CHAPTER VIIIAGRICULTURE
Area under Cultivation.—Oases in the Desert.—Farming in Central Chile.—Vineyards.—Wheatfields, Orchards and Sheep Farms.—Irrigation Canals.
“Agriculture in Chile and Buenos Aires has formed their population, while the mines of Peru have extinguished almost all the Empire of the Incas.” So wrote David Barry in his preface to theNoticias Secretasin 1826.
I think that no one who knows Chile today will dispute the suggestion that her fertile soil has chiefly contributed to her social well-being. It has brought white European settlers, able to rear families in a magnificent temperate climate; it has offered permanent homes and not a temporary field for the fortune-hunter. There is a spring of life about the farming region of Chile, a sense of energy, health and freshness that is extraordinarily exhilarating. Much of this land is still but newly opened: one may pass through hundreds of miles of land where the tree-stumps of the primeval forest still stand among the vigorous corn, where the farmhouse is but an impermanent thatched hut. But the dark rich earth, the lusty crops, the blossoming orchards and hedges, the green pastures with their sleek cattle, create a scene of genuine content. The holdings may be new, yet they are plainly homes. Chile possesses mines, but they drain rather than create populations; growing industries—weaving factories,grain mills, and a score of new employments which tend to concentrate wealth and culture; but it is in her farming lands that the truest cradle of the race, the frankest and strongest people, the most cheerful spirit, is found.
In actual figures the amount of land under cultivation in Chile is not immense, yet the farmlands produce not only sufficient grain and fruits to serve the needs of the inhabitants of both fertile and arid regions but also ship a surplus to the exterior markets of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
Government statistics add up the total of land assigned to “agricultural properties” or farms to 18,000,000 hectares, or about 45,000,000 acres. But not all this land is under cultivation. The area devoted to cereals, beans and peas, potatoes and vegetables, is reckoned as about 4½ per cent of all Chilean territory, or 750,000 hectares, equal to two and a half times as many acres; vines and orchards, 111,000 hectares; planted woodland, 32,000 hectares. The cultivated pastures (grass, alfalfa, clover, etc.) attain the figure of about 520,000 hectares; while there are nearly 7,000,000 hectares of natural pastures. Twenty-two per cent of all national territory is ascribed to forest and woodland, much of it either utilisable for industry or at least covering the ground with a rich vegetable detritus of great future value to the farmer. Twenty-nine per cent of Chilean land areas is regarded as completely sterile, or at least negligible under present conditions.
This proportion of uncultivated or barren country appears high at first sight, but three great areas must be practically excluded from possible cultivation, although unlikely and long-neglected regions have of late triumphantly proved their worth as sheep pastures.The great, diversified and topographically fantastic Territory of Magellanes, comprising 71,000 square miles, has little to offer to the agriculturist.
Sheltered country as that in the vicinity of Punta Arenas produces certain field crops, while the limit of cultivable land both in Eastern Patagonia and upon the islands of Tierra del Fuego, Navarin, Brunswick, and other smaller groups, has not been reached with the establishment of sheep farms; but the barren and rocky lands on the borders of many channels, where blue glaciers creep to the edge of the water, and that part of the Strait region where the freezing gusts of the “williwaws” bend the heads of the drenched forests, is outside consideration until the climate changes.
Also beyond the vision of the farmer are the widespread, sun-scorched and waterless districts of the three northerly provinces of Atacama, Antofagasta and Tarapacá, covering more than 95,000 square miles of land: as well as most of the 9000 square miles of Tacna, whose final ownership is still undetermined. The third considerable region which is apparently destined to remain uncultivable is that of the rugged and broken foothills and heights of the Andean slopes of eastern Chile, where nothing lives but wild mountain birds and the hardy guanaco.
