Gorge of the Cachapoal at Baños de Cauquenes
The Baths of Cauquenes are situated in the Department of Caupolican in the Province of Colchagua on the south or left bank of the Cachapoal River in Latitude 34° 14´ 17´´ south and in Longitude 70° 34´ 5´´ west of Greenwich. The altitude of the place above sea level has been a matter of argument. Eight different professors claim its altitude in different figures from 2200 feet which is the lowest and which is said by Domeyko to be correct, to 2762 feet which is the highest and is said by Gillis to be correct. 2490 feet which is the altitude claimed by Guessfelt seems to be the most exact and is the figure accepted by Dr. Louis Darapsky in his book, Mineral Waters of Chile. The season for the baths is from September 15th to May 31st, and in midsummer the place is generally crowded. Describing the scenery, Don José Victorino Lastarria, an illustrious newspaper man of Santiago, says:
"I have never seen a more impressing, and at the same time, a more charming landscape than that of the Baths of Cauquenes, nor have I ever seen in so small a space so many different kinds of views nor such surprising details. Nature has grouped there her most beautiful accidents. In sight of the snowy Andes, here rise in the foreground rounded hills covered with vegetation; there rise barren rocks through whose clefts rushes the turbulent Cachapoal. Here are gardens filled with flowers; there are impenetrable thickets. Light and shadows everywhere, colors without end, harmony and contrast which reflect or darken the rays of the sun."
The temperature is consistent and the variation during the day is neither rapid nor extreme although the mornings and evenings are cool and it is warm at midday. Even in the hottest months the heat is not irksome, due to the fresh breezes which blow down the valley from the cordilleras. In winter there is snow; the cold, however, is not excessive.
The baths have been known since 1646, and were described by Padre Ovalle in his History of the Kingdom of Chile. There are three hot springs issuing from the porous and shaly rock, named Pelambre, Solitario, and Corrimiento. Their temperatures are 122°, 113°, and 107°6' Fahrenheit respectively. They are walled up and the waters of the first-mentioned two are run by pipes into a swimming tank and into tubs in the thermal establishment. During their course in the pipes Pelambre loses 3°6' Fahrenheit of its heat and Solitario 5°4'. Their waters more than supply their use so the water of Corrimiento is allowed to go to waste. The thermal establishment, though by no means primitive, is rather old-fashioned. I was surprised to see such an attractive place as the Baños de Cauquenes not made more of for in hot springs and natural scenery it is the zenith of God's works. Man also has done his share well but much improvement can be made, all of which requires capital. The natural lay out of the place is a paradise. It is something like the Cserna Valley in southeastern Hungary, but wilder and grander with also a soft touch of nature. The hills covered with live oak, laurel, and mesquite resemble those of California, yet are more fertile. A shaded walk leads from the hotel to an artificial lake bordered by fifty-five of the largest eucalyptus trees that I have ever seen. In its center rising from the water stand two willows. One is never absent from the swiftly flowing Cachapoal which murmurs like the Tepl at Carlsbad, only louder.
The baths are supposed to be beneficial in cases of gout, diuretics, rheumatism, anemia, and so forth, although one of the guests of the hotel evidently came there for relief for consumption. He was a bearded man about sixty years old and he made an unholy spectacle of himself by coughing and expectorating on the floor of the dining room while the other guests were eating dinner.
When I arrived at the place I was met at the door by a young man wearing white duck trousers and a blue double-breasted yachting coat. With the exception of his large yellow moustache he had a most cherubic countenance with a smooth, pink, babylike face without a wrinkle or blemish. I afterwards discovered that this cherubic individual had an inordinately strong passion for whiskey, gin, and beer as well as for any drink which had as a fundamental principle among its ingredients, alcohol. On several trips which I made later to the Baños de Cauquenes in 1916 I became fairly well acquainted with this Señor Hermann Manthey. He had arrived two years previously on one of the German merchantmen on which he was a steward. The ship was interned and he struck up-country to make a living and finally evolved in becoming manager of this hotel, as the proprietor, an old doctor had leased it for a few years and was too wrapped up in his own private affairs and also too lazy to give it his attention. Señor Manthey was doing well on the small salary and large tips he was getting but was not without ambitions. A few months afterwards I ran across him on a few days' vacation in Santiago, and he then was planning to get the owner to lease the establishment to him upon the expiration of the present lease to the doctor. The hotel with its grounds, fine fruit orchard, springs, lake, and six thousand acres of hilly grazing land, across which several rushing streams of transparent water flow headlong into the Cachapoal is owned by a gentleman in Santiago who leases it out as he has several other large properties. He will sell it for eighty thousand dollars which is dirt cheap. Some day I expect to buy it and make it my home.
At the hotel there are horses to let. On one of these I rode up a narrow valley and discovered that with nothing but mere bridle paths leading to them, and miles from the nearest houses, were lonely thatched and adobe huts, the homes of poor people and charcoal burners situated in mountain wheat fields or in clearings of a few acres. All of a sudden while riding I had a sensation as if the horse was trying to squat on its haunches. I reached for a stick from a nearby limb to put life into it and nearly lost my balance. A noise like distant thunder that I had already heard twice that afternoon, although the sky was cloudless, was audible, and in all directions stones and small boulders came rolling down the mountain side. It was a slight earthquake which the natives call temblor in order to distinguish it from the great ones which they call terramoto.
In the center of one of the myrtle-carpeted patios at the hotel is a fountain encircled by an ivy-covered wall. Here evenings bats congregate and flap their wings in the vicinity of the faces of the guests. A party of Canadians, employees of El Teniente Mine, were stopping at the Baths when I was there. They filled up on liquor and made sleep impossible for the other guests by their sacrilegious bawling of Onward Christian Soldiers and other hymns of the Episcopal Church.
On leaving Baños de Cauquenes I decided to take the twenty-three-mile horseback ride to the station of Los Lirios and from there take the train to southern Chile. The country road was very stony; in some places it was a mere cart track, while in others it was a broad avenue. During the first part of the ride it windingly followed the south bank of the Cachapoal and crossed two streams of transparent water, each known by the same name, Rio Claro. This means Clear River, and evidently the natives thought that if the name would do for one, it would be appropriate for the other. At every turn of the road a small freshet was crossed, for out of every cleft or dent in a hill gushed forth a spring. These small streams the peasants deviated from their courses by turning them into their gardens for irrigating purposes. The natives were very poor all living in adobe hovels with thatched roofs. A few acres of cattle, a dog or two, two acres of cultivated land, and some pear trees represented all their worldly belongings; yet they seemed very content. These peasants as a class were the poorest people that I have ever seen as far as worldly possessions go, yet every one of them always had a full meal at dinner time. They ate what they raised, and where they grew crops they worked them with infinite care. As they were too poor to buy fertilizer, they worked a new piece of land each year, coming back to the original piece after five years' time, because it had then enriched itself by remaining idle. There were many wheat fields, ripe and yellow, the sixty bushels to an acre kind. Central Chile gets plenty of rain but as it gets it only in the winter months, irrigation has to be resorted to in the summer.