The landscape now changes again. Oak, laurel, and lingue appear, at first scattered, then in groves, and later in forests, while everywhere possible in clearings are oat fields, the grain just turning color. The farther south we go the greener the grain is, until we reach Victoria, population 9840, where the grain has not begun to change color. Every three years the farmers cut off the branches from the laurels; these they scatter over their fields and set fire to. Among the ashes they drag the grain into the ground for by this procedure they are supposed to harvest better crops. Land here is worth eighty dollars an acre. The landscape is decidedly like that of our Northern States, and the climate is much the same as that of Oregon and Washington. At dusk Lautaro in the Province of Cautin was reached. This town has a population of 5968 and is named after Valdivia's Araucanian horse boy who murdered him and as tradition says ate him. As I mentioned before all the towns that we passed through south of the Bio-Bio are built of wood, but up to here their roofs were of tile, with a few exceptions of corrugated iron, tin, and shingles. The tile roofs now entirely disappear and their place is taken by those of shingles or slabs of lumber. The houses are unpainted and as to external appearances are veritable hovels. They resemble those dilapidated structures of the nigger villages in our Gulf States. Many towns resemble the one-time lumber settlements of the upper peninsula of Michigan.
On the train I became acquainted with the Reverend Steerer, a divine of the Church of England who had resided for twenty-six years in Temuco and who gave me valuable information about the country. He had just returned from a trip to the mountains at the request of the British Consul in Concepcion who had sent him there to inquire into the mystery surrounding the murder of an Englishman who was stabbed to death in bed by some natives who wanted the money he had on him.
At Temuco the Cautin River is reached. The country around here has had a troubled history in the wars between the Araucanians and the whites. One of the anecdotes is that on July 31, 1849, the bark Joven Daniel ran into some rocks near the mouth of the river and was shipwrecked. The cacique Curin lived near the spot and with the help of his tribesmen they saved the lives of the crew and passengers together with the cargo which was given to them out of gratitude. In the cargo was liquor which they immediately attacked. Under its influence they murdered every survivor except an eighteen-year-old girl, Elisa Bravo of Valparaiso, whom Curin selected to be one of his wives. She was betrothed to a Ramón Bañados of Valparaiso. His family immediately took up the matter with the government which immediately got into action to chastise the Araucanians. Dissentions had in the meantime arisen among the Indians, and two caciques, Loncomilla and Huaquinpan took the side of the whites. The Araucanians were beaten but no trace of Elisa Bravo was ever found as it was supposed that Curin married her and took her to a place of safety.
Another incident happened in 1861. A French adventurer named Aurelie de Tournes proclaimed himself King of Araucania under the title of Orelie I. He promised to free the Indians from the Chilean rule and had the ability to get the aid of several caciques and quite a large following. In a battle he was taken prisoner; he was tried for menacing public safety and would likely have been executed if it had not been for the intercession of the members of the French colony in Santiago, and of a judge who has previously declared him to be insane.
Street in Temuco
Temuco is the capital of the Province of Cautin and is the geographical capital of Araucania. It is the largest city of Chile south of the Bio-Bio and has a population of 29,557, ranking ninth in the republic. It is 422 miles south of Santiago, and owes its origin to a fort which was built here in 1881. In recent years its growth has been rapid. The city is situated west of the mainline of the longitudinal railroad, and is the junction for a branch line that runs to the town of Imperial. There is a considerable English colony which has a church and two schools, but like all over in southern Chile, the Teutonic element outnumbers all the rest of foreigners in a ratio of ten to one. The business is mostly in the hands of the Germans as can be seen by the names over the stores. Somebody with a Yiddish streak must have strolled in from somewhere because I noticed the sign of Benjamin Goldenberg over the door of a second-hand clothing shop. The city is a long-strung-out place of frame unpainted buildings presenting a most unattractive appearance; only in the center of the town one gets away from these eyesores for there brick and cement structures abound, especially in the neighborhood of the Plaza Anibal Pinto. The principal streets, Jeneral Bulnes, Arturo Prat, and several others are well paved with cobblestones over which horse cars rattle in the long ride to the railroad station. Driving from this station to the town the hotel omnibuses race each other much to the fright of the uninitiated stranger. Temuco boasts of an excellent hotel, the Central, owned by a large, fat German named Finsterbusch, whose facial adornment is a big aureate moustache. Like most of the Chilean hotels owned by Germans the place is clean, the beer good, and the cuisine excellent.
The 109-mile train ride from Temuco to Valdivia is made in four and a quarter hours through a country entirely different from any that is passed through from Santiago to this point. The low mountains come in such close proximity to the railroad track that one is pierced by a tunnel. They are heavily timbered with trees of good saw-log size, laurel and oak abounding. The only place of importance on the stretch is the sawmill town of Loncoche. The valley bottoms are impenetrable jungles of vines, bushes, thorns, and berry plants which reach a height of about twenty-five feet. It took the pioneers a month to traverse ten miles of this wilderness whose bottom is soggy muck, the average day's penetration being but one third of a mile. Antilhue is the junction for trains running south. The Calle-Calle River is crossed and its south bank is followed into Valdivia through a fragrant country covered with scarlet wild fuchsias, honeysuckles, snapdragons, and morning-glories. On all sides are the green mountains covered with primeval forests.