Reckoning in hectares, Magellanes counts an area of 3,214,000 hectares, or about 8,000,000 acres: yet only 133 hectares were under crops in 1919. At the same time the Island of Chiloé, with a surface of about 8600 square miles, had only 75 hectares in cultivation. As between the too-dry lands of the north and the too-rainy country of the south, agricultural advantages lie with the former, for wherever irrigation is possible the natural disabilities are at once overcome, and the rainless belt becomes magnificently fertile. The agriculturistof the Chilean lands below Puerto Montt is seldom able to risk planting a cereal crop, for even should the heavy rains not affect the fields adversely, the grain must be gathered green lest wind-storms should blow the ripened seed away. However, the discovery of the last few years that certain types of sheep (usually cross-bred Romney Marsh varieties similar to those reared in the Falklands) thrive in Chilean Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and other once-despised Magellanic lands, has brought about an agreeable transformation in the agricultural industries, as in the revenue and population of the far south.
Perhaps it is partly because they stand out in such sharp contrast with a barren background that such northern valleys as that of the Lluta, with pretty Arica town at its mouth, appear to be of such enchanting loveliness. In other regions, burning ochre deserts stretch away in dazzling sunlight, and suddenly one comes upon the tender lime-green fields of the Copiapó River; the emerald maize and alfalfa of the Loa; the Pica Vale, a strip of deepest green studded with millions of the golden globes of ripe oranges; or the exquisite Elqui and Huasco in the month when loads upon loads of grapes, peaches and figs are ripe. In every dip of the land where a stream flows down from the Andes, gardens and orchards bloom; careful intensive cultivation is the rule in north Chile, where the farming industry has received an impetus since the nitrate fields swarmed with industrial camps, ready to pay big prices for every pound of fresh fruit or vegetables.
This cultivation of orchards in the desert is reviving enthusiastically, but is no more than the restoration ofancient arts; before the day of Spanish occupation irrigation was extensively practised, and we know from the large burial grounds discovered near what are today small villages that certain parts of the arid country formerly supported considerable populations—as at Calama, at Chiu-Chiu, or at Arica itself. The desolation of former cultivated districts is sometimes ascribed to the war-expeditions of the Incas, sometimes to the destruction of irrigation works by the Spaniards, sometimes to the action of earthquakes which have diverted rivers from their original courses, and is certainly to be attributed in many cases to the character of the streams, rushing from mountain heights with tremendous force, washing away fields and defences, and leaving wide, stony and sterile beds to mark their ruinous course.
Tacna province, with Arica as the port and Tacna City as the capital, is looked upon hopefully today as a source of supply of sugar and cotton for Chilean mills; both these commodities are now imported. With sufficient water, this little province of 40,000 inhabitants can produce also enough tobacco for Chile’s internal consumption. The Sociedad Industrial Azucarera de Tacna, formed at the end of 1920, hopes to plant 8000 hectares in sugarcane, to obtain from the harvest of each hectare ten tons of sugar, and thus to fill the Chilean demand for 80,000 tons of sugar per year. Apart from this enterprise, whose results are awaited with interest, a number of small landholders already produce a little sugar, and find a ready sale for the almonds, olives, walnuts, peaches, figs, green fodder and vegetables cultivated. The splendid cotton of Tacna province is eagerly purchased by South Chile’s mills, but the export is small as yet, amounting only to a few hundred tons annually; there is every inducementto immense extension of the cultivation of this fibre, and when present plans to canalise the waters of the Caplina River and of Lake Chuncara are completed, the little province will multiply its 230,000 hectares now under cultivation.
Tarapacá Province is curiously situated as regards cultivation; to the north a few rivers reach the sea, as in Arica, but from Pisagua southwards the great nitrate beds lie like an immense dry lake parallel with the coast, and a dozen little rivers flowing down from Andean foothills disappear in the desert sands long before they reach the eastern edge of the nitrate pampas. But each one of these rivers is a green ribbon of fertility, and Tarapacá ships its luscious oranges to the nitrate camps, and by train all the way to Pueblo Hundido in Atacama.
Antofagasta’s one considerable river is the Loa, subject to strong floods, but irrigating small fields all the way. There are but 121 farmers in the whole province of 46,000 square miles, cultivating less than 3000 hectares. Sites of old pre-Spanish towns along the Loa’s banks are proof of centuries of utilisation of its waters.
Copiapó possesses two charming oases in the desert. The first and most important is the ancient town of Copiapó, long famous for its copper mines, but depressed by the drop in metal prices after the close of the European war. The second is Vallenar, whose bright setting of little fields, peach trees and vines, is a joy to the eyes after a journey through the copper country. Neither region produces enough foodstuffs for its own maintenance, and there is no agricultural surplus to sell. The whole province of over 30,000 square miles has less than 20,000 hectares under irrigation.
