Between the forbidding lands of the extreme north and far south and the frontiers of mountain and sea, lies fertile Chile—fruitful, gentle, brisk, well-watered. Nitrate and copper have their great populated camps, but they are artificial towns; the Magellanic city of Punta Arenas has a firmer root, but both north and south are new, and have received rather than produced. The Central Valley of Chile is the great garden of South America, one of the most enchantingly lovely, the most frankly friendly, regions in all the world.
It seems as though nature had deliberately tried to compensate here for the arid and the stormy end of the belt by showering beauty upon the intervening strip. There is none of that strange illusory quality, the sense of living in a mirage, that attends upon tropical regions. Central Chile is fresh, dewy-bright, with the familiar sweetness of the temperate zones of western Europe. Here are fine cattle, sheep and horses, pleasant orchards of pears and plums and apples; olive groves and grapevines; the long green lines of wheat fields, the spires of the poplars, the blackberry hedges edged with gorse and bracken and purple-headed thistles, are all familiar. The stock of the farms, every kind of crop—except those invaluable American contributions to the world’s list of foods, maize and potatoes—were introduced from overseas, but they have long been absorbed into the economic life of Chile. If the visitor is lulled into forgetfulness of his real milieu by the sight of neat wooden fences, by the bramble-bordered and fern-edged lane, he is recalled by the sudden glimpse of a shining white cone suspended in the transparent air, the snowy head of a far volcano. Or he may see in the thicket beside the road a trail of copihue with its bright rosy bell, or note that the farmer, ruddy-cheeked and bright-eyed, riding a fine horse along a deep muddy road, wears a gay poncho and a pair of enormous silver spurs.
It is the Chilean south that has brought to the Pacific Coast its fame as a land of beautiful pictures. Before Puerto Montt is reached, the edge of Lake Llanquihue is skirted by the railway, and the sight of this splendid sheet of water is an introduction to the wild and lovely scenery that was still unknown fifty years ago. The mountain and lake regions of Chile have even yet not been thoroughly explored, and that so much of this magnificent territory has been charted is partly due to the ancient uncertainty of exact boundary limits with Argentina, and, after long negotiations, the surveying work of Holdich at the head of the commission of 1898, reporting to King Edward VII as arbitrator. Between Chile and Argentina lies a series of exquisite lakes, many lying in old volcano cups. There is no more lovely body of fresh water in the world than Todos los Santos, with emerald heights rising clear from the mirror of the water; Rupanco, Riñihue, Ranco, and Viedma are beads upon a splendid chain of fine waters.
Chile is a land of brilliant hues. The dark waters, shouldered by tree-clothed mountains, of the Strait of Magellan, reflect yellow and russet leaf-changes as bright as in the maple woods of Canada. Blue glaciers, pure snow heads and the delicate green of fern brakes are contrasted with the crimson of wild fuchsias and the mass of glorious bloom of apple and cherry orchards. Farther north, where poplars stand like tall flames against the background of the hills in the Chilean autumn, and the willows line the rivers with gold, all is soft and glowing; but beyond the northern limits of vegetation where nothing meets the eye but masses of orange mountains that seem like glowing draperies hung against the unchanging blue sky, there is an extraordinary clarity of line and tint.
When the sun descends, quick flushes of pink and yellow, sheets of pale green and violet, flood the burning desert and the deeply scored heights; there is no movement, no sound, and yet the wide scene appears instinct with life, to move beneath the waves of pure light.
Lake Todos los Santos.
Every smallest thread of water is here edged with a lush growth of bright emerald plants, every bush is a mass of orange or purple flowers. And in the settled spots there is grace in every tree, a picturesque quality in each little thatched hut by the wayside, an insouciance that lends charm to ’dobe walls and maize patches. The beauty and the kindliness of Chile are, in fact, apt to destroy one’s critical faculties.
The weather in Chile may be called extremely obvious. It is impossible to ignore it, as in some other countries, despite the situation of the greater part of Chilean territory within the temperate zone. The remarkable topographical conditions of this strip force each barometrical change upon the attention.
In the rainless north, modifications are chiefly confined to the effects of the curious sea-mist, the camanchaca, spreading over some parts of the pampas to fifty miles inland; appearing about six in the evening, these fogs screen the coast and promptly lower the temperature, so, that, scorching at midday, one shivers under blankets at night. In the extreme south, among the islands and channels of the Magellanic region, boisterous seas and violent winds, cold and rain, made it the terror of sailors for three hundred years. The prevailing weather displays traits almost as unvarying as in the sharply contrasted north. Fine and calm days are rarities, although the climate is certainly not unhealthy, as Punta Arenas demonstrates.