Image unavailable: A QUAINT OLD BALCONY IN ORUROA QUAINT OLD BALCONY IN ORURO
Image unavailable: A CORNER IN ORUROA CORNER IN ORURO
railway train leaves La Paz in the morning and arrives at Oruro late in the afternoon. Once a week, as soon after the arrival of this train as possible, the new vestibuled train starts for Antofagasta. There is no chance for a through service, for the Bolivia Railway has a meter gauge, while the Antofagasta line is only three-quarters of a meter wide. Furthermore owing to some unfortunate squabble between the railroad companies, the stations are located at some distance from one another, and the traveller must get across the town as best he may.
When the Antofagasta line was completed, Oruro increased in population by leaps and bounds, and the admiring Bolivians called their city the “Chicago of Bolivia.” The only resemblance, however, that I was able to discover was this forced transfer across the city. The streets of Oruro which one has to cross in going from one terminal station to the other are not paved, and the traveller who happens to take the journey in the rainy reason, when the roads are two feet deep in mud, will wish this were Chicago!
The departure of the weekly train for Antofagasta is just as much of an event for Oruro as that of the weekly steamer is for a port in the Hawaiian Islands or the West Indies. Every one who can comes down to the station, and those who can afford it crowd into the restaurant car, order drinks and enjoy the iced luxuries just as the residents of the Caribbean ports do when a mail-steamer calls.
We had been advised by friends in New York not to attempt to use this railway as it was only intended to carry ore and no one cared how many passengerswere killed. It did give one a creepy feeling to see a heavy sleeping-car balanced on rails that were only twenty-eight inches apart. It seemed like riding on a monorail and I could not help wondering whether, if the berths on one side of the sleeping-car should happen to be filled first, the car would not capsize. Evidently this thought had occurred to the builders of the car, for by an ingenious arrangement the berths are all in the centre of the car, directly over the rails!
We left Oruro at dusk and during the night passed through Challapata, the end of our mule trip, and Uyuni, where Don Santiago’s stages start for Potosí, Tupiza, and La QuiacaviaCotagaita.
The scenery early next morning was not impressive. Before long, however, gigantic volcanic peaks twenty thousand feet high rose into view, one of them, the volcano of Ollawe, emitting a tiny cloud of sulphurous steam that gives a yellow stain to its snow-capped peak. We soon left behind the great sandy tableland of Bolivia, that veritable Thibetan Sahara, and began climbing out of the great plateau through the western Cordillera.
At one of the stations an Indian came aboard the train with a young vicuña that he had raised as a pet and which he was taking to be sold to a gentleman in Chile.
About noon we crossed the frontier. Our train was boarded by two officials. One of them was a Bolivian, seeing to it that departing passengers did not take any gold out of the country and violate the law which prevents any exportation of the yellow metal.The other was a polite Chilean customs officer. Their inspection of the luggage was very superficial. In the afternoon, at Ascotan, after crossing a pass thirteen thousand feet high, we commenced the descent and soon reached the banks of that wonderful white sea of borax, glistening like snow in the sun, which has made this region famous.
The mountains were grand and inspiring but we were so tired of seeing barren brown hillsides that we longed for something green, and yet the further we went, the more desolate became the country. We had entered the nitrate region which is part of that magnificent desert that extends for two thousand miles up and down the west coast of South America.
In the evening we stopped for a few minutes at Calamá, a small town but important as a nitrate centre. It has a moderately good water-supply which enables it to present an attractive greenness in contrast to the absolute aridity of the surrounding desert. In this region are several mines of silver, gold, and copper.
Calamá was the scene of some skirmishing during the revolution against Balmaceda in 1891, but its chief claim to fame rests on a battle that was fought here in the war between Chile, Bolivia, and Peru in 1879, when Bolivia lost her seaport and Chile made a large increase to her territory at the expense of her two northern neighbors. The first thing that Chile did after war was declared was to attack the unprotected Bolivian seaport of Antofagasta. The majority of the population of Antofagasta were Chileans and the small garrison was quite unable to offer any adequate resistance to the Chilean invaders, so the Bolivian authorities retreated at once to Calamá. Thither the Chileans sent six hundred men to attack one hundred and forty. Although the Bolivian forces took up a strong position the Chileans had the advantage of superior numbers and won an overwhelming victory. The affair was insignificant except that it destroyed all the hold that Bolivia had on her seacoast.
During the night, we passed through a large number of little stations in the nitrate country. Early the next morning, as the last half hour of the railway journey, came an exciting ride down a steep grade in full view of the beautiful blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. After weeks of everlasting browns, it was a tremendous relief to our eyes to see such an expanse of blue. Of course no green was to be expected in this vicinity. But blue did just as well.
The railroad runs for some distance parallel to the shore back of the town until it enters the terminal station. We had left Oruro Thursday at 6:30P.M., were in Calamá by nine o’clock Friday evening, and reached Antofagasta soon after seven o’clock Saturday morning.
Hardly were we established in a hotel when we learned that the steamer Mexico, of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, was to sail that morning for Valparaiso. We had had no chance to explore the sandy streets and well-stocked shops of Antofagasta, but this was the first steamer to sail for six or seven days and it might be a week before therewould be another. Furthermore, there was little to tempt us in this modern seaport with its ugly, galvanized-iron workshops and warehouses. So we decided to board the Mexico as fast as possible.
The harbor was crowded with boats and barges. A few steamers and sailing-vessels were lying at anchor waiting for cargoes of minerals of one sort or another, mostly nitrates and copper.
Antofagasta is a seaport of considerable importance, being the port of entry for a large part of Bolivia and northern Chile. Yet it shares with Mollendo the reputation of being the worst harbor on the west coast of South America. There is little protection against westerly and southerly winds. Even in calm weather there is a considerable swell at the boat-landing.
Once in the boat, however, we were charmed by the gambols of inquisitive sea-lions who thrust their snouts out of the water, a biscuit-toss away from the boat. As a counter attraction great flocks of birds flew in circles overhead looking for schools of fish that swim in this bay. As soon as a school was located, the entire flock of birds would pause an instant and then dive with the rapidity of lightning from the airy height straight into the billows, leaving only a splash of white water to show where they had gone. Another moment and they came to the surface, shook themselves, flapped their wings, and were away again to enjoy another magnificent dive a little later.
