NORTHERN CHILE
Two days 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 the
_peso_, 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 the same 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 the _delegados_ ashore 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 American schooners 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
income had 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 Treaty continues: “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 Peruvian _soles_, 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 open one. 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 demand on 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 Coast at 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 the
_Yankis_. 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.