At the southern end of the town there is good bathing; and in addition, pavilions and beer gardens to entice the weary clerk from the nitrate offices. The well-arranged grounds of the Jockey Club afford opportunity for social intercourse, polo, and tennis. But the most interesting place in Iquique is what is known as the Combination, the central office of the Nitrate Association, where the different companies, mostly English, unite to arrange scales of prices and quantity of output and maintain an efficient Bureau of Propaganda.
People frequently confuse Chilean nitrates with guano. One is a mineral, the other an animal product. Whether the nitrate fields were not originally guano deposits is a moot point, but I believe this idea has been abandoned. There is, however, considerable difference of opinion as to the actual origin of the great nitrate desert.
As there is a heavy export duty on the nitrates, Chile has been, and will continue to be, as long as the supply holds out, in the very enviable position of making foreigners pay the bulk of her taxes. How long this exceptional state of affairs will last is a problem for the geologists to settle. As there is undoubtedly enough material in sight to satisfy the demands of the present generation and the next, no one has any very stringent reason for husbanding the output or for investing the national income from the export duties in such a way as to provide for the exigencies of future tax-payers. The natural result of this easy method of securing a revenue is a tendency towards extravagance in the Chilean budget and an absence of careful supervision. Few people care whether the money is spent for the best interests of the country. Political scientists say that when the voter has a very light burden of taxes to bear, he does not mind seeing the government’s money wasted or his favorite politicians grow wealthy. Doubtless in time such a condition of affairs will have a serious influence for evil on Chilean character. As yet the whole industry is too young to have produced any marked effect. Fortunately for the race, the nitrate fields will probably become exhausted before any lasting harm is done. Nevertheless Chile would do well to take warning from the experience of Peru, whose revenue for many years depended almost exclusively on the yield of guano from the Chincha Islands. The exhaustion of that valuable product left the country in a far worse state than she was before her easily acquired income had commenced to corrupt her politicians and financiers.
We left Iquique late that night and arrived early the next morning at Pisagua, the northern limit of the nitrate country. Like all the other ports at which we had touched since leaving Valparaiso, it is the terminus of a little railway that goes back a few miles into the interior and brings down minerals of one sort or another; sometimes copper ore, generally nitrate, more rarely tin and silver.
In the course of the afternoon we reached Arica. The southern side of the bay is guarded by a picturesque cliff, not unlike Gibraltar, which is celebrated in Peruvian history as the site of a memorable battle in the war with Chile. At its crisis the commandant of the Peruvian garrison, rather than fall into the hands of the victorious Chileans, spurred his horse over the summit and was dashed to pieces among the rocks and waves at the base of the cliff. To the Anglo-Saxon mind, he would have died more creditably had he killed as many Chileans as possible first, and fallen face to the front. But the more spectacular death that he chose appeals strongly to the Latin temperament.
Yet this trick of committing suicide instead of fighting to the last breath is not a characteristic of Spanish heroes generally. It is not easy to say whether the gallant soldier was influenced or not by any Quichua ancestor that he may have had. Readers of Prescott’s “Conquest of Peru” will remember that in the attack on Cuzco, made by one of the Pizarros, a Quichua noble who had greatly distinguished himself in the Inca army, seeing that his cause was irretrievably lost, jumped over the precipice on the south side of the Sacsahuaman hill, and preferred to be dashed to pieces rather than to see how many Spaniards he could kill first. He in turn may have inherited the tendency from remote ancestors in the Pacific Ocean. On the Island of Kusaie there is a picturesque waterfall where, according to tradition, two young chiefs, defeated in battle, ended their lives by casting themselves from the precipice into the boiling pool below. The habit of jumping over a precipice in preference to being killed in battle by one’s enemies is not uncommon in the history of the Pacific races, both in the Carolines and in the Hawaiian Islands.
Arica is particularly interesting to Americans because it was here that the U. S. S. Wateree was carried inland by the great tidal wave of 1868. Not only has the port been devastated by earthquakes and tidal waves but also by fire. At present it has a very squalid appearance. Before the completion in 1871 of the Southern Peruvian railway from Mollendo to Puno, Arica was an important port of entry for Bolivia. When the Chileans finish the railway which they are building to connect this port with La Paz by a line that shall cross the mountains back of Tacna, this importance will be restored.
At the close of the war between Chile and Peru the Treaty of Peace known as the Treaty of Ancon stipulated that the territory of the provinces of Tacna and Arica should remain in the possession of Chile for ten years from 1883 to 1893. The Treaty continues: “The term having expired, a plebiscite shall decide by popular vote if the territory of these provinces shall remain definitely under the dominion and sovereignty of Chile, or if they shall continue to form part of the territory of Peru. The Government of the country in whose favor the provinces of Tacna and Arica shall be annexed shall pay to the other ten millions of dollars Chilean silver money or Peruvian soles, of equal percentage of fine silver and of equal weight as the former. A special protocol, which shall be considered an integral part of the present treaty, shall establish the form in which the plebiscite shall take place, and the terms and conditions in which the ten millions of dollars shall be paid by the nation remaining in possession of Tacna and Arica.”
As is well known, the special protocol, establishing the form in which the plebiscite is to take place, has never been agreed upon. The principal obstacle is that since 1883 a large number of Chileans have settled, voluntarily or otherwise, in the provinces, enough to decide the vote of the plebiscite in favor of Chile. The Chilean government says all present residents should vote. The Peruvians maintain that the voters in the plebiscite should consist only of those who were residents of the provinces at the termination of the war. Naturally, the Chileans will not agree to this as there is no doubt but that the majority of such persons are of inherent Peruvian preferences.
It is now seventeen years since the plebiscite was due to take place and the question is still an open one. The fact, however, that in a recent treaty with Bolivia, Chile promised to construct, at her expense, a railway from Arica to La Paz, and has since granted a contract to a reliable company to build that railway, would seem to indicate that Chile considers the question settled although no plebiscite has been held. No nation voluntarily commits itself to spend millions of dollars in building a railway in a province which it considers in the slightest degree likely to become the property of a neighbor. The Peruvians have not overlooked the calm way in which the Chileans take it for granted that Tacna and Arica are to be permanently Chilean territory, but they are in no position to dispute such a conclusion. Their fighting strength is far below the Chilean standard and they know it.