I had heard much of the terrors of steamship travel on the West Coast. Passengers who had recentlyexperienced it assured me that it was simply horrible. We must have been very lucky, for we found the Mexico most comfortable and quite as good as one could expect in this part of the world. Of course she was neither so large nor so luxurious as the average trans-Atlantic liner. On the other hand she was not intended to carry luxury-loving travellers three thousand miles over a rough ocean and keep them amused, contented, and well-fed for a week. Her task consists in stopping every afternoon, anchoring in a badly-sheltered bay or an open roadstead, landing passengers, merchandise, and cattle into row-boats and barges, taking on cargoes of hides, coffee, or provisions; and meanwhile acting as a home for itinerant greengrocers whose business it is to provide this two thousand mile desert with fresh vegetables. Furthermore she was built to sail over the comparatively smooth waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean and provide for passengers who are travelling in a climate of perpetual spring and summer. All of this she does admirably.
The staterooms opened onto the promenade deck. There was a well-stocked library of fiction with books in four languages. The Chilean stewards were polite and obliging. Altogether we had little to find fault with. The food might have been a little better, but when one looked toward the land and saw that bleak desert coast continuing for hour after hour and day after day and realized that in the mountains behind it there were even greater desert solitudes, it did not seem surprising that the food was not up to our ideas of what it should be on board an ocean steamer.
Most of the passengers were natives of the West Coast. To them the diet seemed quite luxurious. To us who had come from thepostesof southern Bolivia the table fairly groaned with abundance. I can readily believe that a traveller, who, while on his way south from Panama to Lima, has his first South American meals on board of one of these West Coast steamers would find the fare distressingly bad and the boats not very clean. Perhaps the discipline would seem lax and the service execrable. It all depends on one’s point of view.
If one is going to travel in South America at all, it is necessary to make up one’s mind to put up with a lot of this sort of thing. It need only be remembered that these boats are as safe and comfortable as those in other parts of the world, and that they have better accommodations than will be found anywhere in South America outside of half a dozen cities.
The first day after leaving Antofagasta brought us to Caldera. On the second day we reached Coquimbo which seems to be a flourishing seaport. Of course there are no wharves, but the bay is fairly well protected and steamers are able to anchor within three quarters of a mile of the landing-stage. New villas in course of construction on the heights at the south end of the bay testify to the prosperity of two of the leading business men of the place.
Devoted as Coquimbo has been to commercial pursuits, very little attention has been given to making the buildings attractive, and only recently has an effort been made to improve the appearance ofthe plaza. I visited two book shops in the hopes of getting some local prints and found a recently published anthology of the poets of Coquimbo! The books for the most part were those such as are found in the usual South American book store: French novels, French text-books, a few Spanish novels, and the local legal commentaries and law books.
It is a night’s journey by steamer from Coquimbo to Valparaiso. The temperature was much cooler than we had expected, and grew more so as we neared Valparaiso. To be sure, Valparaiso is as far south of the equator as San Francisco is north and the same general climatic conditions prevail.
The beautiful bay and harbor of Valparaiso have been repeatedly described by enthusiastic visitors for many years. Since the terrible earthquake of 1906, the city has lost much of its beauty, although many of the buildings have been restored and business is going on quite briskly. In the harbor were fifteen or twenty ocean steamers lying at anchor, two or three Chilean men-of-war and two large floating dry docks capable of taking care of the West Coast merchant steamers.
The naval dry dock is at Talcahuano. Although Valparaiso is the principal seaport on the West Coast, there are no wharves. The business section is built on the old beach and on a terrace. The hills rise abruptly from this narrow shelf and the residential district is on the hills. Elevators and trolley-lines connect the upper and the lower city. The railroad station is very near the boat-landing.
The railway fares were very moderate and the officials of the road seemed to us quite courteous and obliging although, during our stay in Santiago, we read in one of the local newspapers a letter from a lady globe-trotter who declared the Chilean railway officials were the rudest and most disobliging that she had found anywhere in the world. Chilean railways have grown tremendously during the past fourteen years. At the time of the revolution against Balmaceda, in 1892, there were barely seven hundred miles; while, at the time of the Scientific Congress, the trackage had increased to three thousand miles of which half is owned and operated by the government. More lines are in course of construction.
Valparaiso is the commercial capital of Chile and her Stock Exchange determines the rate of exchange. The shops of Valparaiso are filled with things that appeal to Anglo-Saxons, for there is a large British colony here.
Perhaps it was natural that we welcomed most eagerly of all the presence of an attractive English book shop where we purchased files of English newspapers and all the recent pictorial weeklies and magazines that we could find. Partly for this reason and partly because we had grown tired of looking at scenery, the four hours’ railroad journey between Valparaiso and Santiago passed without making much impression on us so far as our immediate surroundings were concerned, and almost before we knew it, we had entered the political and social capital of Chile.
Fromthe railway station to the centre of Santiago is a two-mile ride on a fine parkway, the Alameda de las Deliciosas. It has rows of trees, muddy little brooks, and a shady promenade. Statues to some of Chile’s more famous heroes have been placed in the centre of the promenade, and stone benches, more artistic than comfortable, line its sides near the brook. This sounds rather romantic, but the waters of the stream, which is in reality a ditch two feet wide, are so dirty that it suggests an open sewer rather than a mountain brook.
During our stay some one became disgusted with either the brook or the stone benches and exploded a bomb under one of the latter. It happened late in the night and nothing was hurt, except the bench, which was quite demolished. Had the bomb gone off earlier in the evening there would have been a list of casualties, for all the world walks up and down here in the cool of the evening admiring the view of the Andes. The strictly fashionable world confines itself more often to the pavements of the principal plazas where it may be found about nine o’clock, on evenings when the band is playing, walking slowly round and round, enjoying a glimpse of itself. Butthe broad Alameda, as wide as three or four ordinary streets, is distinctly the more popular resort, and on festivals like Christmas or New Year’s, it is thronged with merry-makers.
