aware that Mr. Kehle had a hotel in that city, so I went to the Oddo where I had previously stayed on a former visit. The rooms in the Oddo were good but I am sorry to say that the cuisine and dining room service was execrable. Unkempt and unshaven waiters dropped food from the platters onto the floor, and clumsily running to serve a guest would slip in the spilled soup and drop plates of unsavory and indescribable edibles to the din of broken dishes. For seventy years this hotel had been in existence, the last twenty-five of them under the proprietorship of the French family of Girard. The bung-eyed but accommodating daughter told me that on January 3, 1916, this hotel would close its doors for good. "We are returning to France to live as we have worked long enough," she said. Yet, however, when I came back to Santiago in March, 1916, they hadn't returned to France and the Oddo was still running, though minus its dining room. The other hotels are the Milan, well spoken of, and the Melossi near the Alameda Station, poorly located as it is too far from the center of activity.
The restaurants are fair, that named the Club Santiago being good. The Restaurant Niza is fair. It is owned by a Spaniard who, if the guest does not understand the local name of the meat on the menu, will demonstrate on his own fat physiology that part from which the succulent morsel is taken. There is a good restaurant in the Palacio Urmaneta. It must be taken under consideration that ladies do not frequent these places unaccompanied for no other reason solely than that it is the custom of the country. They generally take their meals in the hotel dining rooms.
I met a North American university professor in Santiago who was always kicking because he did not know enough Spanish to order what he wanted to eat. He was stopping at the Oddo and the food there was so vile that he could not digest it. He was wishing that there was an American hotel in the city and this being in 1915, and I not knowing that Mr. Kehle had the Grand Hotel, knew of no place where I could recommend him to go. One morning, however, he burst into my room and proffering me a card told me to read it.
"See what I've got," he cried in glee; "a nice-looking woman handed it to me on the street."
I took the piece of pasteboard that he so eagerly extended to me. It was about an inch long and half as wide. The printed inscription on it read: "Pension Norte Americana" giving street name and number. I turned to the professor and said: "It reads, North American boarding-house with the number of the street."
"Just what I thought," he said. "It's the very thing I want. I certainly would like to be among my fellow countrymen again, and now that the Oddo is closing its doors, I shall go there at once and inquire about the terms." He did, and immediately upon admittance was pounced upon by four ladies of pleasure.