CHILE
Except Egypt, there is not in the world a country so strangely formed
as Chile. Egypt is seven hundred miles long and nowhere save in the
Delta more than twelve miles wide. Chile is nearly three thousand
miles in length, nowhere more than one hundred and thirty miles wide
and for most of her length much narrower. Even Norway, whose shape and
sea-front best resemble those of Chile, has but fifteen hundred miles
of coast and has, in her south part, two hundred and fifty miles of
width. Much of the Chilean territory is a barren desert; much that is
not desert is in fact uninhabited. Over large tracts the population
is extremely thin. Yet Chile is the most united and the most ardently
national in sentiment among all the Spanish-American countries.
Nor is Chile any more singular in the shape of her territory than in
her physical conditions also. On the east she is bounded all the way
down to Magellan's Straits by the Cordillera of the Andes, the height
of whose summits averages in the northern regions from fourteen to
twenty thousand feet and in the southern from five to nine thousand,
some few peaks exceeding these heights. Parallel to the Cordillera,
and geologically much older, there runs along the coast a range
averaging from two to three thousand feet, between the foot of which
and the ocean there is practically no level ground. The space between
this coast range and the Cordillera is a long depression from twenty
to thirty miles wide, sometimes hilly, sometimes spreading out into
plains, yet everywhere so narrow that both the Coast Range on the
one side and the spurs of the Andes on the other are within sight of
the inhabitants who live between them. This long and narrow central
depression is Chile, just as the cultivable land on each side the Nile
is Egypt; and in it all the people dwell, except those who are to be
found in the few maritime towns.
It may seem strange that a country of this shape, three thousand miles
long, and with only three million three hundred thousand people,
should be conspicuously homogeneous, united, and patriotic. When the
difference between territorial Chile, the country of the map, and
actual Chile dawns upon the traveller, his surprise disappears. There
are in the republic three distinct regions. The northern, from latitude
18° south as far as Coquimbo in latitude 30° south, is arid desert;
some of it profitable nitrate desert, most of it, like Atacama, useless
desert. The south, from Puerto Montt in latitude 42° south down to
latitude 54° south, is an archipelago of wooded isles with a narrow
strip of wooded mountain on the mainland behind, both of them drenched
by perpetual rains and inhabited only by a few wandering Indians, with
here and there a trading post of white men. It is the central part
alone that is compactly peopled, a narrow tract about seven hundred
miles long, most of it mountainous, but the valleys generally fertile,
and the climate excellent. This central part is the real Chile, the
home of the nation.
To central Chile I shall return presently. Meantime a few pages may be
given to the northern section, which, though a desert, has an enormous
economic value, and is, indeed, one of the chief sources of natural
wealth in the two American continents. It is the region which supplies
the agriculturists of the whole world with their nitrates, and the
nitrates are here because the country is absolutely rainless. Rains
would have washed the precious mineral out of the soil long ago and
swept it down into the Pacific.
One enters the nitrate fields in two or three hours after leaving the
Bolivian plateau and passing through the Western Cordillera described
in the last preceding chapter. They are unmitigated desert, a region
of low stony hills, dry and barren, not a shrub, not a blade of grass.
Sources of fertility to other countries, they remain themselves forever
sterile. All the water is brought down in pipes from the upper course
of the Loa, the stream which rises on the flanks of the volcano of San
Pedro already mentioned. One can just descry in the far distance its
snow-streaked summit. But the desert is all alive. Everywhere there
are narrow-gauge lines of rails running hither and thither, with long
rows of trucks passing down them, carrying lumps of rock. Groups of men
are at work with pickaxes breaking the ground or loading the trucks.
Puffs of smoke and dust are rising from places where the rock is being
blasted with dynamite. Here and there buildings with machinery and
tall iron pipes shew the _oficinas_ where the rock is ground to powder,
then washed and boiled, the liquid mass run off and drained and dried
into a whitish powder, which is packed into sacks and sent down to
the coast for shipment. The mineral occurs in a stratum which lies
about a foot below the surface, and averages three feet in thickness.
It is brownish grey in colour and very hard. There is a considerable
by-product of iodine, which is separated and sent off for sale. The
demand for it is said to be less than the supply.
Each _oficina_--that is the name given to the places for the reduction
and preparation of the mineral--is the centre of a larger or smaller
nitrate estate, and the larger and more modern ones are equipped with
houses for the managers and workpeople, each being a sort of village
where the company supplies everything to the workpeople, who are
mostly Chilean _rotos_, sturdy peasants of half-Indian blood. In South
America one sees plenty of isolated mining villages in deserts, but
here a whole wide region unable to support human life is alive with an
industrious population.
The air being dry and pure (except for the dust) at this considerable
elevation, averaging from three to five thousand feet, the climate
ought to be healthy. But it is impossible to imagine a more dismal
place to inhabit, and those parts of the surface from which the mineral
has been removed are at once forsaken.
These nitrate fields cover a very large area in the northern provinces
of Chile, but some districts in which the mineral is believed to exist
are still imperfectly explored, and many in which it does exist shew a
comparatively poor stratum, so that it is not possible to estimate how
much remains to be developed and the length of time it will take, at
the present rate of production, to exhaust that amount. We were told,
however, that, so far as can be conjectured, the fields might (at the
present rate) last nearly two centuries, before the end of which period
much may happen in the field of scientific agriculture. The export duty
or royalty which the Chilean government levies produces a large annual
revenue, and is, indeed, the mainstay of the finance of the republic,
enabling taxation to be fixed at a low figure.[50] There are those who
say that this is no unmixed benefit, because it reduces the motives
for economical administration. The guano deposits of Peru proved to be
the source of more evil than good, for by pouring into her treasury
sums which excited the cupidity of military adventurers, they made
revolutions more frequent. No such danger need be feared in Chile; yet
there are always temptations incident to the possession of wealth which
a man or a nation has not earned by effort. As the nitrates are part of
the capital of the country which will some day come to an end, it would
seem prudent to expend what they produce upon permanent improvements
which will add to the nation's permanent wealth, such, for instance,
as railroads and harbours. A good deal is, in fact, being spent on
railroad construction, and a good deal on the creation of a naval
stronghold and docks at Talcahuano.
Between the nitrate fields and the sea there lies a strip of wholly
unprofitable desert, traversed by that range of hills which rises
from the coast all the way along the west side of Chile and Peru.
