[105] The charge for apartments of three persons (two sleeping and one drawing-room), including board, was 30 Spanish piastres = £6 6s. per diem!
[106] The Chilean Mint is entirely arranged on the French system, and is provided with French machinery.
[107] "Historia fisica y politica de Chile, segun documentos adquiridos en esta Republica durante doze años de residencia en ella, y publicado bajo los auspicios del supremo Gobierno por Claudio Gay, &c., Paris, 1844, 8vo.;" besides two large quarto volumes, "Atlas de la historia fisica y politica de Chile."
[108] The results of the great attention bestowed on public instruction have not been inadequate, as is apparent from the latest statistics on the subject, according to which the average proportion of the inhabitants, who can read and write, is 100 out of every 561 of the male population, and 100 in 1095 of the females, or an average of 100 in every 828. In 1858, there were on the whole State 950 schools, attended by 39,657 scholars (viz. 27,288 male and 12,369 female). There is, however, a difference in these two statements of 6 per cent. The proportion of females to males attending school is 45 to 100; of those able to read and write, of 51 females to 100 males.
[109] There are in the whole country 37 public and 12 private libraries (including in the latter only such as are really worthy of the name).
[110] See Gay's History of Chile, Zoology, vol. i, p. 161.
[111] The whole consumption of ice used in Valparaiso and Santiago is supplied by American ships, which take in their cargo at Boston, and sell it here at about 2 1⁄4d. per lb. It is cheaper to import the ice from America round the Horn than from the Andes, though the latter are only 50 or 60 miles distant, and though ice is found on these at certain seasons at an elevation of only 6000 feet.
[112] Mr. Haidinger, who at the very first exerted himself to the utmost of his ability and patriotism to promote the objects of the Novara Expedition, was so thoughtfully kind as to provide the geologist attached to it with a number of copies of publications of the Imperial Institute, as well as a corresponding number of neat little specimens of tertiary petrifactions from the Vienna basin, for the purpose of presenting them to kindred institutes in different quarters of the globe.
[113] The lines of road already in operation or projected throughout Chile are as follows:—
a. From Valparaiso to Santiago, 110 miles, constructed at the expense of the State, and estimated to cost $7,150,000 (£2,860,000). This had been opened when we were there, as far as Guillota, 30 miles, but the whole was to be finished by 1862.