El Teniente and Chuquicamata

5. The most recent foreign entry into the Chilean copper field is that of the Japanese, with interests in three large deposits in Bio-Bio Province.

Under the old haphazard system, when a man would frequently go out into the desert alone, or with a single companion, hunting for rich veins of copper ore, a good living at least was the rule; when the discovery of a considerable deposit warranted the introduction of simple machinery, a few employés, transport animals, etc., many little and big fortunes were made. The buyers and smelters of last century also earned satisfactory returns. But, curiously enough, the huge organisations utilising immense masses of lower-grade ores, employing thousands of men and most modern machinery, with smelters at the mining camp, are generally stated to be run at a loss. There are reasons why such statements should be accepted with reserve, but looking at the matter purely from a Chilean angle it is at least questionable whether an industry which yields nothing to the national treasury in the way of export dues upon the mineral shipped out, and which draws many thousands of men from agricultural zones to an isolated and entirely artificial life under conditions tending to lower the standard of citizenship, has a soundraison d’être. Possession of the large Chileancopper deposits, whether operated at all, or operated without profit, does however enable a group of powerful interests controlling copper in North America to control also the copper markets of the world: for after North America, Chile is the scene of the greatest identified copper areas, the two series of mines together producing over 60 per cent of the total international output.

At the present time, that is to say, at the end of 1921, the situation in Chile with respect to copper is briefly this: there still exists, throughout the copper-sown regions of Coquimbo and Atacama provinces, a diminishing number of small mines following rich veins of the ore. Some of these are little more than holes in the ground, others are worked by organised companies with good machinery, housing several hundred workers and owning their own system of transport, as the Dulcinea mine in Copiapó. But almost everywhere the rich lodes, containing anything from 8 per cent of copper upwards, are disappearing; they have been hunted for centuries, and although scientific examination of these immense regions would no doubt reveal many unsuspected rich deposits, the accessible mines have been worked out to a considerable degree.

No more striking example of the rise and fall of a copper mining centre is to be seen in Chile than at the deserted city of La Higuera. It lies just off the road leading from La Serena (Coquimbo) to the iron mountain of El Tofo, upon a tiny thread of a stream trickling from the steep and tumbled mountains. The city lies in the shallow cup of an immense hillside, a patch upon the sandy and orange waste; numbers of black dumps mark the sites of old copper mines, a score of chimneys stand among the silent machinery of abandoned mines. At least a thousand houses make, from a distance, a brave showing.

But at the approach of the infrequent visitor in automobile or on horseback, the houses are seen to be windowless, empty; nothing moves in the sun but a stray cur or two, until presently an old woman with a child at her skirts peeps from a makeshift shelter. The whole place is dead; not an engine is working, not a gang of workers moves upon the great spread of properties. The exhaustion of rich veins, difficulty of competition with metal produced at less expense in a fallen market, coupled with tangled litigation, has brought back silence to this strange spot in the mineral-strewn mountain spurs that here crowd down almost to the sea.

The day of La Higuera is not long past; the mines of this extraordinarily rich region were actively productive during the present century. But a similar fate has already closed down very many smaller groups of mines, as it closed down smelters from Arauco to Antofagasta. In the prosperous days of the industry last century, when Chile was the greatest copper-producing country in the world, a big fleet of sailing ships, copper-bottomed, fast, with a famous list of captains, voyaged constantly between Swansea and the Chilean coast by way of Cape Horn, bringing British coal and merchandise and returning with bar copper or rich ores. A whole colony of Welsh set up the first scientific furnaces in Herradura Bay, just outside Coquimbo Town, and at a dozen points the little smelters of Copiapó and Coquimbo were busy; simple methods were used with profit, and many Chilean residents recall the time when the stem and stalk of thecardónwere always used to obtain a fine clear fire when annealing copper.

El Teniente and Chuquicamata

The most spectacular of the large copper mines in operation today in Chile is that of El Teniente, situated on the rim of an ancient crater of the Andes east of Rancagua, the nearest main line railway station. Sewell, the little town of mining employés, is connected with Rancagua by the private line of the Braden Copper Company, 72 kilometres in length, climbing from Rancagua’s altitude of 513 metres, or about 1600 feet, to the mining camp’s height above sea level of 2140 metres, or some 7000 feet, on the side of a terrific gorge in a tangle of rocky mountain shoulders and peaks. The main ore bodies lie above the site of the town and plant at altitudes ranging from 9000 to 11,000 feet, one peak, El Diablo, on the crater’s edge, rising to 13,000 feet.