At the end of the Alameda, beyond the centre of the city, is the romantic rock of Santa Lucia. Santiago owes its situation to the fact that this precipitous hill of solid rock was left by nature in the centre of a rich, fertile plain. The rock formed a natural fortress and was fortified by the Spaniards when they first came to Chile. After having been the scene of numerous bloody battles during Chile’s colonial days, Santa Lucia is now a wonderfully attractive park with fine driveways, well-made paths that command splendid panoramas of city, plain, and mountains, and a theatre and restaurant on its summit. The view is remarkably fine. The city spreads itself out on all sides although the principal plaza and the business district lie more to the west. The snow-capped Andes, the most characteristic feature of Santiago scenery, rise majestically to the east. Low foot-hills bound the western horizon. The fertile plain, which is none other than the great central valley of Chile, lies to the north and south. Magnificent vineyards yielding a larger crop of wine than those of California itself, are scattered over this valley. Chile repeatedly reminds one of California by its climate, its fruit, its mountain scenery, and its arid coast. California has one advantage, its width between the ocean and the Sierras, particularly in the fertile region, is so much greater than that of Chile.
The hotels of Santiago are not so luxurious and modern as those of Buenos Aires, yet we found the “Annexo B” of the Oddo to be perfectly comfortable. It is really a “bachelor apartment hotel.” No meals, except early coffee, were served there, so we took advantage of the generous hospitality of the two leading clubs, the Club Santiago and the Union. Wearied as I was by the dismal brown desert of southern Bolivia, the gardens and fountains in the patio of the Club Santiago seemed like Paradise itself. To be able to sit at small tables, served by courteous waiters, and enjoy immaculate linen and the best of food and drink, was sufficiently novel to be charming, but only half as welcome as the restful green of the trees and the pleasant splash of the fountains.
We soon discovered that the coolest and easiest way to see Santiago was from the second story of an electric car, especially when the upper tier of seats was covered. The fare on the roof is intended for the pocket-books of second-class passengers and is only fivecentavos(a cent and a quarter!) which makes it cheaper to take a car than to walk. Unfortunately for the pleasures of life in Santiago, fashion frowns on any one who climbs the stairs when he can afford to ride below.
Our friends would not even allow us to ride below, however, and put us instead into a kind of “hack” that is known here as an “Americano.”
It seems that several generations ago, an American resident introduced a carriage which he thought peculiarly adapted to Santiago. It might be describedas a two-seated rockaway. This vehicle soon became a vogue and is now the established style for hackney carriages. There are victorias for hire on the principal plazas, but their rates are extortionately high while those of the “Americanos” are ridiculously low. It is well they are, for otherwise no one would patronize them. They seem to be without springs, cleanliness, or any ordinary comforts. They are not without fleas and other insects. As you go bumping and rattling over the cobblestones of Santiago in one of these antiquated vehicles you come to wonder whether the Chilean’s proverbial dislike of Americans has not been intensified by the discomforts he has suffered in the “Americanos!”
The first Pan-American Scientific Congress was the fruit of an idea started some years ago in Buenos Aires where delegates from a few of the South American countries met for the firstLatin-AmericanScientific Congress. That was followed by a second which met at Montevideo, and a third, at Rio, each showing an increase in numbers and importance. Plans for the fourth Congress were left entirely in the hands of a Chilean organization committee who decided that the time was ripe to include the United States in the list of invitations and make the Congress Pan-American instead of Latin-American. The visits of a number of distinguished North Americans, including Secretary Root and Professors Moses, Rowe, and Shepherd, had done much to pave the way for friendly feeling between the scientific men of Chile and those of the United States, and the proposal of the organization committee met with heartyapproval. Owing to the efforts of Secretary Root and Professor Rowe, the United States Congress passed an appropriation to send an official delegation to the Congress. A number of our leading universities likewise appointed delegates.
The programme suggested for the Congress was replete with all manner of topics for discussion and covered almost the entire field of knowledge, from questions of sanitation to those of international law, and from the antiquity of primitive man in America to modern methods of primary instruction.
As was to be expected from such a comprehensive programme, the intention was not so much to bring out the results of the latest research as to furnish topics that would be sure to interest the delegates. Even the meetings of our learned societies in the States are largely social. To many of those who attend the chief attraction is the opportunity of meeting others who are interested in the same lines, and the programme is merely an excuse for the meeting. The Pan-American Scientific Congress was not far different. It offered an excellent opportunity for the scientists of Latin-America to renew old acquaintance, and it gave the favored delegates from the United States a chance to make new friends among men whose interests are chiefly intellectual.
Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that few of the papers presented new facts or the results of prolonged and scholarly research. Nor is it at all remarkable that the most animated discussions took place in the sessions devoted to international law and politics, education, and political science. Theseare topics on which every man has ideas which he is not afraid to express. And these discussions served as a means of introducing men that might not otherwise have met.
Politics were kept in the background, as far as possible, but national feelings occasionally found opportunity for expression.
Chile is the one country in South America that has never had and cannot have a boundary dispute with Brazil. The Portuguese-American Republic is not likely to meddle with West Coast matters, and Chile has nothing to gain from troubling the beautiful harbors of Rio and Bahia. Indeed, so lacking have been any causes of friction between the two Republics that they are fond of emphasizing theentente cordialethat exists between them. It was natural, consequently, that the third Latin-American Scientific Congress, meeting in Rio under Brazilian organization, should have chosen Santiago as the seat of the fourth congress, and it was a return of the courtesy when the organizing committee at Santiago, composed of Chileans, selected the local Brazilian Minister as President.
The Congress opened with formal ceremonies, fine music, and much oration. In answer to the roll-call of republics, the leading delegate from each country responded with befittingly felicitous remarks.
It is true that the learned Brazilian who replied, when the name of his country was called, with a speech in Portuguese lasting nearly an hour in length, stretched the friendly feelings toward the Brazilian delegation almost to the breaking point. Few of the audience could understand enough of what he said to follow his wordy address. Almost everyone thought that its unnecessary length, added to the fact of its being the only address of the evening that was not in Spanish, the official language of the Congress, was at least a breach of good manners.