Coquimbo Province is generally regarded as the northern limit to general farming; it is a small province, including only 13,500 square miles, shouldered by the Andes that here push down within eighty kilometres of the Pacific Ocean, but it is prosperous and enterprising. The population is about 250,000, of whom 4500 are farmers; of the remainder the great bulk are interested in mining small veins of copper, an industry which has been handed down for generations as a kind of technical inheritance in northern Chile. I know a Coquimbo farm, excellently managed, situated a few miles outside Coquimbo Port and its older sister, La Serena, which is a revelation of what can be done under the difficulties attendant upon almost constant drought—for the rainfall does not usually attain two inches in the year—and a temperature which remains steadily at about 60° Fahrenheit. The livestock were, in the period of greatest heat, driven eastwards to the hills, many landowners upon the coast following the system of buying supplementary land in the cordilleras in the hope of finding at every season a few patches of pasture. John McAuliffe is one of those Britons who identify their fortunes with those of Chile, and forty years’ residence, with experience of shipbuilding, mining and farming, has made the genial owner of San Martin a resourceful producer and distributor.
Coquimbo Province possesses 1,500,000 hectares of land devoted to agriculture, of which 20,000 are irrigated and about 25,000 are “artificial” pastures. Vineyards on a commercial scale, orchards of figs and other sub-tropical fruits, as well as fields of wheat, maize and barley, produce a surplus exported from Coquimbo.
Farming in Central Chile
South of this province Central Chile begins. Aconcagua, Valparaiso, Santiago, O’Higgins, Colchagua and Curicó are among the most delightful regions in the world, with a perfect climate, fertile land, access to markets, and employés who are not yet impressed with the views of the I. W. W. which have troubled the waters of Chilean industry so effectively during recent years. It has been the writer’s good fortune to see something of the life upon several estates devoted to general farming and livestock, upon fruit and alfalfa farms, and upon one of the finest vine-growing and wine-making properties in Central Chile. I cannot imagine a more agreeable life than that upon these estates.
In the first example, the lands are situated upon the Aconcagua River, extending from this barrier in a half circle enclosed by a horse-shoe of wooded hills. The river is a typical Chilean watercourse, widespread, turbulent, spreading into five or six branches on a wide and stony bed. When the snows melt and the stream comes down with great force, it is almost impassable, although the sturdy Chilean horse, extremely intelligent and well trained, will always struggle across safely so long as the reins are left loose. The farm includes about 250 acres of irrigated land and about 2000 acres of hillside. The jealously-watched water rights are regulated by a set of special laws, and as there is just about enough water for the service of the farms along the Aconcagua’s banks, with none to spare, water-stealing is a black crime. Quebrada Redonda is a mixed farm, upon which a couple of hundred sheep, as well as cattle and horses, are fed: the fields are brilliant with lucerne, wheat, beans, barley and Indian corn. In the kitchen garden are peaches, walnuts, artichokes,oranges, pears, plums, celery—in fact, all fruit and vegetables that grow in temperate or sub-tropical zones. The lawn edges are gay with roses and iris, chrysanthemums and lupins. All the flat lands are fertile: no fertilisers are needed, but leguminous crops are grown in rotation with cereals. The milk of the Chilean cows is first-class in quality and produces cheese—made daily by the simplest process—that finds a ready sale in local markets.
The hill lands, invaluable upon a Chilean farm, offer plenty of food for the young cattle in winter. Within a few days after the first heavy rains the brown slopes turn green, and the cattle are driven up to crop the new carpet of young grass. The woodland yields sufficient timber to supply the domestic needs of thepatrónand theinquilinos(farm hands working upon a special system), but there is no growth of big trees. The graceful, evergreen quillay is the base of quite a considerable industry, for the bark is highly saponaceous, and, stripped and dried, is sold in all the public markets in Chile. The maitén, another thick little tree, is also cut for firewood; the litre offers useful lumber when of sufficient size. Down by the water stand rows of familiar willows, their branches draped with the scarlet flowers of the parasite quintral; and on the slopes are scores of bunches of blue-green dagger-shaped leaves enclosing a stalk crowned with a violet flower-head. This is the chagual, whose young stem is eaten in springtime, a lovely period when pink wild lilies clothe the rocky slopes and a myriad flowering trees and shrubs scent the clear air. Many of the aromatic leaves and barks for which Chile is famous are used to make medicinal decoctions, beloved of the working classes.