Its scenery is bold and in places striking, but the utter bareness
and brownness deprive it of all charm except that which the morning
and evening sunlight gives, bringing out delicate tints on distant
slopes. Here the railway line forks, sending one branch to the port of
Antofagasta, and the other to the smaller town but better sheltered
roadstead of Megillones. We went to the latter. Local interests of
a selfish kind have here, as elsewhere along the coast, caused the
selection of Antofagasta as the principal terminus of the line; and
though it is now admitted that Megillones would have been a fitter
spot, so much capital has been sunk in buildings at the former that it
is deemed too late to make a change. The bay of Megillones, guarded by
a lofty promontory on the south, and commanding a view of ridge after
ridge of mountains stretching out to the north, has a beautiful sweep,
and is enlivened by the abundance of seals and sea-lions, who wallow
and bark to one another in the long, slow rollers of the Pacific. The
beach is excellent for bathing, but the water so cold that only in the
hotter part of the year do the Englishmen, who manage the railway and
its machine works and who retain here the national love of salt water,
find it suitable for anything more than a plunge in and out again.
Though rain is extremely rare, one may conclude from the gullies in
the hills down which torrents seem to have swept either that violent
storms come occasionally or that the climate has altered since hills
and valleys took their present form.
Antofagasta, where we landed on the southward voyage down the coast,
is a much busier place than Megillones, but a less attractive one, for
it has no such sweep of sand and space of level ground behind, being
crushed in between the dreary, dusty hills and the rocky shore. Landing
in the surf is often difficult and sometimes dangerous, but as the
chief port of the southern nitrate country it receives a good deal of
shipping, and has a pleasant little native society, besides an English
and a German colony.
Nearly five hundred miles further south are the towns of La Serena and
Coquimbo, the former a quiet old Spanish city, placed back from the
coast to be out of the way of the English and Dutch marauders, who
were frequent and formidable visitors in these seas, after Sir Francis
Drake had led the way in his famous voyage in 1578, when he sailed up
and down the coast plundering towns and capturing ships. Coquimbo is
a newer place, with a fairly good harbour, and thrives on the trade
which the mines in its neighbourhood assure to it. It is an arid land,
yet here there begins to be some rain, and here, therefore, we felt
that we were bidding farewell to the desert, which we had first struck
at Payta, fifteen hundred miles further north. Nevertheless there was
little green upon the hills until we reached, next day, a far more
important port, the commercial capital not only of Chile, but of all
western South America, and now the terminus of the trans-continental
railway to Buenos Aires.
This is Valparaiso, where the wanderer who has been musing among
prehistoric ruins and Bolivian volcanoes finds himself again in
the busy modern world. The harbour is full of vessels from all
quarters,--coasting steamers that ply to Callao and Panama, sailing
ships as well as steamers from San Francisco and others from Australia,
mostly with cargoes of coal, besides vessels that have come from Europe
round Cape Horn or through the Straits of Magellan. The so-called
harbour is really an open roadstead, for there is no shelter to the
north, and when, as often happens, the dreaded gale from that quarter
breaks, vessels that have not had time to run out under steam are in
danger of drifting ashore, for the water deepens so quickly from the
land that they cannot anchor far out. Why not build a breakwater?
Because the water is so deep that the cost of a breakwater long
enough to give effective protection would be enormous. There is a
more sheltered haven some miles to the north, but as all the business
offices and warehouses are here, not to speak of the labouring
population and their houses, the idea of moving the city and railway
terminus has not been seriously considered.
Seen from the sea, Valparaiso is picturesque, and has a marked
character of its own, though the dryness of the hills and the clearness
of the light make it faintly recall one of those Spanish or Italian
towns which glitter on the steep shores of the Mediterranean. It
resembles Messina in Sicily in being very long and very narrow, for
here, as there, the heights, rising abruptly from the shore, leave
little space for houses, and the lower part of the town has less
than a quarter of a mile in breadth. On this narrow strip are all
the places of business, banks, shipping offices, and shops, as well
as the dwellings of most of the poorer class. On the hills above,
rising steeply two hundred feet or more, stands the upper town, which
consists chiefly of the residences of the richer people. Their villas,
interspersed with gardens, have a pretty effect seen from below, and
in rambling along the lanes that run up to heights behind one gets
charming views over the long line of coast to the north. Communication
between the lower and upper towns is carried on chiefly by elevators
(lifts) or trolley cars worked on the cog-wheel system.
At the time of my visit, the city was half in ruins, rebuilding itself
after a terrible earthquake. The lower town had suffered most, for
here, as at Messina and at San Francisco, buildings erected on soft
alluvial ground were overthrown more frequently and completely than
those that stood on a rocky foundation. The opportunity was being
taken to widen and straighten the principal thoroughfares, and to
open up some of the overcrowded poorer districts. The irregularities
of the site between a sinuous coastline and spurs projecting from the
hills make the city plan less uniform and rectangular than in most
Spanish-American cities, and though nothing is old and there is little
architectural variety, still the bright colours of the houses washed
in blue or white, the glimpses of rocky heights seen at the eastern end
of all the cross streets and of the sea glittering at the western give
a quality of its own to the lower town, while the upper town has its
steep gardens and tree clumps and wide prospects over the bay and the
jutting capes beyond.
But Valparaiso is perhaps most picturesque when seen from a steamer
anchored in the bay, especially when its white houses and hills, green
for a few weeks in spring, meet the eyes of one who comes from the
barren deserts of Bolivia and the nitrate region. In front are the
ocean steamers and the tall spars of Australian clippers; nearer shore
the smaller craft are tossing on the ocean swell; the upper town is
seen rising on its cliffs behind the lower, with high pastures and
rocky hummocks still further back. Far away in the northeast the snowy
mass of Aconcagua, loftiest of all American summits, floats like a
white cloud on the horizon.
A few miles north of Valparaiso is the pretty residential suburb of
Viña del Mar, beyond which the rocks come down to the sea, here and
there enclosing stretches of sandy beach on which the great green
rollers break. The dark yellow Californian poppy (_Eschscholtzia_)
which covers the fields in such masses round San Francisco is equally
common here. Woody glens come down from the hills; and in the bottom
of one of these the principal sporting club has laid out a race-course
and polo ground, where we saw the fashionable world gathered for these
diversions, just as popular here as in Europe. (South America has
not yet given any game of its own to the world as the North American
Indians gave La Crosse and the East Indies polo.) Everything looked
very pretty in the fresh green of October, but everybody shivered; for
though the summers are extremely hot, the spring was less genial than
one expected in this latitude. Valparaiso has winds equally chilling
whether they come down from the snowy Andes on the east or up from the
Antarctic current on the west. It is a windy place and in summer a very
dusty one, but in comparison with the dismal barrenness of Mollendo and
Antofagasta it deserves its name of Valley of Paradise.