The state of mind of the Chilean audience was reflected in the daily papers the next morning when full space was given to verbatim reports of the speeches made by the representatives of all the other republics and not even a synopsis was accorded to the speech of the learned Brazilian. The Brazilian delegation took umbrage at this and also at the ovation that was given the Argentine representative whose speech was short, crisp, and filled with expressions of friendship. Like the Mexican delegate, he had appreciated the fact that there were of necessity seventeen other addresses, and that five minutes devoted to cordial greetings was better than fifty minutes of erudite information. A month afterwards when the Brazilian delegation was on its way home, I read in the newspaper reports from Buenos Aires that the Brazilians felt that the Chileans had gone out of their way to make friendly overtures to Argentina, Brazil’s natural rival. But the only things of which they had any cause to complain were brought about by their own unfortunate mistakes and in no wise indicated any desire on Chile’s part to weaken the ties of her long friendship with Brazil.
Another interesting thing in the formal opening
Image unavailable: BATTLEFIELD OF MAIPO NEAR SANTIAGOBATTLEFIELD OF MAIPO NEAR SANTIAGO
meeting was that although the Peruvian delegate received one of the most enthusiastic and heartiest ovations of any, he took it in stolid silence, making no motion and giving no sign that he heard or understood what was going on. As a matter of fact, he and his colleagues felt out of place. Peruvians hate and dread Chile and feel grievously wronged by her continued occupation of Peru’s southernmost provinces, Tacna and Arica. Consequently, they accepted all the Chilean overtures with very bad grace, feeling that it would have been much more desirable to have had fewer fine words and more kind actions. It was apparent that the Chileans were doing everything in their power to try and patch up the quarrel and let bygones be bygones, but the Peruvians felt that the demonstration lacked the essential quality of sincerity which, of course, could only have been given by a sacrifice of the provinces of Tacna and Arica which Chile had no intention whatever of making. Throughout the meetings the Peruvian delegates held themselves somewhat aloof and took part in the exercises with a certain dignity which showed how little they enjoyed being the recipients of Chilean hospitality. The Chileans were undoubtedly annoyed at the cool reception of their friendly overtures. It is entirely possible that this contributed not a little to Chilean excitement over the incident of La Corona, of which I shall have occasion to speak later on.
The greater part of the time of the Congress, counted by hours, was given over to receptions and teas, breakfasts and dinners, visits to vineyards,public works, and exhibitions, military tournaments, picnics, and balls.
Hardly had we got settled in our hotel before invitations began to pour in, and we soon found that the hospitable Chilenos had made up their minds to overwhelm us with kindnesses from the moment of our arrival until our departure. Never did a city give itself over more heartily and more gracefully to entertaining an international gathering. For three weeks, hardly a day passed that was not marked by elaborate entertainments. Balls, distinguished by elegance and magnificence, were attended by the youth and beauty of the most aristocratic society in South America, clad in the height of fashion and behaving just as society does in other parts of the world. The Club Santiago was repeatedly the scene of banquets whose brilliance would have rather startled those good people in the United States who think of South America as being something like an African jungle.
Most of the outdoor festivals were held at the racetrack where a fine large grandstand, capable of seating ten thousand people, faces a beautiful field and the magnificent snow-capped Andes. Here, on a sunny afternoon, Santiago society met in a battle of flowers for the benefit of charity. The participants, either standing on the terrace in front of the grandstand or driving by in handsomely decorated equipages, were neither noisy nor boisterous and yet entered heartily into a very pretty event.
One evening was devoted to the volunteer firemen of Santiago. Following a parade was a distribution of premiums for bravery and length of service. As there is no paid fire department, the city depends on these volunteers for fire protection, and it has always been fashionable to belong to one of the best companies.
For over three hundred years Santiago has been the home of Spanish families of distinction. Their income has never been so swollen as to tempt them to extravagant display or so small as to drive them to petty pursuits for the sake of gaining a livelihood.
In such matters as magnificent hotels, expensive restaurants, luxurious clubs, and showy automobiles, Santiago readily yields the palm to Buenos Aires. There has been no great boom in Chile at all comparable to that which Argentina has seen. Furthermore, earthquakes and fires have done their worst to impoverish a nation not too bountifully supplied with natural resources. To be sure, the enormous nitrate deposits of northern Chile have made the government able to distribute millions of dollars among its followers without overtaxing the population. Money has come in so easily from the export duties on nitrate that no Finance Minister has been greatly troubled by his budget.
Although Santiago cannot boast of as many evidences of wealth as Buenos Aires, she has other qualifications which give her the right to hold her head higher than any city in South America. The chief of these is her literary preëminence.
She has produced during the past generation more writers of ability than any other South American city. Easily first among these is José Toribio Medina,whose untiring industry and genius for bibliography have made him famous all over the world. Aided by a devoted wife, he has produced more scholarly works than any other man now living in South America, and more volumes of first-class bibliography than any in the western hemisphere. A born collector, he spent years in various parts of the world purchasing rare books in out-of-the-way places and making notes of unpurchasable volumes in the great libraries, until he had built up a magnificent collection of early Americana that is almost unparalleled.
His modest house is replete with interest. Three large rooms are lined from floor to ceiling with his treasures. One room is devoted almost entirely to early Mexican imprints. To see gathered together in one place ten thousand pamphlets printed before Mexico secured her independence, leads one to modify somewhat those conceptions of Spanish intolerance for learning which we have inherited from some of our older writers. To be sure, the pamphlets are mostly of a religious character. However much one may disagree with the dogmas they contain one cannot but admit that the intention of their publishers was to raise the religious and moral tone of the community. In the back part of Sr. Medina’s house are the rooms of the “Elzevir” Press. Here have been printed those sumptuous bibliographical quartos that are the envy of every librarian and the despair of the average scholar. As Sr. Medina was originally a printer, it is his recreation to assist in putting his volumes into type. It is not often in themodern world that one finds the whole process of making a book existing under one roof. Here are the sources; here lives the scholar who knows them; here he extracts their virtues; and from this same place he sends forth to the world the results of his investigations, printed and bound, ready for the use of the student.
