But it is in the central region lying between Coquimbo and Valdivia that changes of weather have the most spectacular effect. In the valleys of the Aconcagua, the Mapocho, the Maule and the Bio-Bio we have perhaps the most striking results when the rainy season begins, usually towards the end of April. In the lowlands a blinding deluge descends that promptly clears town streets of pedestrians and frequently reduces cabs and street cars to temporary inactivity, while every country path and highway is transformed by a few hours’ rain into a deep morass. But whenever it rains in the central Chilean valleys snow is falling upon the Andean heights, and presently the eyes that for months have glanced with the indifference of custom at the far-distant, blue-shrouded, tawny mountains are astonished with a vision of giant peaks and shoulders that seem to have made an immense stride forward to the edge of the next field, their serene magnificence covered with shining white.
The effect upon the foothills is no less striking. During the last months of the dry season—enduring in the vineyard regions for some eight months—every inch of ground that is not artificially irrigated has taken on a uniform sandy hue. The whole earth is parched and the roads are a foot deep in dust. But within a week of the first rain a shimmering veil of light green tinges the land; in ten days every knoll and hillside has its carpet of young grass, and in a month the whole face of the country is changed, awakened, brilliant, bursting out with sturdy fertility. Such rivers as the Aconcagua and the Mapocho, dwindled to rippling threads among the wide stone-strewn beds, are changed in a night to raging torrents, fed from the sides of the mountains. More than once these silver streams have swept from their shallow banks, torn down protecting barriers, and done serious material damage, besides changing their courses—a matter of great import in regions where water-rights are the chief causes of quarrel among farmers.
Balmaceda Glacier.
With the setting in of the definite dry season at the beginning of September, the upper part of Central Chile thenceforth forgets the sound of rain for over half a year. Bright blue skies and unrelenting midday heat are almost unchanged; the watered country is a series of orchards, and the famous big black grapes, the peaches and plums and apples of Central Chile, succeed the strawberry crops. Chile in the early part of the dry season is a garden of flowers, and the fruitripening at the end of the year fills the valleys with busy scenes. There are thousands of workers in the orchards, grain fields and vineyards, and the heavywheeled ox-carts send up swirling masses of dust in every lane. Before the New Year the snow has melted under the summer sun from almost every part of the Cordilleras, although I have seen it linger in deep folds of Aconcagua and Tupungato until late February. Down south in Magellanic territory the permanent snow line comes down to a couple of thousand feet above sea level, and cold weather is the rule. The squalls of the Strait are generally rain-laden.
Aconcagua, highest peak of South America, is not actually a Chilean mountain, lying just across the Argentine frontier; but it is so familiar a feature of Central Chile that it is constantly annexed in thought. Mercedario, another magnificent height, also just escapes the boundary line. Beautiful Tupungato, 21,300 ft., is outclassed among Chilean peaks, as regards altitude, by Tocorpuri and Llullaico farther north, and is closely rivalled by a number of less famous mountains—Socompa, Baya, San Pedro and San Pablo, Peña Blanco, San Francisco, Muerto, Solo, Salado, Tres Cruces and Toro; below Central Chile the average height of the crests of the great volcanic wall drops from fifteen to nine thousand feet, but even such comparatively modest peaks as Osorno, Llaima, Calbuco, Lonquimay, Villa Rica, and the most southerly Paine, Burney, Balmaceda and Sarmiento, are striking and dignified with their snow crowns.
The long dry season of Mid Chile, and the violence of rains in the wet months, render the construction of permanent roads a task necessitating immense outlay. Chile has 35,000 kilometres of highroads, but reckons only a few thousand kilometres in first-class condition: a recent Road Law aims at a reform of vital importance to the Chilean farmer. But if roads are scarce, Chile has an excellent system of railways, serving the main length of her territory, connecting with all exporting points along the coast, and linking Valparaiso to Buenos Aires. The adequate equipment of ports—of which there are sixty, important or embryo—has always presented difficulties, owing to the shallow character of almost every indentation, with the notable exception of Talcahuano, and the prevalence of heavy ground swells and strong gales from the north and the southwest.
The social problems of Chile are no more and no less than the problems of any other country of the temperate zone inhabited by a progressive white population. The difficulties of adequate transport to serve her growing industrial and farming regions; questions regarding a large working population crowded into great mining camps; political and educational problems, are all hers: but she is aided towards solution by the homogeneity of her hardy race.
Chile has no “black” or “yellow” population. There are in the country only four African Negroes, and the foreigners resident are mainly Western Europeans and the nationals of sister states. Peruvians, prior to the friction of 1920, formed 20 per cent of the foreign population; Bolivians number 22,000 or 16 per cent; there are 20,000 Spaniards, about 13 per cent; Germans, 11,000, or 8 per cent; French, 10,000; British, 10,000; Italians, 13,000; Swiss, 2000; North Americans, 1000; Chinese, 2000; Argentines, 7000.