Sewell Camp at Night.

Sewell (El Teniente Copper Mines) near Rancagua.

The amount of copper ore found in masses on the circular rim was calculated at the beginning of 1920 as 174,500,000 tons of 2.45 per cent, with (probably) 92,000,000 tons of 1.91 per cent ore in sight, with, in all probability, other large deposits in the vicinity. The main body now under exploitation yields a low-grade ore containing an average of 2½ per cent of copper in the form of sulphides. The ore is brought down to the plant by a railway line protected by sheds from the deep snow falling and standing for six months of the year; is crushed very fine, treated by the oil flotation system about which so much litigation has raged, and smelted by three processes during which the copper is freed from sulphur and iron. A small quantity of gold and silver remains in the bars shipped to market. Crushing 5000 tons of ore per day, a production of 100 tons of bar copper is at present possible; plans are also under way for new mills at a snow-free site on the railway line to Rancagua, at a spot where the junction of the Coya and a canal from the Cachapoal River forms a waterfall of 422 feet, yielding hydraulic power sufficient for the generation of 40,000 H.P. A new power house recently completed, on the Pangal River, another nearby Andean torrent joining the Cachapoal and Coya, adds to the equipment by which the Braden Company contemplates 10,000 tons of daily crushing, operations which should result in the production of over 70,000 tons of bar copper each year. Paralyzation of international markets has so far checked the materialisation of these plans, and during 1921 the plant was operated at no more than half its capacity. The most prosperous year which the mine has had so far was that of 1918, when El Teniente produced nearly 35,000 metric tons of bar copper, out of the Chilean total production of rather more than 102,200 tons: a year later, 1919, the Braden Company sold and shipped only 10,000 tons of bar copper.

Rancagua, a somnolent little town lying about 70 miles from the Pacific, has no direct rail communication with the sea, and derives what liveliness it possesses from its position upon the main line to Santiago, its chief market, and as the terminus of the Braden Company’s electrically-operated line to El Teniente or rather to Sewell—which has an older name, Machalí. At times the activity resulting from the mine’s access to this town, and this town alone, is regarded without any pleasure by the townsfolk, for when strike trouble occurs there is likely to be a descent of discontented workmen and families. Such an occasion occurred at the time of the disorders at the end of 1919, when an army of expelled men with their families walked down the narrow track from Sewell to Rancagua, and although the journey of 72 kilometres occupied somethree days, and the spirit of the strikers was reduced by their experiences, Rancagua was alarmed and embarrassed by their presence.

A curious mixture of workers finds its way to this and other mining camps of Chile. The bulk consists of the hardy Chilean himself, concerning whose good qualities no employer of intelligence and feeling has any doubts: he is strong, trustworthy, kindly—but can be roused by drink or anger to violence. Treated well, he is the best element among massed groups of workers. But side by side with the genuine and sound Chilean is not only the malcontent roaming from north to south, from camp to camp, according to his own will or the exigencies of the Ley de Residencia, but the “hard case” from half a score of different countries. The mines are refuges for every variety of man who is down and out: they offer fertile ground for the sowing of Bolshevik propaganda or the seed of the I. W. W. of California, whose flag has been seen more than once flaunted in Chilean streets. The curious artificial life of the camps, with its poor rewards, the lack of healthy recreation, of the sight of the horizon, of birds and fields and flowers, of any interest at all but that of daily toil, lends itself to the development of grievances.

From Rancagua to Coya the line is open to the public, the pleasant and famous Baths of Cauquenes lying in the deep green gorge of the Cachapoal River followed by the track. Casual visitors to the camp at Sewell are however not encouraged: there is a wary eye kept upon possible purveyors of such forbidden joys as alcoholic liquors. El Teniente is as “dry” as managerial care can make it, but the fact that 1200 to 2000 bottles of whisky and brandy are seized every year by the camp detectives without putting any end to the attempts of theguachucheros(bootleggers) appears to prove thatenough liquor gets through to make the business pay. Despite this lack of welcome to the unintroduced stranger, however, Sewell is hospitable to the visitor, and any accredited person receives pleasant courtesies.