Besides Sr. Medina, Santiago has produced a number of historians, men like Vicuña Mackenna and Diego Barros Arana who for careful statement and concise diction have not been surpassed in South America. Even the late Bartolome Mitre of Buenos Aires, one of Argentina’s greatest statesmen and her greatest historian, never succeeded in getting away from the Spanish trick of efflorescence in language which greatly marred his work from the literary point of view.
Santiago’s literary preëminence is further shown both by the fact that in no other city in South America are there so many people who are fond of books and reading—witness the large number of new and second-hand book stores—and the excellent list of works that are published here every year. While Buenos Aires, with a population three times as large, can boast of a few booksellers whose shops are devoted to showy imprints, and who cater to the needs of those who buy their libraries by the yard, there is little evidence in Argentina of a discriminating group of booklovers like those who patronize the score of old book stalls in one of Santiago’s streets near the university.
On the outskirts of Santiago is an excellent manual training school where several hundred boys are lodged, fed, and taught all manner of trades, from printing to forging, and carpentry to carving. Particular attention is paid to electricity, and a large number of the students become practical electricians. At the exhibition of the year’s work we were particularly impressed with the fact that the school is able to sell nearly all the articles made by the students. Churns, derricks, chairs, and bells, well made and cheap, gave evidence that the school was run on sound business principles.
Not far off is the Quinta Normal, a fine large reservation where normal and agricultural schools rub shoulders with museums of fine arts and natural history. The result is a charming place for study and a delightful public park.
During our visit, the annual fine arts exhibition was in progress and included a number of extremely meritorious paintings by Sotomayor, a Spanish painter who has recently been engaged by the Chilean government to teach in the Art School. Chile is certainly to be congratulated on the class of teachers that she brings from abroad for her schools, and her latest acquisition is well up to the standard.
Chile’s appreciation of art and her policy of securing able foreign talent to teach her youth are greatly in her favor. She is in fact a young and vigorous nation. Her people are bred in a splendid climate, well suited to the development of a strong race. In fact the Araucanian aborigines were superior to anything that the Spaniards found in either North or South America. The early Spanish immigrants werean unusually good lot. And there has been a striking admixture of Anglo-Saxon blood as is shown by the frequency of English family names in Santiago.
As is well known, in the south of Chile there are many Germans and it is commonly cited as one of the danger spots of German expansion in South America. Those who argue so fail to take into consideration the remarkably strong hold that Chile has on her children. In no other part of South America do foreigners become so fond of the soil as in Chile. Even those of English ancestry are prouder of the history of Chile than they are of that of England. I have heard them go so far in praise of their adopted land as to deride England and predict her downfall. In Buenos Aires, on the other hand, they continually revisit the homeland and pride themselves on their close connection with it. There one sees little of that devotion to the country of their adoption which is in evidence here.
Among the spectacles provided for the benefit of the delegates, the most interesting was a military tournament that was worth going a long way to see. The Chilean cavalryman is a remarkably daring horseman. His Spanish and Araucanian ancestry have given him qualities that appeal to the eye and to one’s admiration of courage. Perhaps the most remarkable feat of the afternoon was the charge made by a squadron of cavalry over a burning hurdle. A brush fence, well soaked in kerosene, was erected in front of the grandstand and set on fire. Starting to windward, the squadron charged, vaulted over the flames and dashed away in the smoke, onlyto turn in the face of a strong wind which blew the smoke and flames into the very faces of the horses, dash back again, and in perfect order clear the fiery obstacle with as much ease and grace as though it had been a peaceful country fence. As an exhibition of training it was extremely significant.
President Montt,[1]who was extremely kind and courteous to us, and is one of the most able and honest officials that South America has ever seen, sent us an invitation one morning to attend the official inspection of the Military Academy. All the Chilean officers speak German and most of them have spent from two to three years studying in Germany. Like the army, the school is run on German models and is extremely well kept up. The neatness, discipline, cleanliness, and excellent sanitary arrangements were in marked contrast to most public buildings in South America. The cadets are a fine-looking lot of boys who are largely put on their honor. Few rules are made for their guidance but when any one is guilty of conduct unbecoming in an officer and a gentleman, he is permanently discharged from the academy. The instructors lay great stress on map-making. The exhibition of maps made by the students was remarkably interesting. The students are taught not only to make outline maps, but also to construct models of battlefields and even to draw sectional panoramas on a uniform scale. Three cadets are sent out to survey a position and to return in half an hour, each with a drawing which, fitted to that of his mates, will make a panorama that willenable the commanding officer to understand the situation and direct his forces intelligently. This is only one instance of the thoroughness with which the cadets are instructed. It is not remarkable that several other Latin-American countries have sent for Chilean officers to teach their cadets, and have even sent their own boys to study here.
The Congress closed on the evening of the 5th of January, 1909, with a grand banquet that was a blaze of glory. Eloquent speeches of mutual congratulation were delivered by the representatives of various parts of the two continents. Perhaps the most striking thing of the evening was the contrast between the speeches of that member of the American delegation who had been chosen to respond to the toast, “The United States,” and the one that followed it delivered by a brilliant young orator from Uruguay. As might have been expected, the latter was fiery, flowery, and ecstatic, while the former was dignified and well within the bounds of reason even in his compliments. The unexpected and very striking difference was that the American spoke better Spanish, pure Castilian, melodious and graceful. The Uruguayan speech was in the offensive dialect of Montevideo, harsh to the ear, resembling Portuguese in its guttural quality.
The only other speech of the evening that equalled the North American’s in beauty of diction was that of General Uribe Uribe, the delegate from Colombia. He ably upheld the reputation of his country for speaking the best Castilian in America. So far as one who is not a native may be permitted the privilege of judging by the effect on the ear, the inhabitants of Colombia and Peru speak the best, while the people of the countries of the River Plate speak the worst and most impure Spanish of any on the continent. The impurity is a natural result of their century-long dealings with the Portuguese in Southern Brazil; of the presence in their midst of a very large number of Italians whose speech is so like the Spanish that it easily corrupts it; and also of the fact that during the colonial epoch, Buenos Aires was not a centre of Spanish culture like Bogotá or Lima. On the contrary, as is well known, Buenos Aires was filled with a fairly rough lot of traders who made their fortune by smuggling and other illegitimate transactions. However much we may be inclined to justify such actions on their part by the injustice of the Spanish trade laws governing the commerce of the Indies, we cannot be oblivious to the fact that the kind of individual who would be willing to make his living by smuggling would probably not take pains to speak his native tongue with either elegance or careful attention to grammatical rules. In Lima and Bogotá, on the other hand, society was dominated by the official class, and however critically we may regard these proud Spaniards who were sent by their King to govern America, we must be willing to admit that they were likely to speak the beautiful language of Castile as perfectly as possible.
