From Puerto Montt southward is a long series of fiords, islands, indentations and inland channels whose intricacy and extent are unequalled even by the famous fiords of Norway. For natural beauty the Norwegian complex cannot compare with that of Chile, for no woodland exists in Europe that rivals the pathless, luxuriant, flower-hung forests of Chiloé Island, the Andean spurs of Western Patagonia, the broken archipelago of Chonos, and the noble mountains of the Strait of Magellan. Rich ferns and flowering shrubs, wild bamboo and pines and beeches, reach to the water’s edge. Through the thousand miles of this complicated chain of inlets and islands between Puerto Montt and Punta Arenas runs an almost continuous channel, continuation of the long depression which creates the deep fold of the great Chilean central valley. Steamers seeking sheltered waters from the Strait of Magellan northward need not emerge into the open Pacific, but turn north by Smyth Channel and run inside the barrier formed by Hanover and Wellington Islands. But at the Gulf of Peñas vessels are forced out to the turbulent ocean, a thin strip of land barring the way to the calmer waters of the Moraleda Canal. Chilean engineers have long projected a cut through this Ofqui bar, joining the mainland to Taitao peninsula; for it is only 7000 feet wide; no doubt this necessary help to navigation will be given before long. With this opening effected, small vessels will be able to pass from Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas and Tierra del Fuego by a sheltered waterway, passing great forests, majestic glaciers, frowning snow-capped mountains, stark headlands and a thousand inlets and islands, a long panorama of splendid beauty.
Vessels of all nations visit Chile, Australasia and Japan sending regular lines to compete with the shipping of Europe, North America and Chile’s sister South American republics, the total tonnage of visiting ships amounting on an average to over twelve million, of which less than five hundred thousand tons represent sailing vessels. Sea transport on the Chilean coast has undergone an immense transformation since Cochrane brought the first steamer ever seen upon the West Coast, the little Rising Star, in 1818. Traffic from North America and Europe comes today in a considerable proportion through the Panama Canal, but the next few years will probably witness a development of tourist traffic through the Magellanic waterway and to such beautiful Chilean islands as Juan Fernández, with its romantic history and wild beauty—undiminished by the local lobster “factory” supplying the tables of Valparaiso and Santiago.
Chile herself performs a fair share of maritime service. About one hundred large and small steamers fly the Chilean flag, with about 35 sailing vessels chiefly engaged in fishing and the transport of coal and lumber, the total representing some 75,000 tons. Over 40 per cent of “maritime movement” of Chilean ports is recorded by Chilean vessels, and strong support of national traffic was afforded in early 1922 by the passage of a new law restricting coastwise trade to ships registered in Chile.
The largest and most important of Chilean steamship companies is the Compañia Sud Americana de Vapores, Government-supported, with headoffices in Valparaiso, operating a fine and excellently-equipped fleet of ten vessels serving Chilean and Peruvian ports, and, since the War, extending its international service through the Panama Canal to New York and European ports. Two new vessels of 7000 tons each were added in 1922 to the company’s fleet: the Aconcagua and her sister ship were built at Greenock, and bring the Sud Americana’s first-class passenger service to a high standard.
Roads
Chilean highways, placed though they are in scenery so lovely that the traveller’s eyes are directed to mountains and tall trees rather than to the morass at his feet, need the improvement projected by the Road Law of 1920, arranging for special taxes to be devoted to the construction and upkeep of first-class country roads.
Reasons for the long neglect of this means of transport include the fact that farmers and countryfolk in Chile commonly ride horseback—this is a land of good horsemen and well-trained animals—and the condition of the surface if not a matter of indifference is of less concern than if vehicles were more common. Next, country produce has been in the past, and in many regions is yet, brought from the farms by heavy ox-carts, pulled by teams for whose convenience, again, a smooth surface is not considered a necessity. The third reason, which perhaps should have foremost place, is the nature of a great part of the Chilean soil.
As soon as one enters the Central Valley of Chile, one recognises a characteristic of the Pacific Coast, the fertile and extremely fine soil, as light as face-powder, with its slightly pungent scent. Much of this soil is volcanic ash, with a mixture of vegetable detritus; it is extraordinarily fertile, with almost every virtue in the eyes of the farmer, and undoubtedly this genial soil produces the best food in the world. But it is difficult to reduce fine dust to the consistency of a road with a surface hard enough to resist the disintegrating effects of an eight-months’ drought, followed by tremendous and violent rains.
Between the double row of blackberry hedges, backed by lines of poplars, a typical road of Central Chile is a deep trough of shifting, floating dust in the dry season, and a swamp after the rains set in. Once upon a day in May the writer with a party of friends tried to reach Los Andes from Santiago in a motor-car: the Chilean chauffeur and the car both did their excellent best, but a mile or two outside the capital the highway became a sea of mud, and we finally gave it up when the car skidded upon the top of the Chacabuco Pass. During the fifty or sixty miles traversed before we reached a railway station, the only strip of really hard foundation for the wheels was encountered when we ran in the gravelly bed of a shallow stream.
This test, however, was not quite fair to Chilean roads; the season and the route were not chosen with discretion. For even in Central Chile there are well-made, wide roads, a few hundred miles in each province, over which motors may pass. The coming of the automobile renders the creation of better highways an urgent necessity, in fact, the motor lorry promising a means for getting farm produce to market that is badly needed in the developing districts.