The springs, bathing establishment, and hotel known as the Termas de Chillán are at the highest limit of the tree line. They are owned by the municipality of Chillán, and at the present time are leased to a Basque, Monsieur Bernard Paguéguy, the French consul at Chillán, for the sum of $12,240 for the season of four months, which is at the rate of $3060 a month. In order to make a profit Paguéguy runs a gambling establishment in conjunction with the hostelry. People are not desired as guests who have no lust for the green baize. Baccarat, petits chevaux, and slot machines operate at full swing regardless of the strict anti-gambling laws of the country. A policeman recently lost $204, his whole worldly possessions, and had to borrow $17.50 to get away. While I was at Las Termas a man dropped $2040 in one evening which though not much to lose at either Montevideo or at Mar del Plata is a fortune to lose in Chile.
Forest in the Province of Ñuble, Chile
At Las Termas there is a main building and about thirty huts called casuchas, where lodgers room en famille. There are stables and a long barrack where the peons live. The bathhouses are about a quarter of a mile up the ravine.
The main building is of stone and is three stories high in front and two stories high in the rear as it is built on the slope of the hill. Besides the dining room and the coffee room, it has a barber shop, telegraph office, doctor's office, and rooms for guests. To one side is the administration office, bar, two gambling rooms, writing room, and kitchen. The ladies congregate evenings in a well-furnished hut which has for furniture red cloth covered chairs, a sofa, and a pianoforte.
Scene on the Road to Termas de Chillán
The casuchas all have at least three connecting rooms and are preferable to the main building. There has been considerable criticism in the Chillán newspapers about the treatment of the peons at the barrack. These poor people, afflicted with rheumatism and other ailments, and too poor to afford to pay the regular price for food and lodging, walk to Las Termas or come a whole family in an ox-cart or on mule back. They tether their animals in the woods or turn them loose in a corral. They bring their own food and bedclothing with them and pay eighty-five cents a day for the privilege of shelter. Sometimes a hundred of them are jammed nondescriptly into the dirty barrack which serves as a dining room, kitchen, and bedroom for dirty and diseased humanity of both sexes. Some of these poor fellows are seen nightly sleeping hunched up on the floor against the walls of the buildings near the kitchen and huddled close against one another for warmth, for the nights are apt to be frightfully cold. They are unwelcome to the host because they do not gamble.