Despite earthquakes and northern gales, Valparaiso continues to be
the most flourishing seat of world trade on the western side of its
Continent, the only South American rival of San Francisco, Seattle, and
Vancouver. It is also the centre of the coast trade of the Chileans,
the only Spanish-American people who have shewn taste or talent for
seafaring. We felt ourselves back in the modern world when we saw a
Stock Exchange, having since we left New York passed near no city
possessing that familiar appliance of civilization. Apart from stocks,
abundant opportunities are supplied for speculation by the sudden and
violent fluctuations in exchange upon Europe. The commercial houses
are chiefly English and German, and among the Chilean firms there are
some that bear English names. The Europeans of former days soon made
themselves at home here, and their descendants in the third or even the
second generation are patriotic Chileans. Some of the heads of British
firms told me that the young men who come out to them to-day from
England, are not, as a rule, equal either to those of thirty years ago
or to the young Germans who are sent to serve German houses. "They care
less for their work,"--so my informants declared,--and "they do it less
thoroughly; their interests at school in England have lain chiefly in
playing, or in reading about, cricket and football, not in any pursuit
needing mental exertion, and here where cricket and football are not
to be had, they become listless and will not, like the young Germans,
spend their evenings in mastering the language and the business
conditions of the country." What truth there is in this I had no means
of testing, but Valparaiso is not the only foreign port in which one
hears such things said.
Fifty miles inland, as the crow flies, but much farther by railway, is
Santiago, the capital of Chile, and in population the fourth city in
South America.[51] Except Rio de Janeiro, no capital in the world has a
more striking position. Standing in the great central valley of Chile,
it looks out on one side over a fertile plain to the wooded slopes of
the Coast Range, and on the other looks up to the gigantic chain of
the Cordillera, rising nineteen thousand feet above it, furrowed by
deep glens into which glaciers pour down, with snowy wastes behind.
At Santiago, as at Innsbruck, one sees the vista of a long, straight
street closed by towering mountains that crown it with white as the sea
crowns with blue the streets of Venice. But here the mountains are
more than twice as high as those of the Tyrolean city and they never
put off their snowy vesture. Wherever one walks or drives through the
city in the beautiful public park and on the large open grounds of the
race-course, these fields of ice are always before the eye, whether
wreathed with cloud or glittering against an ardent sky.
The interior of the city does not offer very much to the traveller.
There is one long, broad and handsome thoroughfare, the Alameda,
adorned with statues and with four rows of trees, as well as several
plazas, small compared to those of Lima and Arequipa, but very
tastefully planted. There is a cathedral of the familiar type, spacious
and well proportioned, with the usual two west towers and the usual
silver altar. There are handsome government offices, and a fine
building for the legislature. The streets are narrow, the houses seldom
high, for here also earthquakes have to be considered. Everything looks
new, as might be expected in a place which was small and poor till
the end of the eighteenth century, and which has grown rapidly within
the last sixty years with the prosperity of the country. Prosperity
and confidence are in the air. Great, indeed, is the contrast between
old-fashioned Lima and still more ancient Cuzco, or between La Paz,
nestling in its _Barranca_ under the mountains like an owl in the
desert, and this brisk, eager, active, modern city, where crowded
electric cars pass along crowded streets and men hurry to their
business or their politics even as they do in western Europe or North
America. Santiago is a real capital, the heart of a real nation, the
place in which all the political energy of the nation is focussed,
commercial energy being shared with Valparaiso. Here are no loitering
negroes, nor impassive Indians, for the population is all Chilean,
though close inspection discovers a difference between the purer and
the less pure European stock. A great deal of native blood flows in the
veins of the Chilean _roto_.
There is little of historical or archæological interest in Santiago, no
skeleton of its founder (as of Pizarro in Lima), for Pedro de Valdivia
was taken prisoner and killed by the Araucanian Indians hundreds of
miles away; no palace of the Inquisition, for Santiago was in the
seventeenth century too small a place to need the elaborate machinery
of the Holy Office for the protection of its orthodoxy. Till the War of
Independence it was a remote provincial town. But Nature has given it
one spot to which historical associations can attach. When Valdivia,
one of the ablest and boldest of the lieutenants of Pizarro, was sent
down hither to complete the conquest of that southernmost part of the
Inca dominion from which Almagro had returned disappointed in the quest
for gold, his soldierly eye lit upon and marked a steep rock that rose
out of the plain on the banks of a torrent descending from the Andes.
On this rock he planted (in 1541) a rude fort and, after receiving the
submission of the neighbouring Indians, marched on still further south,
into regions which the Incas had never conquered. After some successes,
a sudden rising of the natives chased him back and he had to take
refuge in the fort upon this rock, now called Santa Lucia. Besieged for
many weeks and reduced to the utmost extremity of famine, he held out
here with that desperate tenacity of which the men of Spain have given
so many examples from the days of Saguntum to those of Cortes at Mexico
and from those of Cortes to those of Palafox at Saragossa. The Indians
had, however, no notion of how to conduct siege operations and at last
Valdivia was relieved. The fort remained, and beneath it there grew up
in course of time the city.
The ancient Acropolis or Hill Fortress is a familiar sight in India,
in Greece, and Italy, and in western Europe also. Gwalior and
Trichinopoly, Acrocorinthus and Taormina, and in England, Old Sarum,
Durham, Exeter, Shrewsbury, London itself, are instances, and the
Fortress has often as in the last four cases, been the germ of a city.
But so far as I know Santa Lucia, below which Santiago has grown up,
is the only conspicuous instance in the two Americas of any such
stronghold built by Europeans. The hill, a little over two hundred
feet high, is much lower than are the Castle Hills of Edinburgh and
Stirling, and the space on it smaller. It is lower even than the Castle
Rock of Dumbarton, which it more resembles. Like those three, it is a
mass of hard igneous rock, so irregular in form as to suggest that it
may be a detached fragment of an old lava flow, and most of its sides
are so precipitous as to be easily defensible. The buildings which had
defaced it having been nearly all removed, it is now laid out as a
pleasure ground, and planted with trees. Walks have been made round
it, with a footpath to the craggy summit, and there is a statue of
Pedro de Valdivia, the only monument to any one of the Conquistadores
which I can remember to have seen in Spanish America, for the men of
that famous group are not much honoured by their colonial descendants.
Every evening we walked to the top to enjoy the wonderful view over
the valley, and the last rays of the sun reddening the Andean snows. A
still more extended view is obtained from the summit, surmounted by a
colossal statue of the Virgin, of the hill of San Cristobal, whose base
is half a mile from the town.
Chile, like the rest of South America, is a country of large estates,
the early conquerors having received grants of land, many of which
have not since been broken up into smaller properties; so there
exists a landed aristocracy something like that of England in the
eighteenth century, with peasants cultivating the soil as tenants
or labourers, while the small middle class consists of shopkeepers
or skilled artisans in the towns. The leading landowners spend the
summers in their country houses and the winter and spring in Santiago,
which has thus a pleasant society, with plenty of talent and talk
among the men, of gaiety and talk among the women, a society more
enlightened and abreast of the modern world than are those of the more
northern republics, and with a more stimulating atmosphere. Santiago
has always been the centre and heart of Chile both politically and
socially and has in this way contributed to give unity to the nation
and to create a Chilean type of character. The jealousy felt by the
country folk against the capital which has been the source of so much
strife in other states was generally less marked here. Santiago leads;
Santiago's influence forbids any attempts at federalizing the republic.