The rail automobile which takes such visitors from Rancagua to the camp offers by far the most agreeable form of travel; the bright green fields and sub-tropical verdure of the sheltered plain country gives way to deep folds of mountain spurs, and presently, rising into colder air, vegetation is reduced to a few hardy shrubs and mosses, and the violet and tawny shoulders of the Andes rise from the banks of the racing river. When I visited El Teniente the mountains were bare; their rocky sides, steep, incredibly scored and peaked, took on at sunset and dawn brilliant hues of rose and flame; but before I left the first snow fell, transforming the whole country in a single night. A thick blanket filled the crevices of the sheer rocks, black ridges and points alone emerging; the piled tenements of the miners, clinging like birds’ nests on the face of a cliff, were blanched, half-buried, pathless. Communication with the outer world, by the single line down the ravine to Rancagua, was actually not much more restricted, but with the blocking of even the few mountain tracks open in summertime the isolation of the camp was emphasised.

There are about 2800 miners engaged at El Teniente, but the total population of the camp, including the workmen’s families, the officials (chiefly North Americans), employés of railways, stores, etc., is usually over 12,000. All this artificial town hangs precariously on a steep slope immediately opposite to the jagged crater where the huge copper deposits are embedded. Formerly, rows of camp buildings were built on the mine’s lower slope, but avalanches of soil, rock and snow necessitatedthe removal of dwellings to the present site, at the 7000-foot level.

Scarcely a sign of mining operations is visible from across the mountain chasm, although work has been going on here for at least 200 years. Owing to the treacherous nature of the country rock and danger from snow slides during six months of each year, the ore bodies are now attacked from below; entrances to the intricate system of shafts and subterranean passages are lost in the rugged crenellations of the old volcano. Yet the place is honeycombed: one tunnel, starting from the more recently approached Fortuna side, runs all round the three-quarter-mile-wide crater; there are innumerable hoists, ore-passes, shafts, galleries and tunnels, that, with the railways and powerful machinery and gangs of workers, comprise an industrial town hidden in the mountains.

The second large copper property operated by the Guggenheim interests in Chile is at Chuquicamata, in the high deserts of the province of Antofagasta, at about 11,000 feet above sea level. The region has long been famous for its copper-ore deposits, and small, rich veins have been worked during and since colonial times.

Most of these high-grade ores have been exhausted near the surface, whatever may lie hidden in the heart of the region: the principle adopted by the Chile Copper Company, as that of the Braden, is to attack large bodies of low-grade ore upon a big scale and in a scientific manner. But “Chuqui” is an open-air mine situated on a tawny desert, in extraordinary contrast with El Teniente, and the actual processes employed are different because the two bodies of ores differ in composition.

Sewell (El Teniente Mine) in the Snows of June.

Railway between Rancagua and El Teniente.

Chuquicamata is reached by way of the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway. An all-day ride from Antofagasta Port takes the traveller across the flaming nitrate pampas, waterless, without a sign of green, winding upwards until the air is chill and the wind bleak. At sundown, when the station of Calama is approached, the altitude of nearly 8000 feet has been attained. In the distance the lights of the mining camp flicker at a higher level; Calama itself shows a brilliant flare of green, for here is the river Loa and a little modern town with fields and orchards superimposed upon very ancient remains. Gold, pottery, and textiles showing Inca influence have been found in the old cemeteries of Calama.

There is from Calama a small branch line of a few miles running to Punto de Rieles, and some use is made of this to ship merchandise, etc., to and from the Chuquicamata camp: but a private line is projected, and a number of company motor cars traverse the road across the saffron desert between the main line and the mines, ignoring Punto de Rieles as much as possible. That ramshackle village is, indeed, little more than an impudent hanger-on of the big works; practically every little frowsy shack is a saloon or a gambling-den, more than one of the most enterprising brothel-keepers being white ex-employés of the camp. Even were any serious attempt made to operate Chuquicamata as a “dry” camp, the existence of this terminus-village a mile away would counteract these efforts.

