Street in Valdivia
I left Valdivia about the middle of an afternoon and got off the train an hour and a half later at the station of Collilelfu where I put up for the night at a wooden shack with a tin roof which was an apology for a hotel. Early the next morning I arose to catch the seven-thirty train for Huidif, the railroad terminus of the branch line which will in time be continued to Lake Riñihue. The ride of an hour only brought the train to its destination where the passengers alighted to change into carriages which cover the six remaining miles to the lake in three quarters of the time. The whole landscape is rolling and is semiforested, and as the lake is approached vast marshes abounding in wild fowl are traversed. Lake Riñihue is about fifteen miles long by four miles broad and is a favorite summer resort for the inhabitants of Valdivia. The landscape is beautified by vistas of the snow-capped volcanos, Choshuenco and Mocho.
Riñihue Landscape, Southern Chile
The seventy-five-mile trip to Osorno from Valdivia consumes four hours and lies through a smiling farming country with villages, farms, and soils characteristic to those of the best part of Wisconsin. It was dusk when I arrived at Osorno, metropolis of the Province of Llanquihue. The city has a population of about 12,000 and is 601 miles south of Santiago. A daily train makes the entire distance in 25 hours and 40 minutes, a sleeper being attached to the train as far as Renaico. Osorno is a miserable-looking place of frame buildings built close together as is the custom in all the towns of southern Chile where lumber plays the main rôle in the erection of edifices; but few of the houses and stores are painted. Valdivia is the only place in this section of the country where the inhabitants take enough pride in the appearance of their town to give the houses a fresh coat of paint. I was told by Bussenius to go to a German hotel which had just been opened by a former chef of one of the interned Kosmos Line steamers. I did not go there, however, because Americans do not stand in good repute with the Germans and Chilenos of German descent in southern Chile. Although the United States was not at war with Germany at the time of my visit, nevertheless the Teutonic inhabitants of that section took pains to show their dislike of North Americans. Although I was subjected to no personal discourtesy at either Temuco or Valdivia, but on the contrary was treated well, I was obliged to listen to much tirade against the United States and the inhabitants of our country in general. The Germans were angered because North American firms were supplying the Entente with munitions of war and it was a current topic of conversation among them that the United States was afraid to declare war upon Germany, saying that if it did so there would be an uprising there against its Government by the great number of Germans and Americans of German extraction. They anticipated a Bürgerkrieg or Civil War in the United States if the latter joined sides with Great Britain.
As there were a couple of spruce-looking runners at the railway station for the Hotel Royal, a native hostelry, I gave them my grips and was driven through the unprepossessing streets of the city. The cab eventually stopped in front of a building that has the outward appearance of a certain large residence on the outskirts of Ashland, Wisconsin, where lumberjacks and sailors were wont to congregate after pay days and sojourn until their savings were gone. I was wondering whether this establishment was of the same nature. Fortunately it turned out to be a very good and comfortable hotel, absolutely Chilean. Osorno has several other hotels, all German. Osorno has more Teutons in proportion to its size than any city in Chile. In numbers, Valdivia has a larger German population, but the ratio is smaller for Valdivia is the larger place. Three-quarters of Osorno's population is German, their numbers here being in excess of nine thousand. In southern Chile where most of the hotel-keepers are German, the inns all have the Gastzimmer or Bürgerzimmer as in Germany, where the merchants and clerks assemble nights to discuss news and the events of the day over large schupers of health-giving beer. A non-trust brewery has recently been inaugurated in Osorno by a man named Aubel and his wet goods certainly hit the right spot when partaken of. Outside of his brewery there is no manufacturing in the town excepting the large flour mill of Williamson and Balfour. Both these enterprises were born in 1914.