So much has been said of the inability of Americans to learn Spanish properly and to speak it gracefully (it is a common proverb in South America that English and Americans murder the soft Castilian)that it was a great pleasure to hear the official language of the Congress spoken better by a North American than by a South American. Furthermore, it was characteristic of their courtesy that the Spanish-American delegates at once complimented us on such an achievement.
Twodays after the closing banquet, we rose early and hurried down to the station to take the morning express for Valparaiso. Notwithstanding the unseasonableness of the hour and the fatigue of recent entertainments, a large number of the hospitable folk of Santiago were on hand to bid us “Godspeed” on our journey. It is an extremely pleasant custom, this taking the trouble to welcome the coming and speed the parting guest by going out of your way to greet him at the railway station, or if in the country, to saddle your horse and ride out of town for a mile or two to accompany him. It takes time, to be sure, and time that, according to American standards, might be more profitably expended on attending to the business of adding up dollars and cents. Yet it does increase the store of friendly feelings in the world. The casual visitor to the United States too often has occasion to feel that we are so wrapped up in money-making that we have no time to be polite. As a recent British visitor said in comparing us with Mexico, “when one crosses the Rio Grande, the brisk and selfish American atmosphere is left behind.”
After an uneventful journey of four hours in a parlor car, we reached the water-front of Valparaiso.
Before going on board the steamer we had a few hours to give to sight-seeing and the purchase of furs brought here from the Straits of Magellan and the Andean highlands. We had time also to feel something of the excitement caused by the rapid fluctuation in the value of the paper dollar on the floor of the Valparaiso Stock Exchange.
The national currency fluctuates considerably from day to day and is the most serious drawback to commercial prosperity in Chile. During my stay in Santiago it fluctuated so violently that some of the prominent business men were very evidently less interested in their legitimate business than in speculating in currency. The unit of value is thepeso, worth, while we were there, about twenty-five cents. It has gone as low as fifteen cents, and as high as forty cents. All current accounts in the large importing houses are carried in pounds sterling.
British commercial houses have a very strong hold on Valparaiso. So important are the dealings with Great Britain that English is actually the language of commerce. This is the more noticeable because, although no educated South American would for a moment admit that he could not read and speak French, outside of the larger cities very few South Americans can even understand English. Nor do I remember to have met more than one or two, outside of Chile, who pretended to any knowledge of German. A knowledge of English is generally limited to those who have been in the United States or England and to those who have had large business dealings with British commercial houses. At thesame time, English is taught in many of the schools in Chile and we repeatedly met young Chileans who were anxious to practice it on us.
Great Britain has always favored Chile ever since her merchantmen, headed by the gallant Admiral Thomas Cochran, Earl of Dundonald, created the Chilean navy which swept the West Coast clean of Spanish ships in the Wars of Independence. It was the Chilean navy that enabled San Martin’s troops to reach Peru and strike at the last stronghold of Spain in South America. In those days, most of the vessels were commanded by English and Scottish officers. The tendencies of the navy are still British, and this extends even to the uniform of both officers and cadets. In a word, the navy is as English as the army is German. Furthermore, it has long maintained its preëminence among the navies of South America. When Brazil gets the dreadnoughts for which she has contracted, this supremacy will temporarily disappear.
When we boarded the Chilean steamer Limarí, we found among our fellow passengers quite a number of pleasant-faced little naval cadets bound for some point up the coast where they were to join their training-ship. They smoked too many cigarettes, and their manners on board were not particularly good, although they were probably no worse than a similar group of American schoolboys would have been under the circumstances. Certainly our fellow passengers were not as bad as those cadets whom Hugh de Bonelli encountered in his journey from Panama to Lima in 1850 and describes in his entertaining “Travels in Bolivia.” In one corner of the saloon on his steamer “sat an elderly gentleman and a maiden lady, brother and sister, surrounded by parrots, a monkey, two cats, and three ugly little dogs, all of whom they alternately kissed and hugged. Two young cadets of sixteen, in uniform, who, without a figure of speech, may be said to have smoked themselves away—for they were scarcely perceptible behind the volumes of smoke they emitted,—got into disgrace with these worthy people. One of these young sparks threw down, on the sly, a lighted cigar upon the monkey, who had been watching him. The animal seized it, and put the lighted end of it into his mouth; then screamed, chattered, and cried—jumped upon the head of the old lady, who was so frightened that she fainted away; then upon that of the old man, from which he fell to the ground with the old gentleman’s wig firmly held between his jaws!”
We found the Limarí well crowded with passengers, most of them Chileans bound for Coquimbo, Antofagasta, and Iquique. The absence of a railway makes the semi-weekly steamers the only means of communication on this desert coast. Yet it was not until we had experienced the decided inconveniences of overcrowding and felt the relief caused by the heavy disembarkation at the northern Chilean ports that we fully realized how dependent the Chileans are on the control of sea-power. They are now planning to construct a longitudinal railway that shall run parallel to the shore line, and make them less dependent on naval predominance.
The next day after leaving Valparaiso, we reached Coquimbo. The cable had been used to warn the authorities that there were distinguished passengers on board, and the leading citizens of the town came out to invite thedelegadosashore and took us for a delightful drive along the beach from Coquimbo to the old Spanish settlement of La Serena. At the latter place we were entertained at the Club where an informal reception was held, with the aid of the usual cocktails and champagne.
At Caldera we were spared from official recognition and spent our time catching lizards on the sandy hills back of the town.
The third day brought us to Antofagasta where several of the delegation left to take the railroad to Bolivia over the route by which I had come out a month ago. The sea-lions and the diving birds were playing about the harbor in the same fascinating manner as when I first saw this port. But the effect, after living for several weeks amid the green parks of Santiago and enjoying several days of blue ocean, was far less striking than when we came from the bleak brown deserts of the Bolivian plateau.
