This is an example of one of the means by which brothels are touted in Santiago.
The Chilean capital is a rat warren; rodents abound everywhere. Most of the buildings being adobe, these animals have bored holes all through the walls and have perforated the foundations. I do not believe that New Orleans in its rattiest days ever had anywhere near such a large population of the family Muridæ as Santiago at the present time possesses. Lying in bed nights one is kept awake by the patter of their little feet as they run across the corrugated iron roofs mingled with their sharp squeals. Oftentimes looking out of the window at night, their long tails can be seen silhouetted in the moonlight hanging over the window-tops.
The death rate of Santiago is high, excessively so in infantile diseases which cause the largest mortality toll. The rate for all Chile is 29.4 per thousand inhabitants, while that of Santiago alone is 36.7. Only one South American city of which any record is kept surpasses it in this negligible respect, that being Lima, Peru, with a death rate of 51 per thousand inhabitants. Even Guayaquil, notorious for yellow fever and bubonic plague, has a better record than these two last-mentioned cities, which have no yellow fever, and Santiago minus bubonic plague. Typhoid fever is always prevalent in the Chilean capital, but I doubt if it is as malignant as in North America, on account of its being so common. This large death rate is mostly among the lower classes who are ignorant and have no knowledge of sanitation. Longevity is more common than in any other South American capital with the possible exception of Rio de Janeiro which is testimony that if a person survives childhood, a healthy old age is allotted him.
The cemetery named the Cementerio Jeneral is the largest in Christendom, not in area but in the number of bodies interred. It is exceeded in size by only one other cemetery in the world, that one being the Mohammedan cemetery in Scutari in Asia across the Bosporus from Constantinople. In fineness of its monuments it is only surpassed by the Campo Santo in Genoa and the Recoleta in Buenos Aires. The nature of the Santiago cemetery is entirely different from these last-mentioned two. It is not a rivalry between the grave lot owners who shall have the most expensive allegorical marble sculpture as in Genoa, but is a vast conglomeration of brick tombs, some of them being veritable mausoleums. Here are buried the most famous families of Chile. The Chilenos make a great deal of ceremony about their dead. A poor family will stint itself for years to accumulate enough lucre to erect a proper sepulchre. It will spend $10,000 to build a monument, while for $1000 it could place in their dwelling a modern sanitary system, which when installed would do away with the cause that would lead the person to be buried beneath the monument. This cemetery is divided by straight walks into square blocks; at the intersection of each of these walks is a cross or a fountain. Cedars, pines, eucalyptus, cypresses, boxwood, and other funereal trees abound; there are also beds of brilliant flowers. The tomb of ex-president Don Pedro Montt who died in Bremen, August, 1910, is here; it is a tall monolith with a glazed green and brown tile frieze. There is a morgue near the left entrance to the cemetery and the stench of the ripe corpses is decidedly odoriferous.
About ten miles northeast of Santiago on the slopes of the Andes are the springs of Apoquindo, visited much by the inhabitants of the capital Sunday afternoons. The trip is worth while making once, but that is sufficient, for the poor condition of the country roads together with the dust take away much of the pleasure of the drive. The best road leads through the city of Providencia, which adjoins Santiago on the east and which is so much like a continuation of the capital that it is impossible to tell without looking at a map where the boundary line between the two cities is. At the Avenida Pedro de Valdivia, a broad boulevard on which are magnificent villas and the summer homes of the wealthy Santiaguinos one turns to the right and keeps straight ahead until the main street of Nuñoa is reached. Nuñoa is a town of nine thousand inhabitants, a mixture of wealth and poverty with well shaded streets, poor shops, and adobe buildings.
Street in Nuñoa, Chile
A few miles beyond Nuñoa is a roadhouse named the Quinta Roma, which was formerly the mansion of an estanciero but is now the terminus for joy-riders, many of whom are to be met with returning to the capital late afternoons in a highly hilarious condition. To the credit of the Chileno joy-rider, he does not hit up the great speed of his North American brethren; thus there are but few automobile accidents. The roadhouse stands in a garden of flowers well back from the thoroughfare in a nicely kept lawn. Here is a liquid refreshment dispensary where I have seen gay youths hoist comely maidens upon the bar, and seated there clink glasses with their standing male affinities whose arms encircle their waists to the tune of popping corks and the metallic ring of beer caps as the latter fall to the floor. In the garden behind the bar is a bamboo thicket planted in the form of room partitions. It is so dense that no peeker can look through its foliage to observe the love affairs being enacted in these natural chambers which correspond to the European "separées" or the so-called "private dining rooms" of the North American roadhouses.