The whole question was brought vividly to the fore just at the time of our visit by a little international episode known as the “Incident of La Corona.” Peru had erected a magnificent memorial to her soldiers that fell in the conflict with Chile. As was customary and proper, the representatives of the various foreign powers resident in Lima, requested permission to deposit formal wreaths at the base of the monument as an expression of the friendship of their governments. The Chilean diplomat was not behind the others, and his request was granted, only to be denied later on when his funeral wreath had been made ready for the exercises. At this he took great umbrage, demanded his passports, and sailed for home. His arrival in Santiago was the occasion of a popular outburst. There was a strong demand on the part of a portion of the public that the government resent the Peruvian “insult” in a very practical way, viz., by holding elections in the provinces of Tacna and Arica and summoning representatives to the National Congress in the same manner as from the other Chilean provinces. This would be taking the last step in formal annexation of the disputed territory and final recognition of it as a definite part of the national domain.
I was travelling in the interior of Peru at the time of these demonstrations and it may be imagined that the press reports in the Peruvian newspapers did not underestimate the gravity of the situation. The fact that the Chilean government did not take any active steps toward formally annexing Tacna and Arica in response to the popular demand was attributed by many Peruvians and not a few Chileans to the fact that in the harbor of Lima there happened to be at this time a powerful squadron of American battleships. The long-standing friendship between the United States and Peru, and the active hostility between the United States and Chile at the time of the fall of Balmaceda and the “Baltimore” episode, were regarded by the Peruvians as sufficient guaranty of an intention on the part of the United States to interfere in case trouble arose over an attempt on the part of Chile to terminate the territorial dispute in a high-handed manner.
Whether or not the government at Washington indicated its wishes in any way or expressed any opinion whatever; whether or not the presence of our battleship fleet in the waters of the West Coast at this time was intentional or purely accidental, are matters about which I know nothing and which do not affect the actual results. As it stands, the Peruvians having avoided trouble with Chile feel grateful toward the United States, and the Chileans feel correspondingly irritated that their government was apparently kept from an overt act by the influence of the Yankis. An enthusiastic Chilean, a vigorous “anti-American,” told me some time afterwards that he had endeavored, to the best of his ability, to find out from political friends in Valparaiso why nothing was done when it would have been so easy to settle the whole matter. The reply in every case was “fear of offending the United States.”
After leaving Arica our next stop was to be at Ilo, the southernmost harbor of Peru, a fact that was emphasized by the very marked depletion of our passenger list. Few Chileans care to go to Peru. Because we came from the “polluted” ports of a hated rival, the Limarí was subjected to a thorough-going fumigation, a process rendered the more unnecessary and offensive because nearly all of the Peruvian ports actually had cases of bubonic plague and smallpox while the Chilean ports were free from the pest.
We reached Mollendo on the afternoon of January 14th, just seven days after leaving Valparaiso.
CHAPTER XVI
SOUTHERN PERU
Mollendo is one of those places where nature never intended man to live. The natural port, and the one that was used for centuries, is the bay of Islay, a few miles north. As a matter of fact, this was to have been the terminus of the Southern Railway of Peru, the outlet for the commerce of the Lake Titicaca region. But the owners of real estate at Islay were so convinced that there had arrived that “tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” that they attempted to make the most of their opportunity and asked the railway prohibitive prices for land and water-front. The result was that Islay missed its high tide and the railway engineers carved out of the desert coast what is now the port of Mollendo.
It claims to be the worst harbor on the West Coast. In fact, the author of a recent book on South America was so impressed with the terrors of disembarking here that he described it fully in three separate chapters of his book! Although there was quite a little breeze blowing at the time of my landing, I confess to being very much disappointed at the tameness of the procedure. The reverend author had led me to expect “a surf-lashed landing-place—a tremendous tossing and bouncing on the mountainous swell.” Even in calm weather the boat was “tossed about like a cockle shell, now thrown up to heaven on the crest of a wave, now dropped down towards the nadir in its hollow. The swarthy Peruvian oarsmen strain at the oars, they avoid the jagged rocks between the boat and the pier by a hair’s breadth!” etc. etc.
One gets very little idea from such language of a busy little basin and a dock where half a dozen steam cranes are at work loading and unloading large freight barges. As would be expected from the fact that this is the chief port in southern Peru, the docks were crowded with boxes and bales of every description. Occasionally as many as eight or ten freighters are anchored in the offing, and a large number of lighters are kept busy most of the time. A new breakwater is being built of enormous cubes of concrete, which it is hoped will resist the action of the waves better than the natural rock of the neighborhood which disintegrates rapidly.
A climb of fifty or sixty feet up the face of a steep cliff back of the landing stage brought us to the little platform and gate of the local custom house. Our arrival here was not expected by the officials, and we received the customary hard looks that are given every one coming from Chile. Mollendo has not forgotten the war. Nevertheless it needed but the mystic word delegado to the collector of the port to cause all our luggage to be passed graciously through the custom house without even the formality of an examination.