The great ore bodies of Chuquicamata lie in a range of low, pale-hued hills rising gently from the shelving, wind-swept, dust-strewn plain; the chief mass of ore is easily attacked by steam shovels placed upon four or five different levels cut along the face of the most accessible slope, a system of light railways carrying the blasted-out rock, often of the beautiful blue and green tints exhibited by copper sulphates, to the plant in a shallow saucer below. Here also are the residentialquarters of this isolated camp, where there is neither vegetation nor water, and a dust-laden wind prevails over the cold, widespread territory, bordered only by the snow-crowned peaks of such Andean giants as S. Pedro and S. Pablo.

The Chuquicamata ores are, chiefly, basic sulphates of copper, yielding about 1.7 per cent of the mineral. The present plant has a crushing capacity of 15,000 tons per day, which amount should produce 200 tons of bar copper. As work goes on all day and every day, this production if sustained would produce in twelve months over 70,000 tons of electrolytic copper, a quantity which Chuquicamata has not yet recorded; the mine’s best year so far was that of 1918, when a total of 101,134,000 pounds of electrolytic copper was produced, or about 45,000 tons. The leaching or lixiviation process is employed here: the ores, crushed fairly fine, are soaked in a solution of copper sulphate for 48 hours, during which period the copper in the introduced ore is drawn into the liquid. This, when chlorine has been extracted, is poured into vats through which strong electric currents are passed, causing the copper to be deposited in metallic form upon the copper sheets suspended therein. The sheets and the deposited metal are melted and cast into bars, the process producing a high-grade electrolytic copper bringing top market prices. Eight hundred million tons of low-grade ore are stated to be in sight at Chuquicamata, and a plant capable of turning out 600 tons of bar copper daily is talked of.

Power for operating the Chuquicamata mine, works and camp is derived from Tocopilla, 100 miles distant on the seacoast, where the company’s plant is situated. Transmission lines follow the course of one of the nitrate railways from the port to El Toco, thence running outacross the desert, where a highway also extends. Since no fuel exists in this northerly region, nor are there water-falls available, the plant uses petroleum imported from North America to generate the power required.

Chuquicamata employs about 2000 Chilean or Bolivian, with a small sprinkling of Peruvian, workers, housed under conditions which leave something to be desired. Many of the huts are made of sheetiron, with partitions dividing the rooms; the floors are of mud, and an opaque substitute for glass obscures the window space in too many cases. The better-class houses are insufficient for all the native-born workers, and it is not surprising that a degree of discontent has more than once been fomented in the camp. Daily wages run higher here than at El Teniente, averaging over nine Chilean pesos per day as against rather less than eight pesos, but this raised scale does not compensate for the greater cost of living and other disadvantages. Fuel is one of the serious difficulties; coal is almost unknown, and the employé’s womenfolk are seen cooking over a charcoal brazier, or a fire made of an umbelliferous plant from the mountains (llareta), or a few pieces of wood brought from long distances. A great deal is said by the company of the Welfare Work Department: its most striking exemplification is in the big clubhouse which, well equipped and decorated, is however used almost exclusively by the North American officials and their families.

In addition to the two big mining plants at El Teniente and Chuquicamata, the Guggenheim interests in Chile include the old-established smelters at Carrizal and Caldera ports: the latter, in common with all the smelters founded during the last century, took only high-grade ores, the average of the mineral accepted here working out at about 10½ per cent of copper.These works turned out over 5000 tons of copper ingots in 1918, but were closed in 1921, following the slump in prices.

Chuquicamata is operated by the Chile Copper Company, a subsidiary of the Chile Exploration Company; El Teniente is operated by the Braden Copper Company, which is owned by the Kennecott Copper Corporation, one of the Guggenheim creations also controlling Alaskan and Utah copper properties. The Braden Copper Company is stated to have shown a deficit of $1,500,000, United States, in 1919.

Geographically speaking, there lie between El Teniente and Chuquicamata two other large copper deposits acquired by North American interests since the European War. Between Santiago and the sea lie the Pudahuel mines, identified at least a hundred years ago, worked for their rich surface veins, and now owned by the Andes Copper Company, a subsidiary of the Anaconda interests. Immense masses of low-grade ores, rivalling those of the Guggenheim interests in extent, are said to be available, but although in 1920 projects for a big plant were under active development, work was slackened by depressed markets and the operation of the deposits is not yet in sight.

