Indian Belles, Chiloé Island, Chile
Next to Ancud, the most important place on the island is Castro which was the capital until 1834. It is the oldest town on Chiloé and here the Spaniards made their last stand. It is a well-built village of 1243 inhabitants, situated on the west side of the long and narrow Putemun Bay, and is well sheltered from the winds by the ten-mile-distant mountains to the west. It consists of several parallel streets running lengthwise along the bay. A wagon road runs southeastward from here about thirty miles to the settlement of Ahoni. I only remained a few hours in Castro because there arrived in the afternoon a steamer from Punta Arenas on its way to Puerto Montt. Its route lay through the channel which separates the large island of Lemui from Chiloé, and then took a course eastward between several islands and rounded Cape Chegian at the southeastern extremity of Quinchao Island. This last mentioned island is about twenty miles long and is very narrow excepting at its northwestern end where it broadens out, and is separated from Chiloé by the Strait of Quinchao. It and an archipelago of smaller islands form a political department of which the town of Achao, where we anchored at dusk, is the county seat. Achao has a population of 1571 inhabitants and has taken away much of Castro's former trade. It is a long-strung-out fishing village on the side of a hill, the forest on which comes down to the water's edge. Shortly after leaving Achao, the ship sailed westward to Chiloé again and stopped at Dalcahue on the Strait of Quinchao. Dalcahue has a road leading to a three-miles-distant railroad station on the Ancud-Castro line. During the night, Quincavi was touched at and after a steam through the Gulf of Ancud and the Bay of Reloncaví, Puerto Montt was again reached at 11 A.M. It was a nice clear morning and the snow-capped Andes on the unexplored mainland were resplendent in sunlit brilliancy.
On the mainland southeast of the Island of Chiloé is Chile's largest river, the Palena. It rises from Lake General Paz, whose waters are traversed by the international boundary line of Argentina and Chile; it flows northward through western Patagonia and bending to the west after a course of about thirty miles finally empties itself into the Gulf of Corcovado. North of the Palena and at its source, separated from it by a low range of hills in Patagonia, is the Futaleufu River whose origin is in the Argentine Valley of the 16th of October. It flows westward through the Andes into Lake Yelcho which in turn empties into the Yelcho River. This river finds its way into the Gulf of Corcovado south of the Quinchao Archipelago.
The person who visits Chile and returns home without having seen the Llanquihue lake region has made his trip in vain. Here is a country as grand as Switzerland, which although its mountains are not quite so high, they seem higher and are better for vistas for the valleys are lower. Moreover the snow line is here lower. In Switzerland one gets the best views of the giant peaks from altitudes of valley bottoms that are themselves six thousand feet and over above sea level; here one gets the same view from low-lying rivers and lakes which makes the sheer abruptness grander. There are no great thick forests in Switzerland which are here omnipresent, garbing the mountain sides from the barren, snow-capped peaks down to the very water's edge. This Llanquihue country is beginning to become popular with excursionists and it will not be long before it will be one of the world's famous playgrounds.
Twenty-one miles north of Puerto Montt on the railroad to Osorno is the large triangular Lake Llanquihue, much indented with bays and coves on its western shore. Its breadth is over thirty miles, and it is the largest freshwater lake in Chile. Its outlet is the Maullin River which flows in a southwesterly direction into the ocean to the north of the Bay of Ancud. The scenery in the neighborhood of the lake is most charming. The west and north shores is a rolling country much of which is cleared into farms, well kept up and showing a high degree of prosperity. From the south shore rises a steep incline tapering towards the top into the conical snow-capped volcano, Calbuco, whose lower reaches are embowered in forests of hardwood. Many small streams rush from its sides and pour into the lake. At the eastern extremity rises the mighty, majestic dome of the volcano, Osorno, rising 8645 feet, nearly perpendicularly from the clear waters.
Lake Todos Santos from Petrohué