Though learning and science have not quite kept pace with conquest
and prosperity, there is a thriving university, and a fine museum,
placed beside the zoological and botanical gardens. The last and the
present generation have produced some gifted writers and among the
too few students of to-day is one of the most accomplished historians
and bibliographers in Spanish America, Señor José Toribio Medina. The
bent of Chilean genius has, however, been on the whole towards war and
politics. The material development of the country by railways, the
opening of mines and the extension of agriculture, important as these
are, do not absorb men's thoughts here so much as they do in Argentina
and indeed in most new countries. Politics hold the field just as
politics held it all through the nineteenth century in England and in
Hungary, perhaps the most intensely political countries of the Old
World.[52]
The mention of these two countries suggests another point of
resemblance. The Chileans, a race of riders, are extremely fond of
horse-racing. The races at Santiago rouse immense interest and are the
occasion of a great deal of betting, not only in the city, but also at
Valparaiso, for such of the Valparaiso sportsmen as cannot come to the
capital gather in their clubhouse and carry on their betting during
the progress of each race, every detail of which is reported from
moment to moment by telephone, the bets coming as thick and fast as if
the horses were in sight upon the course.
Chile is the only country in South America which can boast to have had
no revolution within the memory of any living man. In 1890 there was
a civil war, but that conflict differed materially from the familiar
military revolutions of the other republics. President Balmaceda had
quarrelled with the legislature, claiming that he could levy taxes
without its consent, and was overcome, after a fierce struggle, the
navy supporting the Congress, and the command of the sea proving
decisive in a country with so long a coast line. So scrupulously
regardful were the Chileans of their financial credit, that both
Balmaceda and his congressional antagonists, each claiming to be the
lawful government, tendered to the foreign bondholders payment of the
interest on the same public debt while the struggle was going on.
There were, at the time of my visit, five political parties or
divisions of the Liberal party, besides the Conservatives. The
President had died suddenly while travelling in Europe, and the Liberal
sections, holding the majority in Congress, met to select the candidate
whom they should put forward as his successor. The discussions and the
votings in their gatherings went on for several weeks, but force was
never threatened; and the Chileans told their visitors with justifiable
pride that although twelve thousand soldiers were in or near the
capital, no party feared that any other would endeavour to call in
the help of the army. Chile is also the only South American state
which takes so enlightened an interest in its electoral machinery as
to have devised and applied a good while ago a system of proportional
representation which seems to give satisfaction, and certainly deserves
the study of scientific students in other countries. I saw an election
proceeding under it in Santiago. The result was foreknown, because
there had been an arrangement between Liberal sections which ensured
the victory of the candidates they had agreed upon, so there was little
excitement. Everything seemed to work smoothly.
What I had seen of the aspects of nature round Santiago increased the
desire to know something of southern Chile, a region little visited
by travellers, but reported to be full of those beauties which make
the scenery of temperate regions more attractive, at least to persons
born in the temperate zone, than all the grandeurs of the tropics.
Accordingly we set off for the south, the Chilean government having
kindly provided special facilities along their railways.[53] All the
lines, except that which crosses the Andes into Argentina, are the
property of the state. From Santiago to the strait which separates the
large island of Chiloe from the mainland, a distance of 650 miles,
there stretches that long depression mentioned at the beginning of
this chapter, the northern part of which contains nearly all of the
population as well as most of the cultivable area of the republic. The
railway that traverses it from end to end is the main highway of the
country sending off branches which run westward to the towns that lie
on or near the coast, and as it keeps generally in the middle of the
valley, one gets admirable views toward the Andes on one side and the
Coast Range on the other.
Travelling south, one observes four changes in physical conditions.
The rainfall steadily increases. At Santiago it is only about fifteen
inches in the year; at Valdivia, 440 miles to the south, it is seven
times as great. With this abundant rainfall, the streams are fuller,
the landscape greener, the grass richer, the trees taller. The
mountains sink in height, and not the Andes only, but the average
height of the Coast Range also. The snow line also sinks. Near Santiago
it is about 14,000 feet above sea-level; at Valdivia it is rather under
6000. These four things completely alter the character of the scenery.
It is less grand, for one sees no such mighty peaks and wide snowfields
as rise over Santiago, but it is more approachable, with a softer air
and more profuse vegetation. As compared with the desert regions of
northern Chile, the difference is as great as that between the verdure
of Ireland and the sterility of the Sahara.
From Santiago to Osorno, the southern limit of our journey, there was
beauty everywhere, beauty in the fields and meadows which the railway
traverses, beauty in the wild _quebradas_ (narrow glens) that descend
from the Andes, beauty in the glimpses of the snow mountains where a
break in the nearer hills reveals them. But I must be content to speak
of a few points only.
The long depression between the Andes and the Coast Range, which forms
the best part of Chile, is crossed by a series of large and rapid
rivers descending from the Andean snows and forcing their way through
the clefts in the Coast Range to the sea. The first of these is the
Maule, which was the southernmost limit of the conquests of the Inca
monarchs. Next to it, as one goes south, is the still larger Biobio, on
whose banks the Spaniards strove for nearly a century with the fierce
Araucanian tribes, till at last, despairing of success, they desisted
and allowed it to be the boundary of their power. It is the greatest
of all Chilean streams, with a broad and strong current, but is too
shallow for navigation, and the commercial city of Concepcion, which
lies a little above its mouth, uses the harbour of Talcahuano as its
port.
Here, one is already in a well-watered land, but before I describe
the scenery of this delightful region something may be said of the
coast towns, which are quite unlike those of northern Chile and Peru.
Concepcion, founded by Valdivia to bridle the Indians, is an attractive
little city, with a large plaza and wide streets, which are tidy
and well kept. Indeed, as compared with those of Spain and Italy,
the larger cities of South America are as superior in cleanliness
as they are inferior in architectural interest. Cuzco stands almost
alone in its offensiveness to sight and smell. The cheerful airiness
and brightness of the place are enhanced by the beauty of the wide
river on whose north side it stands, and along whose shores, backed
by wooded hills, there are many pretty villas with gardens, most of
them the property of the British and German colonies who live here
in social good will and active business competition. The former have
laid out an excellent golf course a few miles away towards the Ocean
and have infected some Chileans with their passion for the Scottish
game. Though not now so large as Valparaiso, the city has played a more
important part in Chilean history, for it was the military capital of
the southern frontier on the side of Araucania and the centre of the
energetic and fighting population of that region. The leading families
formed the only aristocratic group that was capable of resisting, as,
after independence had been achieved, they did occasionally resist,
the larger aristocratic group of Santiago. There was not enough wealth
in those days to build stately churches or mansions, but the place
has a look of dignity and is more Chilean and less cosmopolitan than
Valparaiso.