A similar fate has befallen the widely heralded plans connected with another Anaconda property, a huge deposit of low-grade copper ores at Potrerillos, in the Andean spurs east of the railway junction at Pueblo Hundido in Atacama province. The main ore bodies lie in a ravine about 12,000 feet above sea level and consist chiefly of sulphides and oxides. At the time when I visited the region in late 1920 the treatment ofthese ores had not been decided upon, and no machinery installed, although an expensive housing scheme had been carried out at the mine. A railway between the tiny village of Pueblo Hundido, a handful of houses in the middle of an apricot-hued desert, and the high-placed mine were in operation; and a power plant, burning petroleum, had been set up at Barquito, on the coast a few miles south of Chañaral, the transmission lines running out across the sandy waste for some 130 miles.

Work on thePotrerillos installation was suspended about the middle of 1921, before a single ounce of copper had been produced. High above the copper deposits are extensive beds of sulphur, and upon the extraction of this mineral, needed in certain processes employed in treating low-grade ores, a certain amount of work has been done.

There are 16,000 mines of copper registered in Chile, covering an area of 57,000 hectares upon which the mining tax of ten pesos per hectare is paid. Of the producing establishments, Chuquicamata and El Teniente are by far the greatest, exporting in 1918 nearly eighty per cent of Chile’s total production. From the Caldera smelters was shipped a total of 5217 metric tons; Catemu produced 3790 tons; Gatico, 3708 tons; Naltagua, a French property, 3653 tons. Small quantities came also from El Volcán, El Hueso, and the Chañaral smelters, also in French hands. For the last ten years Chile’s output of copper in comparison with the total world supply has varied between 4 per cent in 1911 and 1912, and 8 per cent in 1918. By far the greatest producer of copper today is the United States, with a highest record of 880,000 metric tons in 1916, followed by Japan, shipping her highest recorded figure in 1917, when 124,000 tons was produced; Mexico,75,000 tons; Canada, averaging 50,000 tons; and Peru, 45,000.

The story of Chile’s iron deposits and works offers one of the most curious chapters in her mining history.

The most important of the identified deposits lie in the desert country north of Coquimbo, the fields at El Algarrobo and Algarrobito in the Department of Vallenar, Atacama Province, having interested a German firm some years before the war. No practical results were achieved, although the region recorded a small export of manganese, from the Astillas beds, until economic conditions checked these shipments soon after the beginning of this century. Proximity of quantities of manganese ore to the iron fields, reported as being of immense extent, has raised repeated hopes for the foundation of a great industry, but the crux of the problem is the absence of adequate fuel or water supplies, and the unproductivity of a sterile territory.

The only works so far established in connection with Chilean iron ores depend upon what is the most remarkable ferruginous deposit on the West Coast, paralleled only by the Itabira peaks in Brazil and the iron mountain of Durango in Mexico. El Tofo, some forty miles north of Coquimbo town, and fifteen miles from the Pacific, is a round hill practically composed of hematite ores running over 65 per cent pure, the quantity in sight totalling at least 300,000,000 tons. The hill stands among an imposing array of rolling mountains, and both dwellings and mine workings are daily enshrouded in seas of white mist.

Early in the present century this huge deposit was acquired by a French company, the Société Altos Hornos de Corral, which mined a quantity of the ores andtransported them by light railway to the little bay of Cruz Grande and thence to the south where, at the port of Corral in Valdivia province, a smelter was erected, the first experimental production of pig-iron taking place in 1910.

The company was fortunate in obtaining from the Chilean Government various privileges, including the concession of 58,000 hectares, or about 145,000 acres, of southern forest land, estimated to be capable of yielding 50,000,000 cubic metres of fuel wood. The Prudhomme process is employed at Corral; wood fuel alone is required, and an important item in the calculated income from the operation of the plant is that of the sale of by-products (charcoal and alcohol) obtained from the wood, in addition to the output of the blast furnaces. The plant was built to produce 50,000 tons of pig-iron annually, and would require for this purpose nearly half a million cubic metres of fuel wood; the expectations of the company have, however, not been realised, and when I saw the plant in 1920 it had been inactive for several years. A week of trial under the auspices of Chilean Government engineers headed by Dr. Manuel Prieto was undertaken in July of the same year, and an optimistic report issued: a few noteworthy points are quoted below.

