3. Fellowship of the Royal Society was also extended to Captain Juan and both were elected members of the French Academy.
3. Fellowship of the Royal Society was also extended to Captain Juan and both were elected members of the French Academy.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, the time had passed when Spain could continue to exclude foreigners from South America. She had given way to demands for strictly limited trading, and the door could not again be shut.
Since the colonies of Spain wanted the blood and technical skill of young Europe, and young Europe constantly roamed the earth for wealth and adventure, no edicts or penalties could prevent a constant infiltrationof adventuring persons upon the West Coast. Likely young white men have, indeed, seldom been denied a welcome in new countries and whatever the Spanish authorities might say the growing native-born populations of Chile continued to beckon.
From time to time orders were issued that foreigners should be turned out of Chile; for instance, in April, 1769, the Town Council of La Serena (Coquimbo) promulgated a royal edict that foreigners were to leave the country within thirty days under penalty of the confiscation of their property. However, this applied only to persons engaged in trade, mining, or the legal profession, and to travellers, while such useful individuals as locksmiths and blacksmiths, tailors, bakers, cooks, mechanics, physicians and surgeons, were permitted to remain. Two Englishmen, Murphy and Denton, were among the persons told to leave the town, while a couple of Italians, a Frenchman and Portuguese also fell under the ban. It is doubtful whether the edicts were more than temporarily pressed or obeyed, for as a matter of fact many foreigners lived upon excellent terms with the local authorities, and, liking their surroundings, were equally well regarded. Thirty years before this particular edict was issued, and which applied to all important Chilean towns, there was living in Santiago a prosperous Scots physician, who was on sufficiently good terms with the Governor of Chile to obtain the keeping of the three English prisoners from theWager.
Anglo-Saxon names in Chile, as a glance at any Chilean town directory shows, are too many for a satisfactory survey of their origin to be made in a fewpages. But the result of this amicable invasion is strongly witnessed by the characteristics and qualities of the modern Chileno.
Some of the families have immense ramifications, and there are so many interlockings that a member of a good Anglo-Chilean family is likely to possess cousins throughout the republic, as well as in the United Kingdom and possibly also in North America. There are, for instance, the branches and connections of the Edwards family, descendants of that George Edwards who came to Coquimbo on a British ship in 1804, left it, and married the Señorita Isabel Osandon, whose father was of Irish descent. Agustin, one of the three sons of this marriage, founded the Banco de A. Edwards, whose original headoffices were in Copiapó, the once-splendid copper mining centre. The same Agustin Edwards promoted the Copiapó railway, married into the great Ross family, and was the father of the distinguished Chilean Minister at the Court of St. James, Don Agustin Edwards.
By a royal edict of 1808 all foreigners in Chile were listed, the count resulting in a total of 79, among whom were 16 Britons and 9 North Americans. This number is probably far below the correct figures, the presence of such persons being still illegal according to Spain. It was not until 1811 that permission was given for the brigFlyto bring a cargo of merchandise to Chilean ports—similar permits having previously been given only to the French, when politically associated with Spain. John and Joseph Crosbie were the chief adventurers of this shipload, and the bales of cotton and woollen cloth, the hardware and tools of British make, were sold at such good prices that the supercargo, John James Barnard, presently returned with theDart, equally laden. On board was Andrew Blestof Sligo, and both he and Barnard remained and married in the country.
With the first dawn of the struggle for independence in the Spanish colonies of the New World, help came promptly from across the Atlantic. The political aspect, promising a definite cessation of the anxieties and restrictions that harassed Europe and offering the counterbalance to which Canning trusted, was a matter for statesmen; but it was the appeal to the spirit, the call for help towards freedom, that touched popular imagination and sent thousands of British volunteers across seas. Many of these men died; some returned home; and a large number remained in Latin America to form links that have proved invaluable on both sides of the world.
The money sent to Spain’s lost colonies in early days set the new-born countries upon their feet economically; the soldiers who flocked to Bolívar’s standard in northern South America turned the scale of battle on more than one occasion—the gallant Irish Legion is still commemorated in Venezuela and Colombia; but it was to the Pacific that the largest number of volunteers went, for not only were the armies of San Martín strengthened by fighters, many of whom had seen useful service in Peninsular campaigns, but the effect among seamen of the entry of Admiral Cochrane into the conflict was that of a magnificent example to be followed with enthusiasm. Cochrane created Chile’s navy; many of the British officers who followed him remained in Chilean naval service, the link between the British and Chilean navies being sustained by the descendants of these sailors as well as, officially, bythe instructors traditionally lent by the British Admiralty.
The first British naval officers to fight for Chile preceded Cochrane by some months. Actually the first Chilean fighting ship was theAguila, captained by Raymond Morris in 1817; Captain O’Brien, commanding theLautaro, a converted East Indiaman, lost his life in April, 1818, when the Spanish blockading ship, theEsmeralda, was driven from Valparaiso; Captain Wilkinson, who entered Valparaiso as master of another East Indiaman, theCumberland, loaded with coal, sold her and entered the Chilean navy commanding the vessel, renamed theSan Martín.
Captain Morris commanded theAraucanawhen in October, 1818, Chile’s new little squadron went out to attack the big Spanish man-of-war, theMaria Isabella, lying with her transports in Talcahuano Bay, a brilliantly successful exploit. A little later came the former British brigHecate, renamed theGalvarinoand brought by two British naval officers, Captains Spry and Guise, who also entered Chilean service. About this time also came a number of North Americans, chiefly those brought by José Miguel Carrera from the United States.
Miners, investors, buyers and sellers and shipping men came in the wake of the fighters, and before 1850 there was a strong foreign, and chiefly British, colony at Valparaiso, with other groups at Santiago, Coquimbo, Copiapó and down south at Concepción. The kindly Chilean character, the pleasant climate and lovely scenery, held the hearts of the strangers, a great proportion remaining to identify themselves with Chilean fortunes.
A stream of scientific men and travellers was directed to Chile in the early nineteenth century, performingvaluable work and leaving records; the list includes the names of Poeppig, Darwin, de Bougainville, D’Orbigny, Mayen, the two Philippi’s, explorers of the Atacama desert, and Humboldt. There was a lady, too, who has a place amongst travellers, artists and writers of the first days of Independence, the gentle and acute Maria Graham, widow of one of Cochrane’s officers, who eventually returned to England, became LadyCallcott and published a perennially delightful book of Chilean reminiscence.
Many explorers of the Chilean southerly regions did good service, for here came theChallenger, with a group of scientific men, and later theAdventureand theBeagle, carrying King and Fitzroy and Darwin; these vessels and the succeedingAlert, with Coppinger, performed invaluable surveying work. Inland, a number of such explorers as Musters, Viedma and Conway, preceded the official work of the Holdich Commission. Of recent years, no foreigner has owed more to Chile than Shackleton; after the casting away of his ship and men upon Elephant Island in the Polar Seas, and the failure of three attempts at rescue, it was the loan of the Chilean Government’sYelchothat saved a score of gallant lives. But before the end of the nineteenth century the visitor to the Pacific Coast had ceased to be a stranger, and in Chile the newcomer no longer feels himself to be in a foreign land.