Talcahuano, possessing the finest natural harbour in central Chile, has
been made the principal naval stronghold of this country which sets
store upon the strength of its navy, deemed essential to protect its
immensely long coast line. An enemy possessing a more powerful fleet
would, it is thought, have Chile at its mercy until the longitudinal
railway is completed which is to run the whole length of the country
parallel to the coast. A naval harbour has been formed and docks built
and batteries erected to command the approaches. From the heights one
sees across the ample bay the site of an old Spanish town, abandoned
because exposed to the English and Dutch sea-rovers of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Since this time no hostile European
vessels[54] have appeared in these waters, though they have seen
plenty of sea-fights in the days of the Revolution and in those of the
great war between Chile and Peru, and again in the civil war between
Balmaceda and the Congress.
Two other places on the Chilean coast are worth mentioning. From
Concepcion a railroad, crossing the Biobio by a bridge three-quarters
of a mile long, runs southward to the ports of Coronel and Lota. The
shore, sometimes rocky, sometimes bordered by thickets or grassy flats
behind sand beaches, is extremely picturesque; and were it in the
populous parts of Europe or North America, it would be lined by summer
cottages and alive with children. But its vegetation and general aspect
are curiously unlike those of the Atlantic coasts of either of those
two continents, and remind one rather of California. At Lota, the hills
rise boldly from the sea and a large island lying some way out gives
variety to the ocean view. Here, on an eminence behind the town, is a
garden of singular interest and beauty which I had especially wished to
see because it had excited the admiration of my friend, the late Mr.
John Ball, the distinguished botanist and traveller, who has described
it in his _Notes of a Naturalist in South America_, published in 1887.
It occupies the top of a hill which breaks down almost precipitously
to the shore, and was formed by a wealthy Chilean, the owner of a coal
mine and copper smelting works close by, who built a handsome villa,
and assisted by an energetic Irish gardener, laid out a park with
admirable taste, gathering and planting a great variety of trees and
shrubs and so disposing the walks as to give delightful views along the
coast and out into the ocean. There are few things in the course of
journeys which one recalls with more pleasure than parks and gardens
which combine opportunities for studying the flora of a new country
with the enjoyment of natural beauty. This place had the peculiar
interest of showing how, in a mild and humid climate, trees and shrubs
from sub-tropical regions may flourish side by side with those of the
temperate zone. Its profuse variety of trees, many of them seen by
us for the first time, lives in my recollection with the gardens of
the Scilly Isles and those on Valentia Island on the coast of Kerry,
and the famous park at Cintra (near Lisbon), the two former of these
possessing similarly favourable climatic conditions. The landscape at
Lota is more beautiful than at any of those spots, and though it is
marred by the smoke of the smelting works placed here to take advantage
of the coal mine, one must remember that without the coal mine and the
smelting works their owner would not have had the money to expend on
the park and gardens.
About two hundred miles to the south of Concepcion a large river finds
its way to the sea through a comparatively wide and open valley and
meets the tide of the ocean at a point where Valdivia, the lieutenant
of Pizarro, whom I have already mentioned as the first Spaniard to
penetrate into these wild regions, built a small fort and called it
by his own name. His fort was thenceforth the chief and sometimes the
only seat of Spanish power in this whole stretch of country, constantly
besieged and reduced to dire extremity by the warlike Indians, but
almost always saved because it was accessible by sea from the ports of
Peru. No trace now remains of the ancient stronghold, nor, indeed, are
there any old houses, for in this well-wooded part of Chile houses are
built of timber and fires are proportionately numerous and destructive.
A terrible one had swept away half the town in 1909. They were busy
rebuilding and improving it, for the country all round is being
brought into cultivation, and trade is brisk. The phenomena remind
one of western North America, though the pace at which population
grows and natural resources are developed is far slower. There is a
German colony, of course with a large brewery, the chief manufacturing
industry of the spot, and a somewhat smaller British mercantile colony.
The town stretches along both banks of the broad stream, on which light
steamers ply to the seaport of Corral, some twelve miles below. Here,
also, the resources of the land are being exploited. A French company
has erected large works for the smelting of copper, which is brought by
sea from the ports of northern Chile. All the most recent metallurgical
appliances have been introduced, and a considerable population has been
drawn to the place. It is, however, an indigenous population. That
inrush of immigrants from Europe, which is the conspicuous feature
in North America, wherever railways or other large works are being
executed, or new industries set up, is here wanting. It has not yet
been worth while to tempt Italian or Slavonic labour from Europe.
Here at Corral, one touches an interesting bit of history. There are
on both sides of the port ancient forts which command not only the
harbour and the passage out to sea, but lovely views over the smiling
land and wooded mountains. In their present form they seem to date from
the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. They stand now as
mouldering and grass-grown monuments of a vanished empire. Erected to
protect the colonists from British and Dutch attacks, they succumbed
long afterwards to a later British adventurer leading those colonists
themselves against the power of Spain. Less than a century ago (in
1817) they saw one of the most brilliant achievements of Lord Cochrane,
then fighting for the Chilean revolutionaries, when with the crews of
his few ships he stormed these forts, chasing the Spaniards away to
Valdivia and received next day the surrender of that town, their last
stronghold on the Chilean mainland. The services of this Scotchman are
gratefully remembered here along with those of two men of Irish stock,
O'Higgins and Lynch. All three have won a fame not unlike that of
Lafayette and Rochambeau in the United States.
In these seaports we saw the commercial side of Chilean town life,
a side in which the foreigner plays a considerable part, whether
he manages metal works for European capitalists or represents some
great English or German trading firm. Temuco, situated in a purely
agricultural district, supplying its wants and serving as a market
for its produce, is of a different type and gave one a notion of what
corresponds in Chile to the smaller country town of England or North
America. It is a new place, for this region was almost purely Indian
till thirty years ago, covers a great deal of ground, and reminds one
more of an Hungarian or Russian town than of the North American West,
for the wide and generally unpaved streets were not planted with trees
and the one story houses were mostly thatched. The air was soft and
humid, rich green meadows stretched out on every side and though there
were evident signs of growth and comfort, nobody was in a hurry. The
country is lovely. To the west are picturesque wooded hills, outliers
of the Coast Range, and on the east, there opens a view of the Andes
twenty or thirty miles distant, their snowpeaks rising behind a mass of
dark green forest. We were entertained to dinner by the officers of the
regiment quartered here, the commandant, who was also governor of the
district, presiding, and met a large and agreeable company composed of
the officers and their wives, a few officials, and some of the chief
business men. Here, as everywhere in Chile, educated society is more
modern and less ecclesiastical in sentiment than what the traveller
finds in the more northerly republics. In listening to the graceful
and well-phrased speech in which the commandant toasted the guests,
we had fresh occasion to admire the resources of the Castilian tongue,
which like the Italian, perhaps even more than the Italian, seems to
lend itself more naturally than English or German to oratory of an
ornamental kind.