The morning of the fourth day saw us at Iquique, once the centre of Peru’s nitrate industry, now rivaling Valparaiso as the scene of Chilean commercial activity. Numbers of sailing-vessels were lying in the roadstead waiting for cargoes of the precious fertilizers. It was a pleasure to see several of the vessels actually flying the American flag! The West Coast depends largely on Oregon and Puget Sound for its lumber-supply and these three-masted Americanschooners find a profitable trade in bringing lumber and returning with nitrates. The Limarí’s cargo consisted largely of merchandise which had come from Europe and America through the Straits of Magellan. While this was being discharged we had time to see the city, where a few months before an angry mob of strikers from the nitrate works, had been mown down by well-trained government troops.
We were entertained here by Mr. Rea Hanna, the enthusiastic American Consul, who has a difficult rôle to play in a town where Chileans are in control but where the Peruvian Club is the centre of aristocratic society. That he is universally liked speaks volumes.
At the southern end of the town there is good bathing; and in addition, pavilions and beer gardens to entice the weary clerk from the nitrate offices. The well-arranged grounds of the Jockey Club afford opportunity for social intercourse, polo, and tennis. But the most interesting place in Iquique is what is known as the Combination, the central office of the Nitrate Association, where the different companies, mostly English, unite to arrange scales of prices and quantity of output and maintain an efficient Bureau of Propaganda.
People frequently confuse Chilean nitrates with guano. One is a mineral, the other an animal product. Whether the nitrate fields were not originally guano deposits is a moot point, but I believe this idea has been abandoned. There is, however, considerable difference of opinion as to the actual origin of the great nitrate desert.
As there is a heavy export duty on the nitrates, Chile has been, and will continue to be, as long as the supply holds out, in the very enviable position of making foreigners pay the bulk of her taxes. How long this exceptional state of affairs will last is a problem for the geologists to settle. As there is undoubtedly enough material in sight to satisfy the demands of the present generation and the next, no one has any very stringent reason for husbanding the output or for investing the national income from the export duties in such a way as to provide for the exigencies of future tax-payers. The natural result of this easy method of securing a revenue is a tendency towards extravagance in the Chilean budget and an absence of careful supervision. Few people care whether the money is spent for the best interests of the country. Political scientists say that when the voter has a very light burden of taxes to bear, he does not mind seeing the government’s money wasted or his favorite politicians grow wealthy. Doubtless in time such a condition of affairs will have a serious influence for evil on Chilean character. As yet the whole industry is too young to have produced any marked effect. Fortunately for the race, the nitrate fields will probably become exhausted before any lasting harm is done. Nevertheless Chile would do well to take warning from the experience of Peru, whose revenue for many years depended almost exclusively on the yield of guano from the Chincha Islands. The exhaustion of that valuable product left the country in a far worse state than she was before her easily acquired incomehad commenced to corrupt her politicians and financiers.
We left Iquique late that night and arrived early the next morning at Pisagua, the northern limit of the nitrate country. Like all the other ports at which we had touched since leaving Valparaiso, it is the terminus of a little railway that goes back a few miles into the interior and brings down minerals of one sort or another; sometimes copper ore, generally nitrate, more rarely tin and silver.
In the course of the afternoon we reached Arica. The southern side of the bay is guarded by a picturesque cliff, not unlike Gibraltar, which is celebrated in Peruvian history as the site of a memorable battle in the war with Chile. At its crisis the commandant of the Peruvian garrison, rather than fall into the hands of the victorious Chileans, spurred his horse over the summit and was dashed to pieces among the rocks and waves at the base of the cliff. To the Anglo-Saxon mind, he would have died more creditably had he killed as many Chileans as possible first, and fallen face to the front. But the more spectacular death that he chose appeals strongly to the Latin temperament.
Yet this trick of committing suicide instead of fighting to the last breath is not a characteristic of Spanish heroes generally. It is not easy to say whether the gallant soldier was influenced or not by any Quichua ancestor that he may have had. Readers of Prescott’s “Conquest of Peru” will remember that in the attack on Cuzco, made by one of the Pizarros, a Quichua noble who had greatly distinguished himself in the Inca army, seeing that his cause was irretrievably lost, jumped over the precipice on the south side of the Sacsahuaman hill, and preferred to be dashed to pieces rather than to see how many Spaniards he could kill first. He in turn may have inherited the tendency from remote ancestors in the Pacific Ocean. On the Island of Kusaie there is a picturesque waterfall where, according to tradition, two young chiefs, defeated in battle, ended their lives by casting themselves from the precipice into the boiling pool below. The habit of jumping over a precipice in preference to being killed in battle by one’s enemies is not uncommon in the history of the Pacific races, both in the Carolines and in the Hawaiian Islands.
Arica is particularly interesting to Americans because it was here that the U. S. S. Wateree was carried inland by the great tidal wave of 1868. Not only has the port been devastated by earthquakes and tidal waves but also by fire. At present it has a very squalid appearance. Before the completion in 1871 of the Southern Peruvian railway from Mollendo to Puno, Arica was an important port of entry for Bolivia. When the Chileans finish the railway which they are building to connect this port with La Paz by a line that shall cross the mountains back of Tacna, this importance will be restored.
At the close of the war between Chile and Peru the Treaty of Peace known as the Treaty of Ancon stipulated that the territory of the provinces of Tacna and Arica should remain in the possession of Chile for ten years from 1883 to 1893. The Treatycontinues: “The term having expired, a plebiscite shall decide by popular vote if the territory of these provinces shall remain definitely under the dominion and sovereignty of Chile, or if they shall continue to form part of the territory of Peru. The Government of the country in whose favor the provinces of Tacna and Arica shall be annexed shall pay to the other ten millions of dollars Chilean silver money or Peruviansoles, of equal percentage of fine silver and of equal weight as the former. A special protocol, which shall be considered an integral part of the present treaty, shall establish the form in which the plebiscite shall take place, and the terms and conditions in which the ten millions of dollars shall be paid by the nation remaining in possession of Tacna and Arica.”