Adjoining this property is another fine farm, also operated by an energetic country-loving Briton; herelemons and other citrus fruits are grown in well-kept orchards and the fields are given over to alfalfa and hemp, grown in rotation with root crops. Chile has no warmer advocates of her attractions than the owners of Quebrada Redonda and its neighbour, but both farmers lay stress upon the need for personal attention to every detail and constant residence upon the property, even with the bestmayor-domoperforming the duties of a farm bailiff or estate steward. It is also emphasised that Chilean lands are not for the worker without capital. In this coveted region, in fact, costs run high, as the following data, owed to Mr. Geoffrey Bushell, demonstrate.
The average cost of good irrigated land, near the railway, in the Central Valley (from Aconcagua to the Maule) is about 4000 paper pesos percuadraof some four acres: or say £50 per acre with exchange at twelve pence to the peso. To this should be added £50 per cuadra for the purchase of horses, cattle and implements, and another £50 per cuadra should also be allowed for fencing, drains, repairing or putting up buildings, expenses frequently renewed even when a farm is in good running order. Land in less accessible regions is less costly, but transport in Chile depends upon railroads, since the highways are out of action in the rainy season, and it is worth while to avoid trouble by a greater initial outlay. No farm is cheap if its products cannot be sent to market.
When the estate is in good running condition, returns come quickly and markets are excellent; a profit of 12 to 15 per cent upon invested capital is usually expected, but may rise to 20 per cent. Alfalfa can be cut at least three times a year, and always finds a ready sale: potatoes, wheat and barley, beans, hemp, aji (red pepper), all do well and are good selling crops. Potatoes, forexample, yield 300 bags (of 100 kilos each) to the cuadra, and bring fifteen to twenty pesos per bag in the Valparaiso markets.
Animals can be kept out of doors all the year round, and the stock-fattening and dairy businesses are both good. Fruit cultivation, apart from such good carriers as lemons or oranges, is not recommended, since quick access to markets is lacking and selling organisations do not exist.
In order to buy, stock, equip and operate a farm and to wait a year for returns without inconvenience, a farmer taking up land in Central Chile should have £15,000 ($75,000 U. S. currency). He needs at least fifty cuadras, or 200 acres, of irrigated land, as well as some wild bush, preferably hill country. Workers are never abundant in South America, but theinquilinosystem retained in Chile tends to keep generation after generation upon the soil, and no good farmer lacks help in spite of the higher wages offered by the mining industry. Attacks have been levelled against the inquilino system, yet it works well in practice when estate owners are just and a personal interest taken in the worker’s welfare. The men live upon the estate with their families, are given a cottage rent free, a strip of land of generally one or two acres, and sometimes the use of ploughs and other farm implements; a horse and a few domestic animals are usually owned. One pound of bread and one pound of beans are given daily, cooked if so preferred, and one peso per day in cash. On the farms visited by the writer the houses of the farm hands were sound and clean, and the families appeared cheerful and content; I heard warm praises of the Chilean worker from employers.
The life of a farmer in Chile, it was generally agreed, is pleasant; constant attention is required, but rewardsare sufficient and the delightful climate compensates for many difficulties. The open-air life, constant horseback riding, and the sense of freedom in a country not too densely populated, attract many Europeans, lamenting nothing more than the absence of certain forms of sport. There is fair fishing, for instance, in the fast streams from the Cordillera, but there are no sporting fish; no hunting, but good shooting in wooded or open country. The partridge and tortolita fly well and fast, and give almost as good sport as grouse; snipe and quail are also to be found in the central regions.