With regard to the cost of production, the report states that the iron ore costs at Cruz Grande nearly ten pesos per ton (the peso in mid-1920 being worth about one shilling): but the sea freight, unloading at Corral, and transport to the smelter cost 14 pesos per ton. Despite the high freight charge, the cost of producing the 345 experimental tons worked out to only 152 pesos per ton, a quantity of the company’s ingots finding a sale at 345 pesos per ton. If the calculation is correct that, working sustainedly, the smelter could producepig-iron at all in costs of about 55 pesos per ton, the only problem is that of finding sufficient local or other South American markets prepared to take yearly 50,000 tons.

To obtain this quantity, the engineers estimate the employment of 70,000 tons of iron ores, purchased from El Tofo at 8.40 pesos per ton. The famous iron hill is no longer operated by the French Company, for during the war the deposits were leased to the Bethlehem Steel Iron Mines Company, and an extensive establishment created. A contract exists by which the Bethlehem interests guarantee to supply a maximum of 100,000 tons of ore free on board at Cruz Grande to the Société Altos Hornos, for thirty years.

If the fate, so far, of the Prudhomme smelter at Corral is misty despite high promise, that of the big installation at El Tofo is no less clouded. As soon as the Bethlehem Company took possession, large sums of money were spent on an entirely new installation. Land was acquired at Cruz Grande, an oil-burning power plant set up, the railway line rebuilt and electrified, and a loading basin for the Company’s special ore-carrying steamers, each of 17,000 tons capacity, cut out of the solid rock. The basin is 500 feet long by 40 feet wide, and on the dock side are 17 chutes each with a storage space for 20,000 tons of ore, operating electrically, and built to discharge their contents into 17 hatches so that each ship would be loaded in four hours’ time.

At El Tofo itself electric shovels attack the face of the hill on four or five levels; the crushing machinery is, like the ore-carrying outfit, the most modern that Bethlehem’s experience has evolved; strings of dwellings for workmen and officials stand upon the spur leading tothe iron hillside. The Company’s intention, I was informed by the sole official left in the silent camp, is to ship the rich ores of El Tofo to Sparrows Point, Maryland, where special equipment has been built to unload the Cuban ores imported by the Bethlehem interests. The haul from Chile is however considerably longer than from Cuba, and although transit by way of the Panama Canal has brought the Atlantic Coast of North America into closer commercial touch with the West Coast of South America, the cost of freight or other equally powerful reasons have prevented materialisation of the original plans. In more than one instance, wealthy firms making immense sums of money during the great war appear to have placed capital in investments far afield from which a return was not desired for reasons having a certain relation to the tax collector; and whether or no these considerations had any bearing upon the acquisition of large copper, iron, tin and silver deposits in various parts of South America by powerful companies, the fact remains that vast mineral resources have been added to the properties of a comparatively small group, and that their active operation may in the future affect international markets.

Early in 1921 announcement was made to the effect that a concession for thirty years of 140,000 hectares of forestal land in Llanquihue Province had been granted to a German firm, for the installation of large iron works. At the same time the concessionaires, who were stated to be engineers representing the Krupp firm, secured an option upon the Pleito iron ore deposits in Coquimbo and another series of mines in Atacama known as the Zapallo fields. Several Chilean newspapers, including the energeticMercurio, took exceptionto the land grant, pointing out the possibility that Germany was evading the spirit of the Treaty of Versailles, prohibiting her from manufacturing arms or guns within her own territory, by setting up big iron and steel factories upon foreign soil; it was also objected that the territory conceded includes a considerable part of the forestal reserves left in South Chile. A strip of woodland two kilometres wide had been reserved by the Chilean Government between the concession and Lake Todos los Santos, and with this exception the German grant extended from the lake to the foot of Calbuco volcano, with water outlet to the Pacific by way of an arm of the Gulf of Reloncaví. The Petrohue River is said to offer power for large hydraulic installations, and two other and smaller streams also run through the grant.

Ore from the north would, according to the plan, be transported to wood-burning smelters in the south. But difficulties arising from the claims of property-owners in the conceded tract of forest appear to have checked the scheme; the concessionaires announced their withdrawal in early 1922.

The attitude of the Chilean Government is, quite naturally, that it is desirable for large industrial development work to be promoted: and that the concession of forestal land given to the German interests would have been gladly granted to other nationals making similar propositions.