As is well known, the special protocol, establishing the form in which the plebiscite is to take place, has never been agreed upon. The principal obstacle is that since 1883 a large number of Chileans have settled, voluntarily or otherwise, in the provinces, enough to decide the vote of the plebiscite in favor of Chile. The Chilean government says all present residents should vote. The Peruvians maintain that the voters in the plebiscite should consist only of those who were residents of the provinces at the termination of the war. Naturally, the Chileans will not agree to this as there is no doubt but that the majority of such persons are of inherent Peruvian preferences.
It is now seventeen years since the plebiscite was due to take place and the question is still an openone. The fact, however, that in a recent treaty with Bolivia, Chile promised to construct, at her expense, a railway from Arica to La Paz, and has since granted a contract to a reliable company to build that railway, would seem to indicate that Chile considers the question settled although no plebiscite has been held. No nation voluntarily commits itself to spend millions of dollars in building a railway in a province which it considers in the slightest degree likely to become the property of a neighbor. The Peruvians have not overlooked the calm way in which the Chileans take it for granted that Tacna and Arica are to be permanently Chilean territory, but they are in no position to dispute such a conclusion. Their fighting strength is far below the Chilean standard and they know it.
The whole question was brought vividly to the fore just at the time of our visit by a little international episode known as the “Incident of La Corona.” Peru had erected a magnificent memorial to her soldiers that fell in the conflict with Chile. As was customary and proper, the representatives of the various foreign powers resident in Lima, requested permission to deposit formal wreaths at the base of the monument as an expression of the friendship of their governments. The Chilean diplomat was not behind the others, and his request was granted, only to be denied later on when his funeral wreath had been made ready for the exercises. At this he took great umbrage, demanded his passports, and sailed for home. His arrival in Santiago was the occasion of a popular outburst. There was a strong demandon the part of a portion of the public that the government resent the Peruvian “insult” in a very practical way, viz., by holding elections in the provinces of Tacna and Arica and summoning representatives to the National Congress in the same manner as from the other Chilean provinces. This would be taking the last step in formal annexation of the disputed territory and final recognition of it as a definite part of the national domain.
I was travelling in the interior of Peru at the time of these demonstrations and it may be imagined that the press reports in the Peruvian newspapers did not underestimate the gravity of the situation. The fact that the Chilean government did not take any active steps toward formally annexing Tacna and Arica in response to the popular demand was attributed by many Peruvians and not a few Chileans to the fact that in the harbor of Lima there happened to be at this time a powerful squadron of American battleships. The long-standing friendship between the United States and Peru, and the active hostility between the United States and Chile at the time of the fall of Balmaceda and the “Baltimore” episode, were regarded by the Peruvians as sufficient guaranty of an intention on the part of the United States to interfere in case trouble arose over an attempt on the part of Chile to terminate the territorial dispute in a high-handed manner.
Whether or not the government at Washington indicated its wishes in any way or expressed any opinion whatever; whether or not the presence of our battleship fleet in the waters of the West Coastat this time was intentional or purely accidental, are matters about which I know nothing and which do not affect the actual results. As it stands, the Peruvians having avoided trouble with Chile feel grateful toward the United States, and the Chileans feel correspondingly irritated that their government was apparently kept from an overt act by the influence of theYankis. An enthusiastic Chilean, a vigorous “anti-American,” told me some time afterwards that he had endeavored, to the best of his ability, to find out from political friends in Valparaiso why nothing was done when it would have been so easy to settle the whole matter. The reply in every case was “fear of offending the United States.”
After leaving Arica our next stop was to be at Ilo, the southernmost harbor of Peru, a fact that was emphasized by the very marked depletion of our passenger list. Few Chileans care to go to Peru. Because we came from the “polluted” ports of a hated rival, the Limarí was subjected to a thorough-going fumigation, a process rendered the more unnecessary and offensive because nearly all of the Peruvian ports actually had cases of bubonic plague and smallpox while the Chilean ports were free from the pest.
We reached Mollendo on the afternoon of January 14th, just seven days after leaving Valparaiso.
Mollendois one of those places where nature never intended man to live. The natural port, and the one that was used for centuries, is the bay of Islay, a few miles north. As a matter of fact, this was to have been the terminus of the Southern Railway of Peru, the outlet for the commerce of the Lake Titicaca region. But the owners of real estate at Islay were so convinced that there had arrived that “tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” that they attempted to make the most of their opportunity and asked the railway prohibitive prices for land and water-front. The result was that Islay missed its high tide and the railway engineers carved out of the desert coast what is now the port of Mollendo.
It claims to be the worst harbor on the West Coast. In fact, the author of a recent book on South America was so impressed with the terrors of disembarking here that he described it fully in three separate chapters of his book! Although there was quite a little breeze blowing at the time of my landing, I confess to being very much disappointed at the tameness of the procedure. The reverend author had led me to expect “a surf-lashed landing-place—a tremendous tossing and bouncing on the mountainous swell.” Even in calm weather the boat was “tossed about like a cockle shell, now thrown up to heaven on the crest of a wave, now dropped down towards the nadir in its hollow. The swarthy Peruvian oarsmen strain at the oars, they avoid the jagged rocks between the boat and the pier by a hair’s breadth!” etc. etc.
One gets very little idea from such language of a busy little basin and a dock where half a dozen steam cranes are at work loading and unloading large freight barges. As would be expected from the fact that this is the chief port in southern Peru, the docks were crowded with boxes and bales of every description. Occasionally as many as eight or ten freighters are anchored in the offing, and a large number of lighters are kept busy most of the time. A new breakwater is being built of enormous cubes of concrete, which it is hoped will resist the action of the waves better than the natural rock of the neighborhood which disintegrates rapidly.
A climb of fifty or sixty feet up the face of a steep cliff back of the landing stage brought us to the little platform and gate of the local custom house. Our arrival here was not expected by the officials, and we received the customary hard looks that are given every one coming from Chile. Mollendo has not forgotten the war. Nevertheless it needed but the mystic worddelegadoto the collector of the port to cause all our luggage to be passed graciously through the custom house without even the formality of an examination.
Our next difficulty, after landing on Peruvian soil,