In this same region of the Aconcagua Valley are some of the best vineyards and wine-making estates in Chile. The great Panquehue property, one of the Errazuriz estates, is a magnificent sight with its endless rows of trained vines bearing white and black grapes, stretching across the rich brown lowlands to the foot of the Andean spurs, where all cultivation ceases, and where valuable peat has been identified in vast stretches. Here are 2000 acres devoted to viniculture, and from the fruit of the low-trimmed branches is produced each year 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 litres of wine, chicha and brandy. Chilean red and white wines are of sound and pleasant quality, superior to the Mendoza brands, owing to greater suavity; some of the native-made “Sauternes” are practically indistinguishable from the French original. It is astonishing to realise the simplicity of this ancient industry of wine-making, for although Panquehue has today a machine crusher, and a mechanical press, an automatic bottler, etc., there is something primitive and ample in the process. Thebodegas(cellar warehouses) of the estate are immense vistas of cool stillness,the huge vats looming high in the semi-darkness beneath a succession of great arches. This estate, with its enormous and luxurious house of the owners, its settled population of workers, its self-supporting crops and fine livestock, has almost a feudal atmosphere. Altogether, Chile has 90,000 hectares, or say 225,000 acres, under grape culture, about ten times as much as California in her pre-prohibition days.
While these vineyards of the central provinces are in very fine condition—extending west from Santiago to within sight of the sea on the beautiful slopes towards Valparaiso—the real heart of the grape country is farther south, where also lie the great food-producing regions of Chile. The great grape country is spread over Curicó, Talca, Maule, Linares, Ñuble and Concepción provinces, while the wonderful valley of Lontué is one great vineyard, with over 10,000 acres under cultivation. Estates follow in a long succession, some able to boast of model villages for workers and thoroughly up-to-date methods of wine-making. The product of Lontué is sold not only throughout Chile, but is shipped to Argentina, Peru and Colombia. “Dry” laws in Chile, advocated by Dr. Fernando Peña, do not seem likely to cause the extinction of viniculture here, if only for the reason that the use of wine is scarcely ever excessive among the native workmen, or in the educated classes. The industry is extremely important to Chile, is chiefly in the hands of Chileans-born, and represents a very large investment; these considerations would not, however, preserve the vineyards ultimately if the effect of their existence were pernicious. The facts appear to be against any idea of this kind.
South Americans in general inherit the temperate habits of the Latin, and when strong liquors causetrouble amongst such closely crowded groups of workers as one finds in the northern mines, badly made spirits and not wine are to be blamed. Against the disembarcation of imported spirits the workers of the north rose in arms, in 1920, procedure echoed in Punta Arenas a little later, and an investigator sent to the spot by theMercurioof Santiago reported that for every pint of good southern wine sold in Taltal, there were twenty pints of noxious alcohol—much of it made on the spot in amateur stills.
Cereal culture, whether of maize, wheat, barley or other grains, exists throughout Chile, but from Coquimbo to Chiloé are the great fields oftrigo blancoandtrigo candeal—the latter, hard wheat, grown chiefly upon 20,000 acres in the north of the Central Valley, and the former upon 1,000,000 acres, chiefly in the provinces of Maule, Linares, Ñuble, Concepción, Bio-Bio, Malleco, Cautín, Valdivia and Llanquihue. The total wheat crop is 5,500,000 metric quintales, worth 16,000,000 pesos. It is in the great fertile region of the south that one finds the largest number of small farmers, for most of this agricultural country has been opened during the last fifty or sixty years, and no great ancient estates exist. Valdivia and Llanquihue were developed mainly by the efforts of settlers from Central Europe in the middle of last century, while old Araucania was not finally opened to white settlers, whether foreigners or Chileans, until the punitive expedition of 1881 broke down the frontier for ever. Land was parcelled out in comparatively small estates, and as a result Chile is fortunate in counting about 97,000 land proprietors; of these, 65,000 owners farm less than 50acres each; 25,000 others farm holdings of less than 500 acres; 5000 estates are between 500 and 2500 acres in extent; and only 465 proprietors are possessed of estates totalling over 12,000 acres.
To create these southerly farm lands great forestal areas have been necessarily denuded, and a good deal of work is required to keep down the luxurious growth of creepers, wild bamboos, ferns and undergrowth. But the southern agriculturist is spared the constant preoccupation of the northerner as regards water supply. Chile has little marsh or swamp country today, although the presence of large peat beds is eloquent of ancient bogs, but the south is very well watered. Too well watered, in fact, in some localities, Valdivia’s 115 inches of annual rainfall being well outdistanced byChiloé’s 134 inches; the genial softness of the climate saves these localities from the unusual unpleasant effects of such heavy rainfalls, for if it is almost true that in Valdivia it rains every day, it is also true that the sun shines every day.