While in Peru and Bolivia the great mass of the aboriginal population
remained distinct from their Spanish masters, in Chile the fusion began
early and went steadily on until, except in one district, the two
races were blended. A certain number of families, including most of
the aristocracy, have remained pure white; but many more intermarried
with the natives, and the peasants of to-day belong to this mixed
race. As elsewhere in Spanish America, the man of mixed blood deems
himself white, and does so the more easily here, because over most of
the country there are no longer any pure Indians. The aborigines of
this region were less advanced in the arts of life than those of Peru,
but they were better fighters and of a bolder spirit. They have made a
good blend with the whites; the Chilean _roto_ is a hardy and vigorous
man.[55]
The one district in which a pure Indian race has remained is that in
which Temuco stands, for this is the land of those Araucanian Indians
to whom I have already referred, a race deservedly famous as the only
aboriginal people of the Western hemisphere that successfully resisted
the European intruders.[56] I had imagined this people dwelling in the
recesses of forest-covered mountains, and themselves tall and stalwart
men like the Patagonian giants whom Magellan encountered on the other
side of the Andes. But the Mapoche[57]--that is the name by which the
Araucanians call themselves--are, in fact, short men, though sturdy and
muscular, with broad faces, not unlike some East Asiatic types. Their
country is part of that long and wide depression which constitutes the
Central Valley of Chile, a fertile land which, though doubtless once
more thickly wooded than it now is, was probably, even in the days of
Valdivia's invasion, partly open savannah. There is, and apparently
there always has been, so little game that the natives must have
lived chiefly by tillage, for they had, of course, neither sheep nor
cattle. Although less civilized than were the tribes dwelling north
of them, who had received some of the material culture of the Inca
empire, they had risen above the savage state, and were at least as far
advanced as were the Algonquins or Dakotas of North America. They had
organized a sort of fighting confederacy of four tribes, resembling
the "Long House" of the Iroquois Five Nations. Each tribe had its
leading family in which the chieftainship was hereditary, but if the
eldest son were not equal to the place, a second or other son might
be selected by the tribe in his stead. For war, they chose leaders of
special bravery or talent, as Tacitus tells us that the Germans of his
time did. Their weapons were the lance, probably a sort of assegai,
and the axe or tomahawk of stone, and a club of wood, sometimes with
a stone head fastened to it. When Valdivia, having overcome the more
northerly tribes, and having strengthened his force by contingents
from them, crossed the Biobio into the Araucanian country, the chiefs
of the confederacy summoned a general assembly of all the fighting
men--a sort of Homeric _agora_--and after three days' debate, resolved
on resistance. In the first encounters they suffered terribly from
the firearms and the horses of the Spaniards. Valdivia defeated them
and marched through their country as far as the place where he built
(as already mentioned) the town which still bears his name. After a
few years, he returned with a stronger force hoping to complete his
conquest. A hundred miles south of the Biobio the Araucanians attacked
him. Their furious charge could not be stopped by musketry--gunshot
range was very short in those days--the invading force was destroyed,
and Valdivia, flying from the field, was captured. While he was
attempting to save his life by a promise to withdraw altogether from
Chile, an old chief smote him down with a club.
From this time on the warfare lasted with occasional intermissions
for more than sixty years. The Araucanians discovered by degrees
tactics fitted to reduce the advantages which firearms gave to the
Spaniards. They obtained horses, and, like the Comanches in Arizona
and the Basutos of South Africa, learnt to use them in war. They
produced leaders like Lautaro and Caupolican of talents equal to their
bravery. When they found themselves unable to stem a Spanish invasion
they retired into their woods, and as soon as the enemy had retired,
they fell upon the forts and raided across the border. Weary of this
incessant and apparently hopeless strife, the Spaniards at last agreed
to a treaty by which the Biobio was fixed as the boundary. During his
daring cruise in the Pacific in 1578 Sir Francis Drake had occasion
to land on the Chilean coast. The Araucanians, seeing white men come
in a ship, assumed them to be Spaniards, and attacked them. Had they
realized that Drake's crew, being the enemies of their own enemies,
would gladly have been their friends, an alliance profitable to both
parties could have been struck, and it might have been serviceable to
Drake's English and Dutch successors. Fearing such a contingency, the
Spaniards made it a part of their treaty with the Araucanians that they
should give no help to the maritime foes of Spain. Fresh wars from time
to time broke out, but they always ended in the same way, so Araucania
continued independent down till, and long after, the revolt of Chile
from Spain.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the nation had begun to
lose its old fighting habits. Diseases contracted from the whites
had reduced its numbers and sapped its strength, while peaceful
intercourse with the colonists had mitigated the ancient animosity.
Accordingly, when Chile, about 1881, asserted her authority, and the
town of Temuco was founded in the middle of the Araucanian country,
the idea of resistance which some of the chiefs entertained was
dropped on the advice of others who saw that it would be hopeless
under conditions so different from those of the seventeenth century.
Thus it may still be said of this gallant race that though they have
consented to become Chileans, they remain the one unconquered native
people of the continent. Though there has not been much intermarriage
between them and the Spanish colonists, the long conflict had a marked
effect upon the character of the latter, giving to the Chileans a
rude force and aptitude for war not unlike that which the constant
strife with the Moors gave to the Spaniards in the Middle Ages. The
earlier part of the conflict had the rare honour of being made the
theme of an epic poem which ranks high among those of modern Europe,
the _Araucana_[58] of Alonzo de Ercilla, who himself fought against
Caupolican. No ill feeling seems to exist now between the Mapoche and
the Chileans. Educated men among the latter feel a certain pride, as
do the Araucanians themselves, in their romantic history, each race
remembering that its ancestors fought well.
How large the Mapoche nation was when the Spaniards first came is quite
uncertain. The estimate of 400,000 seems excessive for a people who
had no cattle, and did not till the soil on a large scale. Even now
while some put the present population as high as 140,000, others put
it as low as 50,000. There is, unfortunately, no doubt that they are
diminishing through diseases, especially tubercular diseases, which
have spread among them from the whites, and are now transmitted from
parents to offspring. Laws have been passed for their benefit, and a
functionary entitled the Protector of the Indians appointed, but some
of these laws, such as those restricting the sale of intoxicating
liquors, are enforced quite as imperfectly as they are in other
countries better known to us. The tribal system has almost vanished,
but the local communities into which the people are now grouped respect
the heads of the old families and often regret the days when a simple
and speedy justice was administered by the chieftains.
