The morning after we left Valparaiso, we reached Coquimbo, where, a few weeks before (24th April, 1859), a severe action had been fought between the Chilean troops and those of Pedro Gallo, the former proving victorious. Coquimbo is a small town of about 2000 souls, whose sole claim to importance is its proximity to some rich copper-mines. M. Longomasino, one of the many victims of the
coup d'état of the second December, who, the reader will recollect, received permission to make the voyage from Tahiti to Valparaiso on board the Novara, was among our passengers; he left the steamer at Coquimbo, intending to go to the adjoining mining town of Serena (20,000 souls), where, through the kindness of friends, he had been invited to edit a political paper.
Here I went on board the British corvette Amethyst, which just a year before had been lying alongside of the Novara in Singapore harbour, and was received by her excellent commander with a most cordial welcome. To my astonishment I found a number of civilians on board: refugees, who had taken an active part in the late insurrection, and who now, when all hope of success was over, sought an asylum on British soil, for such is the deck of an English man-of-war, and, thanks to British political proclivities, had been cordially received there.
About 11 P.M. the same night we were off the insignificant little harbour of Huasco, and about nine next morning ran into Caldera, a dreary-looking little place of some 2000 inhabitants, built upon one of a succession of sand-slopes. There is not a trace of vegetation; no foliage, no shrubs, no patches of grass,—all around as far as the eye could reach was a cheerless waste of sand. Only extraordinary opportunities for money-making could have induced the inhabitants to settle in this desolate wilderness, deficient in the very first necessity of life—fresh water. Every drop of this most
important beverage has at present to be brought from 90 miles inland, so that a cask containing some 15 gallons costs 31 cents or 1s. 4d. English. The charge for supplying water alone to 90 or 100 workmen amounts to 40 dollars, or £8 8s., a week! At the time I visited it, the people were negotiating for the erection of a steam distilling apparatus, for procuring fresh water from the sea, at a less cost than was paid previously. From Caldera, a locomotive line of rail leads to the mining town of Copiapó, 71 miles inland, in the vicinity of which are rich mines of silver and copper. This enterprise has proved so remunerative, that, although its construction cost 2,500,000 dollars (£525,000 or about £7400 a mile), the shareholders receive an annual dividend of 16 per cent.
I visited the copper-smelting kilns, which belong to an English company, and produce annually from 1800 to 2000 tons of almost virgin copper (90 to 96 per cent.), in ingots and pigs, as they are termed, an ingot weighing from 16 to 18 lbs avoirdupois. The ore, as at first found in the mines of Copiapó, has barely 18 to 36 per cent. of copper, and has to undergo six or seven smeltings before it becomes sufficiently pure to be sold at a profit in the markets of Europe. The smelting-furnace produces about seven tons of copper per diem, at a consumption of 60 tons of coal,[121] which is imported from
Swansea, partly from Pennsylvania, and is worth 12 to 15 dollars per ton of 2240 lbs. The rate of wages at Caldera remains pretty steady at two to three dollars per diem, and this is the reason why the enterprise is less remunerative than would be the case if wages were lower.
The total annual yield of the copper and silver mines of the department of Copiapó is worth about 14,000,000 dollars, and gives employment to from 6000 to 7000 labourers, or one-third the entire population of the district.
On 20th May we anchored off Cobija, the sole harbour possessed by Bolivia on the west coast, and with a population of 1000. The state of affairs in Bolivia affords a marked example of how closely the development of a country is connected with the fact of its possessing more or less of sea-coast. How great is the commerce, the. prosperity, and the civilization of Chile, a proportionally small strip of not over-fertile soil, but the entire extent of which is sea-coast, compared with the poverty and barbarism of the interior state of Bolivia, so admirably fitted by nature for raising all manner of valuable produce, but whose sole means of communication with the rest of the world is through one insignificant harbour!
The same day we reached Iquique, the southernmost harbour of Peru, with a population of about 4000, and which quite recently has increased greatly in importance, owing to the trade in saltpetre, which is found in immense quantities all along this rainless coast, and of which 1,000,000 hundredweight