Between the Maule River and Lake Llanquihue the whole country of Chile is like familiar ground to the traveller from well-tended countries of Western Europe, an impression specially keen in Chile’s autumn, March and April. Orderly apple and cherry orchards stand bordered by hedges hung thick with ripening blackberries; long level fields show the tender green of clover. Beside the rose-clustered farmhouse are neatly built stacks of wheat straw; in the meadows are fine sleek cattle and well-groomed horses. The fenced garden is full of flowers, of vegetables and herbs, and behind the house is a grove of walnuts and chestnuts. The farmer riding along a muddy road has the ruddy cheeks of the temperate zone, and the only strange note isstruck by his poncho and long jingling spurs. Rows of tall poplars, burned golden, edge the fields. As background to this ordered fertility there rise to the east the shining, silver-white heads of volcanos—Llaima, Villarica, or Antuco, or, farther south, Osorno and Calbuco—and from the lines of dark forest there run deep and silent rivers. The south is remarkable in possessing three navigable rivers, the Toltén, Imperial, and Valdivia; the Bueno is also traversed by small steamers in part of its course from Lake Ranco and is a channel for farm produce.
Wheat is harvested in the south at the end of March, but in May apples and pears are still being gathered and nuts are ripe. The big crops of strawberries, plums, and cherries are sent to jam and conserving factories, South Chile supplying the whole of the West Coast with canned fruit, while the export of fresh fruit to New York and London is a new industry with bright prospects.
South of Temuco the land is seen in three stages. Belts of primeval forests close down to the border of railway track or road, a green wall matted with the wild climbing bamboo, the trails of scarlet and purple fuchsias, or the slender vines of copihue with its beautiful rosy bells. Native beech and lingue, their feet deep in ferns, stand as a solid barrier, feathering at the top into thickly leaved branches; the wild witch-hazel’s sweetly scented, creamy flowers break from every thicket.
That is the first stage: the next is encountered where a settler has recently broken ground, and corn springs between the blackened stumps of burned trees. A log hut, thatched, windowless, stands at the side of the clearing. In the third stage all signs of violence are gone; the forest is conquered, the cleared space smoothed and ploughed, the homestead enclosed witha neat wooden fence. Rows of young fruit trees display slim twigs beside the farmhouse, and this already has its chicken-run, dove-cote, stable and pleasant meadow for horses and cattle. A chain of sawmills is seen in this lately redeemed country with its thick reserve of forest lands.
Between Valdivia and Puerto Montt lies a great potato-raising country; the land flattens out from Osorno to the edge of Llanquihue Lake, and here hundreds of well-managed farms flourish; a large proportion of the settlers possess German names, and their forebears brought with them, seventy years ago, the craft of the farmer. Today the population is Chilean. Farther south, upon the island of Chiloé, another group of foreign origin operates farms beside the native Chilotes: after the South African War ending in 1903 a number of Boers came here and, in spite of the marked difference between climate and conditions of the Transvaal and South Chile, remained and prosper.
Chile feeds about 5,000,000 sheep, of which number 2,000,000 have been raised in the far south, in the Territory of Magellanes; 2,250,000 head of cattle are distributed throughout the country—Tarapacá and Antofagasta owning about 600 head between them, while Tacna has 2500—but by far the largest number, 2,000,000, are grouped in the provinces below Valparaiso. The country supports also about 400,000 horses, 55,000 mules, and 300,000 pigs. The wool clip of Chile averages 170,000 metric quintals, four-fifths of the total coming from the Territory of Magellanes.
Among the small farming industries of Chile are beekeeping and flax-production; a little olive oil is made in the more northerly provinces, and the dried raisins, peaches and apricots of Huasco have earned much more than local fame.