In early colonial days there was a fair yield of gold from Chile, chiefly obtained from the sands of the southerly rivers and deposits, as those of Tiltil, situated in the mountains between Valparaiso and Santiago,and the shining sands of the river beds of Huasco. It is estimated that from the days of the first settlement to the end of the fifteenth century Chile produced 131,000,000 pesos’ worth of gold, 63,000,000 worth in the sixteenth century and 167,000,000 in the seventeenth.[6]After Independence and the encouragement of foreign enterprise, production rose in less than fifty years (1801 to 1850) to 226,000,000 pesos (all these calculations being reduced to pesos of eighteen pence for purposes of comparison), but weakened abruptly when the deposits of alluvial gold, eagerly sought and worked, became exhausted by the end of the century. The present yearly production of gold averages about 2,000,000 pesos, chiefly from the Alhué mines near Rancagua.

6. Betagh, writing of conditions in 1720, says that there were gold mines at Copiapó, “just beyond the town and all about the country likewise, which have brought many purchasers and workmen thither, to the great damage of the Indians; for the Spanish magistrates take away not only their lands but their horses, which they sell to the new proprietors, under pretence of serving the king and improving the settlements.” He also noted the saltpetre, lying “an inch thick on the ground” in the north, and says that the country is full of all sorts of mines. About the year 1709 two lumps of gold found near the Chilean frontier, one of which weighed 32 pounds, was brought by the Viceroy of Peru, Count Monclove, and given to the King of Spain. In another washing place near Valparaiso belonging to priests gold nuggets are found, he says, ranging from a few ounces to one and a half pounds in weight.

The present production of silver is also a shadow of its former record. Once upon a time rich silver mines were worked at Uspallata, near the Pass; these were already abandoned in 1820, when Peter Schmidtmeyer made his journey. Chile never rivalled Potosí, where travellers of the early sixteenth century (before the amalgam process was introduced in 1571) might see 6000 furnaces shining together at night upon the famous hill; but her mines recorded a splendid total in one quarter-century, 1876 to 1900, when 432,000,000 pesos’ worth of silver was produced. Lowered internationalprices and the exhaustion of rich veins so reduced the industry that in 1915 only 1,000,000 pesos’ worth was produced, and although later years have reached values of over 3,000,000 pesos, future great production depends upon new discoveries and scientific operation. The mining engineer still has much work to do in the deep folds of the Chilean Andes, while the sands of the islands south of the Strait of Magellan have yielded, and are likely to yield again under good management, rich harvests of gold.

The coal industry of South Chile owes its greatest impetus to the energy of Matias Cousiño, who organised development dating from 1852; but mining for commercial purposes began as far back as 1840, when a field near Talcahuano began to supply the needs of Chile’s first steamship line, forerunner of the present Pacific Steam Navigation Company.

The entire region of Chile from Concepción southwards to the Territory of Magellanes is dowered with coal deposits, but the richest region is a series of mines strewn for one hundred miles along the coasts of the provinces of Concepción and Arauco. Wealth in coal has brought a large number of factories and mills to the prosperous city of Concepción, was a factor in the establishment of the chief naval station of Chile in the fine bay of Talcahuano—the best-sheltered port of Chile—and developed smelting and metal-refining works at Tomé, to the north of Talcahuano, and in Coronel and Lota, farther south.

Many coal beds known to exist in the Chilean south are unworked as yet owing to lack of transport in undeveloped regions, but in addition to the big mines inoperation in the rich regions of Arauco and Concepción, a deposit is being worked near Valdivia (the Sociedad Carbonifera de Máfil) while the Loreto beds are also under exploitation in Magellanes Territory, near Punta Arenas. The product of some of the Chilean mines is of excellent quality, but the product was, before the war, insufficient in quantity and not of a grade rendering it suitable for all railway and steamship uses. It was therefore supplemented by hard steam coal imported from foreign countries; before the outbreak of war in 1914 British mines were shipping about 1,000,000 tons per year to Chile, Australia sent about 450,000 tons, and the United States sent small quantities that varied between 3000 and 100,000 tons. The supply from Welsh and Australian mines was, during the war, diminished almost to vanishing point, and at the same time imports from North America rose to three or four hundred thousand tons, and the Chilean home production was immensely stimulated.

