Osorno
While standing on the plaza one night listening to the military band, all at once was heard the pealing of bells and booming of gongs. Everybody started to run in all directions and not knowing what was taking place, thinking it was either an earthquake or a revolution, I followed suit and hid behind a maple tree. This scare turned out to be a fire alarm. The whole crowd now raced and tore down a street that leads across the railroad track, and I presently saw by the blaze that the fire was of no small importance. Slipping up to my room I took my valuables from my valise, and putting them in my pocket joined the crowd. Above the din of conversations, orders from the police, and the noise from the fire pumps, could be heard the agonizing screams of four victims that were being burned to death at the windows of the second story of a dwelling. They were caught like rats in a trap while asleep, and when aid came they were beyond all mortal help. The policemen standing in the road with drawn sabers suddenly ordered the crowd to run for their lives, which they did in all directions. An intonation like the sound of a cannon boomed, followed by two or three sharper reports. Impossible for the firemen to stop the fire which was spreading to all the neighboring closely packed frame dwellings, the police had started dynamiting. This last process which was successful claimed another victim and blinded another person. I saw the remains of the dynamite victim; what remained of him resembled a pudding. No vestige of either teeth or bones was found of the four persons who perished in the fire and whose heart-rending screams are now ringing in my ears.
Scenery on the Railroad Between Osorno and Puerto Montt
All the small towns of southern Chile have flour mills and grain elevators; throughout the countryside on the farms and in the towns are seen tall block houses, reminiscenses of the days of Indian warfare. From Osorno the railroad continues ninety-three miles southward to Puerto Montt, the terminus of the longitudinal railroad southward. Puerto Montt, with 5408 inhabitants, is the capital of the Province of Llanquihue. It lies on the north end of Reloncaví Bay, 694 miles south of Santiago, and is an uninteresting modern frame town, inhabited mainly by Germans. When a southeaster blows the breakers beat with terrific force against the docks.
Small vessels belonging to a local navigation firm ply thrice weekly between Puerto Montt and Ancud, the capital of the Province and the Island of Chiloé which lies eighty miles to the southwest on the extreme northern end of the Chiloé archipelago, on the Bay of Ancud. Large ships of the Compañia Sud-Americana de Vapores, generally known as the Chilean Line, also make both Puerto Montt and Ancud weekly, while those of intermediate size sail from Puerto Montt and make all the small ports on the Gulf of Corcovado en route to Punta Arenas. At eight o'clock in the morning following the day that I arrived in Puerto Montt, I boarded the steamer Chacao in a blinding downpour of rain with a ticket for Ancud which cost about $1.20 in the equivalent of our currency. The sea was not rough but was rather choppy, while the rain prevented the passengers from remaining on deck. Unfortunately the clouds hung too low to permit me to get a good view of the mainland. The islands of Maillen and Guar were skirted and three hours out we anchored off the port of Calbuco, county seat of the Department of Carelmapu in the Province of Llanquihue. This town is situated on a peninsula at the south end of the Bay of Reloncaví and from the steamer deck resembled the lumber villages of Puget Sound. It is connected with Puerto Montt by a rough wagon road and there is talk of extending the railroad here, although I can see no reason for its necessity, excepting that the harbor at Calbuco is sheltered while that of Puerto Montt is not. The difficulties of engineering and the cost of construction, I imagine, would never make it pay. Shortly after leaving Calbuco we entered the Gulf of Ancud and after skirting the south end of Llanquihue entered the narrow roadstead of Chacao, and arrived at the hamlet of that name about two o'clock in the afternoon. Chacao was founded in 1567 and until about fifty years ago was the principal port of Chiloé when it was practically deserted in favor of Ancud whose growth at that time had been rapid, and which owing to its being a port on the Pacific Ocean was fast getting the commerce.
Ancud was reached about four o'clock in the afternoon after a trip that consumed eight hours. It lies at the south end of the bay of the same name, an indentation of the ocean, and is protected from the dreaded southeasters by a mountainous headland named Lacui. The bay is filling up so fast with mud which is washed into it by the rains, that vessels of large draught have to anchor from one to two miles out. Our ship anchored about half a mile out and we were transferred to terra firma by gasoline launches. The village has 3424 inhabitants and is a dirty settlement smelling of dried fish, built on the side of a hill. It is the seat of a bishopric, the frame cathedral being the best building in the town. There is absolutely nothing to do in the place which for amusement has but one moving picture theater. Numbers of mixed bloods and Indians are in evidence seemingly outnumbering the whites, many of the latter being Germans.
Chiloé has an area of 8593 square miles, being larger than the State of Massachusetts; its population is slightly in excess of eighty thousand inhabitants many of whom are Indians. These Indians are not warlike like the Araucanians nor are their physiques as good. Their numbers are on the decrease owing to alcoholism and to diseases which always follow in the wake of the advent of the white men. A continuation of the Coast Range, the Cordillera de Pinchué runs the extreme length of Chiloé from north to south, its summits from 1500 to 2000 feet in altitude being near the Pacific Coast which is inhospitable and has no harbors. The east coast of the island, separated by the thirty-five-mile-wide Gulfs of Ancud and Corcovado abounds in good harbors and it is here that the settlements are. These gulfs teem with small mountainous islands, most of them being uninhabited.
A railroad runs southward from Ancud sixty-five miles to Castro, the distance being made in four hours. There are no towns on the route but numerous stops are made at small settlements such as Quichitue, Puntra, Quildico, and Dalcahue. Midway between Ancud and Castro are the Puntra and Putalcura River valleys of great fertility. Here are many farmhouses with fields of green oats and with pastures of clover in which feed droves of cattle and swine. Hides are one of the chief exports of the island. Where there are no clearings the forests are primeval and are beautiful in their green coloring. It is a dripping forest of moisture with lianas, giant ferns, purple and crimson fuchsias, and species of orchids. The bark of the tree trunks and of the windfalls are covered with inch-deep moss. The density of the woods and the exuberance of plant growth is the nearest approach to a tropical forest imaginable in a temperate zone for the whole island of Chiloé lies south of Latitude 42° South.