Scattered over a wide area they dwell in villages of grass huts or
frame houses, the latter far less favourable to health, and live by
tillage or stock keeping, though a few go north to seek work and are
deemed excellent labourers. The custom observed by the Kafir chiefs
in South Africa, of allotting a separate hut to each wife, does not
seem to hold here, but as the huts are large, each wife, if there
are several, is allowed her own hearth and fire. Some families have
considerable estates; some own large herds of cattle and sheep which at
certain seasons are driven across the Andean passes to the pastures of
Argentina.
While the wars lasted there was, of course, no question of converting
the Araucanians to Christianity; and though in the intervals of peace
friars sometimes went among them, they remained practically heathen
till the establishment of Chilean authority in 1882. Their religion
is a form of that spirit worship which one finds among nearly all
primitive peoples. Its rites are intended to avert the displeasure of
the spirits, to obtain from them fine weather or rain (as the case may
be), and to expel a noxious demon from the body. The priesthood--if
the name can be used--is not hereditary and is confined to females.
The women who discharge the functions of wizards or medicine men
are selected when young by the elder sorceresses and initiated with
elaborate rites. A tree of a particularly sacred kind is chosen and
a sort of ladder of steps cut in it, which the sorceress mounts to
perform the ceremonies. When the tree dies, its trunk continues to
be revered and is dressed up with fresh green boughs for ceremonial
occasions. I could not find that any other natural objects, besides
trees, receive veneration, nor is there anything to shew that the Inca
worship of the sun and the host of heaven had ever spread so far to the
south. The old beliefs and usages are now fast waning. Many Mapoche
have become Christians, a considerable number Protestants, converted by
the English South American mission, others Roman Catholics. They are
described as a people of good intelligence, and easy to deal with when
they are treated with justice, a valuable element in the population,
and one which Chilean statesmen may well seek to preserve, if drink
could be kept from them and the germs of hereditary disease rooted out.
The occupation by the Araucanians of a considerable part of the central
Chilean valley accounts for the fact that the population of the
region beyond them to the south has grown but slowly. It now contains
no Indian tribes till one gets across the channel of Ancud to Chiloe
and the other islands along the coast. Few settlers came to these
parts from Europe until about the middle of last century the Chilean
government encouraged an immigration from Germany which continued,
on a moderate scale, for a good many years, but thereafter stopped
altogether. Going southward from Valdivia one finds both in small towns
and in rural districts round them a good many solid German farmers and
artizans and tidy little German Fraus who might have come straight out
of the Odenwald. We spent a night in Osorno, our furthest point toward
the south, a neat and prosperous looking town, and dined with one of
the leading German citizens, a man of wide reading, and especially
devoted to Robert Burns, whose poems he recited to us, and to Thomas
Moore, some of whose songs he had translated into German. Thereafter a
group of the German residents hospitably took us to their club, where
they have a concert hall and just such a Kegelbahn (skittle alley) as
that in which I remember that we students used to play at Heidelberg
in 1863, about the time when the parents of these worthy Germans were
migrating to Chile. They gave us champagne, the unfailing accompaniment
of every social function in South America; but it ought to have been
Bavarian beer. This is the only part of western South America to which
any considerable mass of settlers have come from Europe, for most of
the English, Germans, French, and Spaniards one meets in the commercial
and mining centres are passing business visitors. On the other side of
the Andes it is different, for there the Italian immigration has been
and still is very large.
Comparatively few immigrants enter Chile now, which would imply that
the quantity of land available for agriculture, but not yet taken
up, is supposed to be not very large. To me the country we traversed
appeared to be far from fully occupied, though on such a matter the
impressions of a passing traveller are of little value. Of all the
parts of the New World I have seen there is none which struck me as
fitter to attract a young man who loves country life, is not in a hurry
to be rich, and can make himself at home in a land where English is not
the language of the people. The soil of southern Chile is extremely
fertile, fit both for stock-raising and for tillage. The climate is
healthy and mild, without extremes either of heat or cold. Wet it
certainly is, but not wetter than parts of our own western coasts.
The summer sun is strong yet not oppressive, the air both soft and
invigorating, for Ocean sends up shrill blowing western breezes to
refresh mankind.[59] There are no noxious beasts, no mosquitoes, no
poisonous snakes, nor other venomous creatures, except a spider found
in the cornfields whose bite, though disagreeable, is not dangerous.
Intermittent fevers, the curse of most countries where new land is
being brought under cultivation, seem to be unknown. There are
deer in the woods, and plenty of fish in the clear, rapid rivers.
The Englishman who loves hunting will not want for foxes; the North
American golfer will find grassy flats by the sea, waiting to be laid
out as links. Remote, secluded, and tranquil as the country is, the
settler should have little difficulty in procuring whatever Europe
supplies, for even at Osorno he is only forty hours from Santiago, and
Santiago is now only two days from Buenos Aires, and Buenos Aires only
seventeen days from Europe.
Perhaps it is the charm of the Chilean scenery that prompts a view of
the country, considered as a home for the emigrant, more favourable
than might be taken by one to whom life would be just as enjoyable
in the boundless levels of Manitoba as within view of a snowy range.
Perhaps, also, this charm of southern Chile with its soft, green
pastures and shaggy woods and flashing streams was enhanced to us by
contrast with the dreary deserts of Peru and Bolivia, through which
we had lately passed. Whoever has in his boyhood learnt to love the
scenery of a temperate country never finds full satisfaction in that
of the tropics, with all their glow of light and all their exuberance
of vegetation. Such lands are splendid to visit, but not so good to
live in, for exertion is less agreeable, the woods are impenetrable,
and the mountains, therefore, less accessible, and the constant heat is
enervating, not to add that insects are everywhere, and in many places
one has to stand always on guard against fevers. Nothing could be
grander than the landscapes in the Andes which we had seen, nor more
beautiful than the landscapes in Brazil which we were shortly to see.
But of all the parts of South America that we visited, southern Chile
stands out to me as the land where one would choose to make a home.
