Punta Arenas, the Southernmost City in the World.
Puerto Varas, facing Calbuco Volcano, Lake Llanquihue.
The agent then went to look for interior land for the next batches of colonists, and, finding that forest country was unclaimed, started to explore what was still virgin country to the white man. He lived on honey and wild nuts, struggled through dense woodland to the edge of Lake Llanquihue, chose his ground, and then gave his chief Indian scout, the celebrated Pichi-Juan, thirty pesos to burn clearings through the heart of the forest. It was this Indian who brought the first fifty yoke of oxen to the borders of the Gulf of Reloncaví, driving them through the jungle from Osorno and opening the first track.
Pichi-Juan took three months to burn a belt five leagues wide, and fifteen leagues long, through the Osorno Valley, leaving isolated woods to serve for house-material and fuel. Puerto Montt, at Melipillo, was founded in February, 1853, among blackened stumps, and the new colony, also of Germans, had two bad winters when the crops rotted in the ground; but by 1861 had progressed so well that the town was made the head of the province.
One hundred and five more settlers had come in 1852; another batch four years later. By 1858 Puerto Montt was self-supporting, with cultivated fields, flour mills, and was exporting brandy and honey, planks, tanned leather and wheat flour. Between the foundation of the settlement and 1864, when immigration of German families ceased, 1363 people had entered. Henceforth the opened territory received continual additions of energetic people from many parts of the world, Chileans themselves went south, and today there is no better developed and managed part of Chile.
Araucanian Lands
A new spurt of immigration occurred after 1881, when the Mapoche Indians obstinately held claim to sovereignty over the broad belt of lands known as Araucania was finally destroyed by the republican forces of Chile. With the frontier barrier overthrown, farming lands lay open, and the Government made a fresh bid for European settlers.
Agents were sent out to Switzerland, France, England and Germany, and prospective colonists were offered 40 hectares of land (about 100 acres) in some regions; in others, twice this amount; part of the passage-money was given, a yoke of oxen, seeds, implements, materials for house construction, and a cash advance towards the expenses of the first year. Against these advances was set off a mortgage upon the property, to be repaid in three years.