The genuine exercise of the vote, and the temperamental cheerfulness and sanity of the Chilean, have saved the country from many miseries suffered by less unified lands.
Two special causes of the general level-headedness and sobriety of the Chilean are, first, the strong position of women in family life, and next the high standard of education. Education provides a channel through which youth can flow, and here, where state elementary schools are spread throughout the country to the number of 3000, with 1000 private and secondary schools, every boy and girl has a chance. The Chilean Government has long followed a policy of sending a number of the brightest students of the high schools and universities abroad for final courses in languages and science, and for this reason is less dependent than the majority of young countries upon the exterior world for engineers, chemists and teachers.
The fine prosperous cities of Chile possess, of course, all the equipment, all the luxury and grace, of modern cities all over the world. If one were to shut out the background of snow-crowned mountains, and happened to be out of sight of such streets as retain Spanish balconies and tiled roofs, one might imagine many a district of Santiago to be a part of a first-class French or English city. The tramways, the common use of motor cars and electricity, the good paving and good shops, the beauty and fashion of the Chilean women, the beautifully built and equipped houses, the good restaurants, the plentiful supply of newspapers, the appearance and avocations of the people, render Valparaiso and the Chilean capital among the front-rank cities of the world.
But Chilean cities vary greatly. In the central region is the great group of centres of Spanish foundation, those of the extreme north showing faces, for the most part, as youthful as those of Western Patagonia or Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan. Temuco, built after the final breaking-down of the Araucanian frontier, dates as a modern town only from 1881. Old Tarata, in the still disputed Province of Tacna, dreaming with its back to the hills and face to the desert, is a link with the past, for although it is away from the traffic stream today it was once a stopping-place on the direct Inca route between Potosí and Arica on the Pacific; Tacna owes its modern existence to its little railway; but Arica is newly alive, a busy port in a bower of gay flowers, a garden on the edge of a waste.
In the Strait of Magellan.
South of Arica lies a fringe of new nitrate towns along the sea-border of the pampas salitreras; Pisagua, Junin, Iquique (not long ago the greatest exporter of nitrate, but yielding pride of place to Antofagasta), Caleta Buena, Tocopilla, Mejillones, also overshadowed today by her younger sister, big, well-served, thriving Antofagasta; Coloso, Paposo, Taltal—all lie baking in the bright aridity of the rainless belt, precariously supplied with food and water from afar. Inland there are no populations more permanent than those of the nitrate oficinas, save here and there along the beds of snow-fed streams. Next in order from north to south comes the string of copper ports, with interior towns beginning to appear as the edge of the permanently fertile lands is reached. Chañaral, Caldera, Carrizal, points where the famous “Chile bars” of copper were smelted and shipped overseas; inland Copiapó, dependent for wealth upon copper and silver mines, but clothed with all the charm of a cloveredged oasis in the desert; the houses are built low for fear of earthquakes, roofed with red tiles and washed pink and blue; the gardens are full of scented flowers. Another oasis is Vallenar, set in the Atacama desert beside its violet-shadowed ravine and surrounded with a little ring of jade fields.
Still farther south, Coquimbo, a newer, busy little city, sweetly placed upon its beautiful curving bay a mile or two from its Spanish-built, slumbering elder sister La Serena. From this point southward the towns lie closer together, and eastward along each fertile valley are clusters of fine fruit farms with dependent villages, filling the railway cars with figs and peaches, grapes and apricots; but where water fails, scrub and cactus deny a living. Here is old Combarbalá, there Illapel with its town-long avenue of orange trees hung with golden globes; Santa Rosa de los Andes, highroad to the chief mountain crossing; and a number of centres of the lovely grape country, younger sisters of San Felipe. Santiago, spread beneath her two famous hills, Santa Lucia and San Cristobal; Valparaiso, risen from the earthquake of 1906, solidly built on its narrow stretch of sand beneath the thousand-foot cliffs, crowned with new dwellings and reached by electric lifts, an energetic and wealthy port with its brilliant suburb, Viña del Mar. Beyond these great twin centres of movement lies all the fast-developing agricultural and manufacturing south—Talca, a rapid and promising growth; dusty Rancagua, looking towards the big interior copper camp; Chillán, head of a great fruit region; Concepción, most agreeable of cities, nestled beside the bright Bio-Bio in a bower of woods, with its fine port, Talcahuano; the coal-mining sea-border towns, Coronel, Lota, Arauco, Lebu; Temuco, one of the most prosperous of all the vigorous young southern towns, placed in wonderfully productive country; handsome Valdivia, facing a factory-covered island on the fine river flowing to Corral port, justly proud of its equipment and buildings; Osorno, a rising centre of industry; Puerto Montt, still in its youth but with good reasons for sturdy growth. And last of all, Punta Arenas, the visibly growing city, fine buildings shouldering little shacks, looking away from the beech-covered hills of Brunswick Peninsula towards the pearly distance of the Polar seas; Punta Arenas is not only a new city of Yugo-Slav and Scots millionaires, of the tributary sheep-raising country: it is the commercial key of Chile’s Far South.
Santa Lucia Hill, Santiago.