Two excursions, one to the sea, the other into the hills, gave us
samples of two different kinds of scenery. Of the many brimming rivers
that sweep down from the Andes across the Central Valley none is more
beautiful in its lower course than is the Rio Bueno. It has in the
course of ages cloven for itself through the hard rocks of the Coast
Range a channel so deep that the tide comes up to the little town of
Trumajo forty miles from the sea, and from that town small steamers can
pass all the way to the bar at its mouth. In one of these little craft
which a kind friend had procured we spent a long day in sailing down
and back again. The hills on each side, sometimes hanging steeply over
the stream, sometimes receding where a narrow glen opened, were clothed
with the richest wood. It was a brilliant day in October, answering to
our April, and the sun brought out an infinite variety of shades of
green in the young foliage in these glens, the trees all new to us, and
the spaces between them filled with climbing plants hanging in festoons
from the boughs. Wild ducks and other water-birds fluttered over the
water and rose in flocks as the little vessel moved onward, and green
paroquets called from the thickets. As it nears the sea, the river
spreads into a wide deep pool under a crescent of bold cliffs, and at
the end of this is seen the bar, a stretch of sand on which the huge
rollers of the Pacific break in foam. There is a lighthouse and a few
houses near a flat stretch of meadow by the banks, the grass as green
and the flowers as abundant as in Ireland. Specially vivid were the
yellow masses of gorse, apparently the same species as our own, and,
if possible, even more profuse in its blossoms than on those Cornish
shores of which it is the chief ornament. I have seen few bits of coast
more picturesque than this meeting of the still, dark river and the
flashing spray of ocean under rocks clothed with feathery woods.
On our way back something went wrong with the machinery and the vessel
had more than once to moor herself to the bank till things were set
right. This gave opportunities for going ashore and exploring the
banks. In some places the forest was too dense to penetrate without a
_machete_ to hew a way through the shrubs and climbers. In other places
where one could creep under the trees or pull one's self up the cliffs
by the boughs, the effort was rewarded by finding an endless variety
of new flowers and ferns. The latter are in this damp atmosphere
especially luxuriant; and their tall fronds, dipping into the river,
were often seven or eight feet long. It was a primeval forest, wild
as it had been from the beginning of things, for only in two or three
places had dwellings been planted on level spots by the river and
little clearings made; and the hills are so high and rocky that it may
remain untouched and lonely for many a year to come.
The other excursion was towards the Andes. There is along the railway
no prettier spot than Collilelfu, where a rapid river, broad and bright
like the Scottish Tay, but with clearer and greener water, sweeps down
out of the foothills into the meadows of the Central Valley. Here a
French company have constructed a little branch railway, partly to
bring down timber, partly in the hope of continuing their line far up
the valley and across a pass into Argentina, in order to carry cattle
to and fro. The manager, a courteous Frenchman from the Basque land
of Bearn, ran us up this line through a succession of lovely views
along the river to a point where we got horses and rode for seven or
eight miles further through the forest up and down low ridges to the
shore of Lake Rinihue. The forest was in parts too thick to penetrate
without cutting one's way through creeping and climbing plants, but in
others it was open enough to give mysterious vistas between the tall
stems, and delicious effects where the sunlight fell upon a glade.
The trees were largely evergreen, but few or none of them coniferous,
for in Chile it is only at higher levels that the characteristic
conifers, such as the well-known _Araucaria_, flourish. Here at last
we found that characteristic South American arboreal flora we had been
looking forward to, a forest where all that we saw was new, unlike
the woods of western North America and of Europe, not only because
the variety of the trees was far greater than it is there, but also
because so many bore brilliant flowers upon their higher boughs,
where the sunlight reached them. We were told that in midsummer the
flowers would be still more profuse, but those we saw were abundant and
beautiful enough, some white, some crimson or scarlet, some yellow,
very few blue. One climber lit up the shade with its red blossoms,
and below there were long rows, standing up along the path, wherever
it was fairly open to the light, of white and pink foxgloves, a
species closely resembling our own, while a woody ragwort, eight to
ten feet high, bore a spreading umbel of yellow. The _Calceolarias_,
frequent in Peru, do not seem to come so far south as this. Most of
the trees had small leaves, but two, one called the _lengue_, valued
for its bark, and another resembling a laurel, had large, dark green,
glossy foliage. It was a silent wood, except for the paroquets and
the occasional coo of a wood-pigeon; nor did we see any four-footed
creatures, except two large, reddish brown foxes scurrying across the
path ahead of us. Wildcats are scarce, and the puma, the beast of prey
that has the widest range over the Western Hemisphere, is here hardly
ever seen. The woodscape was less grand and solemn than what one sees
in the great redwood forests of California or in the sombre depths of
those that cover the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington, where the
Douglas fir and the huge "cedar"[60] tower so high over the trails
that one can scarce catch the light through their topmost branches.
Nor can I say that the views were more beautiful than may still be had
in the few remaining ancient forests of England with their ancestral
oaks and spreading beeches. But there was here a peculiar feature,
giving a sense of the exuberant vitality of nature, in the profusion of
parasitic plants clothing the trunks of the trees, both the fallen and
the living, some of them flowering plants, but more of them ferns and
mosses, especially tender little filmy ferns such as one finds on the
moist and shady rocks of western Scotland and among the mountains of
Killarney.
We embarked on Lake Rinihue in a tiny steamboat, and sailed some miles
over its exquisitely clear, green waters. Steep hills from two to three
thousand feet high enclose it, and at its upper end, where it winds in
towards the central range of the Andes, small glaciers descend from
between high snowpeaks. The view, looking across the deep green of the
forests, broken here and there by a rocky cliff, up to these glittering
pinnacles, had a beauty not only of color and form, but of mystery
also,--that indefinable sense of mystery which belongs to little-known
countries. In regions like Scotland or the Alps or Norway one has
historical associations and the sense of a long human past to enhance
the loveliness of hills and groves and streams. Here one has the
compensating charm of an untouched and almost unexplored nature. The
traveller in southern Chile feels as if he were a discoverer, so little
visited is this land, and such a promise of wild beauty waiting to be
revealed lies in the recesses of these mountains. Along the shores of
Rinihue, which is twelve miles long, there is, save for a house or two
at the place where we embarked, no trace of human life. Other such
lakes, many of them much larger, lie scattered over a space some four
hundred miles long and fifty miles wide on both the Argentine and the
Chilean side of the Cordillera, a land of forests virtually unexplored
and uninhabited, except by a few wandering Indians, standing now as it
has stood ever since the Andes were raised. The day will come, perhaps
less than a century hence, when the townsfolk of a then populous
Argentina, weary of the flat monotony of their boundless Pampas, will
find in this wilderness of lake and river and mountain such a place,
wherein to find rest and recreation in the summer heats, as the North
Americans of the Eastern states do in the Appalachian hills; and
the North Americans of the West, in the glorious ranges along the
Pacific coast. Superior to the former region in its possession of snow
mountains, equal to the latter in climate and picturesque beauty, and
to the naturalist more interesting than either from its still active
volcanoes and its remarkable flora, this lake land of the southern
Andes is an addition, the value of which the South Americans have
hardly yet realized, to the scenic wealth of our planet.