Chile’s producing mines are fourteen in number, twelve of these lying in the Arauco region; in 1909 production amounted to less than 900,000 tons, but had risen to over 1,500,000 in 1918 and 1919. Eleven to twelve thousand men were then employed, as against 9000 in 1911. The most important operators are the Compañia de Lota, Coronel y Arauco, a combination owning four mines and tributary railways, employing 3670 workers, and producing more than half a million tons of coal yearly. Next comes the Cia. Carbonifera y de Fundición Schwager, also situated at Coronel, employing 2800 men and producing over 400,000 tons; the only other company with an output of over 200,000 tons annually is that of Cia. Carbonifera Los Rios de Curanilahue, employing 1500 men. Both here and in the Lota mines the plant is operated by hydro-electricpower, and throughout the Chilean fields the standard of machinery and equipment is high. The general width of coal seams operated in Chile is from fifty to sixty inches.

The wages paid are about the same as for other mining and industrial work in Chile, ranging from five to seven pesos (paper) per day. The Coronel mines, many of which are deep-seated and run under the sea, pay at a higher rate, averaging eight and a half pesos, but the Loreto mine in Punta Arenas, where workers are scarce, pays its employés nearly twelve pesos a day.

Chilean coal miners work only 280 days in the year, but conditions are not always acceptable and there have been from time to time serious strikes; the last, occurring at the beginning of 1922, was said to be mainly fomented by the considerable foreign element.

Among the remaining coal companies of importance are the Cia. Carbonifera de Lirquen (Penco); the Cia. El Rosal (Concepción); and the Cia. Carbonifera de Lebu, owning three mines and a railway.

The price of Chilean coal responded to war conditions. In 1914 it stood at about 13 paper pesos per ton; in 1915 it rose to 25 pesos, and thence steadily climbed to 57 pesos in 1917, to 70 in the following year, and to 85 pesos in 1919. With the cessation of hostilities these prices, which were comparable with those of foreign imported coal, dropped; at the same time demand fell, fewer vessels requiring bunkering, not only because older fuel depôts became again available but because the extended use of the Panama Canal by international vessels is making itself felt more keenly. South Chile found its ports recording many fewer foreign vessels in 1919 and 1920 than in former years.

Curanilahue Coal Mine, Arauco Province.

Dulcinea Copper Mine, Copiapó Province.

Chuquicamata Copper Mine, Antofagasta Province.

In the Lonquimay region, along the valley of the upper Bio-Bio, are deposits of petroliferous shales, upon which a big industry will some day be founded. The most hopeful reports suggest the presence of a great oil-bed, but it is undisputed that the superficial layers orcapasyield 5 to 6 per cent of petroleum, the lower part of the bed yielding 12 per cent. In Scotland a percentage of 5 per cent is considered good enough, and the development of the prosperous North British industry could no doubt be duplicated in Chile—with adequate transport facilities. Manifestations of petroleum have been also identified farther south. Don Salustio Valdes, an enthusiastic Chilean mining engineer, considers that the most promising deposits are in the Province of Llanquihue, at Carelmapu, where the Cia. Petroléos del Pacifico has acquired territory; in Magellanes Territory, near Punta Arenas, where the Sindicato de Petroléo de Agua Fresca is operating; and on Tierra del Fuego, upon the north shore of Useless Bay. Natural gas escapes in considerable quantities in all these regions.

Borax is produced by a British company from a wonderful and beautiful lake-like deposit at Ascotan, on the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway almost at the Bolivian frontier. Nearly half the world’s supply comes from Ascotan, the pre-war export of Borax Consolidated averaging 40,000 tons, a quantity subsequently reduced owing to the imposition of a heavy export tax and high freight rates. The deposit lies at an altitude of over 12,400 feet with temperature ranging from 24 degrees below zero (Centigrade) and 32 degrees above, so that this well-organised company works under climatic difficulties accentuated by high winds, rain and snow.

Sulphur is abundant in Chilean mountains from north to south, a few thousand tons being annuallyproduced, chiefly for the use of the copper mines; lead, cobalt, nickel, aluminium, graphite and bismuth also exist in the highly mineralised north; deposits of manganese are worked on a small scale near Merceditas in the interior of the Province of Atacama.

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