The rise of sheep-farming and allied industries in Magellanes Territory is one of the great surprises of the century. Punta Arenas itself, founded on paper by President Bulnes in 1843, and tentatively settled in 1851, was for a long time nothing but a penal settlement: but a rising of the convicts drew attention to the region, the discovery of gold reefs and coal beds, as well as petroliferous shales, brought a number of enterprising people, and by 1897 the first flock of sheep, brought by the governor Dublé Almeida twenty years previously, had multiplied so fast that the territory counted 800,000 as the total flock. It was difficult to find a use for the sheep, and by way of solving this problem the first packing-house was established in 1905 at Rio Seco, about ten miles from Punta Arenas.
Fourfrigorificosare now in operation, at San Gregorio Bay, at Puerto Bories (Ultima Esperanza) and at Tres Puentes, in addition to the first established. During the war the packing-houses exported meat products (frozen and conserved meat, fats, etc.) worth £1,000,000 sterling annually, and large fortunes were also made by the sheep-raising farms when the price of wool soared from sixpence per pound to twenty-two pence. The largest of the companies running sheep on a big scale is the Sociedad Explotadora de la Tierra del Fuego, which started operations in 1893, has a capital of £1,800,000, raised in London, and owns over a million sheep.
A fifth packing-house built at the close of the war and already in operation is situated in Puerto Montt, is British-financed and equipped, and aims at helping the situation of this part of the south, possessing a surplus for northern markets but lacking sufficient transportation for live animals.
Irrigation Canals
Irrigation canals have been in use in Chile for hundreds of years, those constructed by private estate owners watering a total of over 3,000,000 acres. Several of these are ambitious constructions, those diverted from such well-supplied rivers as the Maipo and Aconcagua extending in certain instances for over one hundred miles.
The great O’Higgins built a canal ensuring Santiago’s water supply 150 years ago: a continuance of this wise policy of Government direction in a matter of national importance has been advised by many thinkers in Chile, but it was not until the closure of nitrate enterprises in 1914 forced the Government to find employment for surplus workers that irrigation laws were added to the Chilean code and bonds issued to finance the construction of four important canals. In early 1915 the creation of a new section in the Public Works Department inaugurated a period of great activity in the work suggested, and by the beginning of 1921 the Manco Canal drawing water from the Aconcagua was already completed, its forty-five miles of main length bringing water to nearly 8000 acres of land. The cost of construction was 2,000,000 pesos paper.
At the same time work was begun on the Maule Canal, drawing water from the Maule River; it is 115 miles long, irrigates 113,000 acres, and was built at a cost of 8,500,000 pesos; its completion represents an engineering feat upon which Chilean engineers are to be congratulated. A fall created by one of the branches of this canal offers 20,000 h.p. to users of hydraulic force in Chile.
The Laja Canal diverts water from the river of thisname, has a main length of 25 miles with distribution canals of 240 miles, and is lined with concrete for ten miles of its course where sandy soil is traversed. It is calculated that this canal serves 110,000 acres of land. The Melado Canal, drawing water from the river of the same name, is fifteen miles long, and irrigates 75,000 acres.
The Public Works Department also plans construction of canals drawing water from the Culenar River, to irrigate 12,000 acres; from the Nilahue, to irrigate 25,000 acres; and from the Colina, to irrigate 10,000 acres, while businesslike schemes for damming and utilising the water of seven of Chile’s string of snow-fed mountain lakes in the south are also under way. All this work is due for completion by 1925, while studies of the strange rivers of the north that flow from the Andes and bury themselves in the sandy deserts long before the sea is approached have also been energetically carried on, with a view to salving these much-needed waters. Don Carlos Hoerning, Chief Engineer of the Chilean Reclamation service, says that the wonderful northern climate and soil respond to irrigation by producing crops five times as abundant as the normal rate in the south, justifying the expense of pumping and piping water.
Formerly, private enterprise was interested in irrigation canals only in the central farming regions, while the more generously watered south ignored the question; but denudation of the southern forests has brought about a change in this rainy region while the need for foodstuffs and the excellent rewards awaiting the farmer have valorised every acre of good soil, and today a large proportion of the canalisation projects of the Government refer to southerly regions. With little public land to offer, the Chilean Government’snew laws were drafted to reach the owner of large areas of uncultivated—and, if without water, uncultivable—land. When the newly inaugurated system is in full working order Chile should have at least 100,000,000 acres under the plough.