The Commission’s recommendations necessitate the expenditure of at least six million pounds sterling, or let us say the whole of the taxes upon nitrate exports during one prosperous year. The sum will in all probability be raised, according to need, year by year, by means of exterior loans.
According to the projects, Valparaiso will be allotted a further million and a half pounds; Valdivia, Lebu, Talcahuano and Constitución, about one million each; Puerto Montt, a preliminary £150,000; Tomé (at the north of Concepción Bay) and Pichilemu, £40,000 each; with smaller sums for Iquique and Puerto Saavedra (Imperial Bajo).
Valparaiso port works have been since 1912 in the hands of a British engineering firm, and have given a good deal of trouble, storms more than once undoing part of the construction work; in the early months of 1922 there were completed two quays totalling 840 metres in length, a breakwater of 288 metres, and a coal wharf 200 metres long by 30 metres wide; work upon the mooring jetty, the extension of the old Fiscal Mole (dating from 1883, and the only means for transferring passengers and cargo until the new quays were constructed), the Prat Quay, warehouses and railway is also well advanced, in spite of long delays caused by the European War. There is plenty of water—in fact, too much for facile construction of jetties or breakwaters, the bottom shelving rapidly from 39 feet at the mooring jetty, and offering, less than 200 feet from shore, nothing but mud as foundation. In consequence, the outer section of the breakwater cost £560 per linear foot to build. Since 1906 Valparaiso has suffered from no serious earthquake, but slight shocks are not infrequent and must be taken into consideration in the case of construction in the sea as well as upon the land. Rise and fall of the tide at Valparaiso does not exceed three feet.
The Nitrate Ports have earned more money than any other points of outflow for Chilean products, but safe, adequate modern havens for shipping are not to be created in a day or even in a decade; and the same difficulties of the open roadstead and prevailing winds have delayed the completion of adequate facilities even at that busy commercial stronghold, Antofagasta. Comprehensive plans are, however, in course of development, and work has only been delayed by the depression of 1921.
Port improvements at Talcahuano are being carried out by a French company, and the main work is unlikely to be completed for a few years, although it has been attacked. Talcahuano lies within the deeply indented Bay of Concepción, the best naturally-protected haven upon the West Coast, and is further shielded from the effects of northerly winds by the pretty island of Quiriquina, once a rendezvous for pirates, and during the War the place of internment for several hundred Germans, including sailors from the Dresden. Talcahuano possesses a floating dock and equipment as the first naval base of Chile, and when the present plans have been developed this port will be one of the best in South America.
The creation of a secure port at the mouth of the fine river Imperial, Puerto Saavedra, will be comparatively easy when the projected cut is made from Budi Bay through a sandy bank into the river, safe from all storms. From this point the stream is to be dredged for 20 miles up to the town of Carahue, where a branch railway connects with Temuco and the Longitudinal system. Another important dredging work is projected along the stream of the Valdivia from Corral port. This haven of old foundation, nestling under its cliffs, has been for centuries of necessity the stopping-place for vessels with cargo and passengers for Valdivia City, twelve miles inland, all traffic being transshipped up river by small steamers, barges, etc. By the new plans a channel will be deepened to permit the passage of ocean-going steamers to the beautifully placed riverine city, whence rail connection opens the most fertile agricultural country, immense forestal zones and a large coal-mining region.
At pretty Constitución, where the dangerous bar is so much dreaded that its condition is always signalled to vessels before they venture to approach, plans include the dredging of a channel and construction of breakwaters to prevent silting-up.
Puerto Montt, at the end of the Longitudinal, and lying within the Gulf of Reloncaví, is a recent creation whose equipment as a port receiving international vessels is still only on paper; this Llanquihue region, with its lumber and sheep industries, is fast developing, and will invite a great deal of tourist traffic when its transport facilities are equal to its glorious scenery. Port construction problems are chiefly due to the 25-foot rise and fall of the tide. At Punta Arenas, another new port of remarkably rapid and vigorous growth, vessels are still obliged to lie out in the Strait while cargo and passengers are transferred by lighters and small boats, but the steady prosperity of this zone as well as its position as a port of call for international steamers render imperative the creation of modern port facilities.
Rivers and Lakes
Chile has one hundred and twenty rivers, but can count no more than five hundred miles as navigable. This navigability is again limited to small vessels only, to which another five hundred miles of lake waterways are also open; motor boats and canoes are able to traverse another four hundred or so of rivers, but these are frequently broken by cascades and falls.