The Republic of Chile, beginning at latitude seventeen degrees, and
extending to the farthest southern limits of South America, forms a
narrow longitudinal strip of territory twenty-four hundred miles long,
and not exceeding two hundred miles in width in the extreme. It has an
area of 462,000 square miles, and a population of 3,500,000.
Nature has been prodigal in the bestowal of her varied gifts upon
Chile. Its geographical formation represents a huge serpent with its
sinewy form stretched along the west coast of the continent, its head
resting in the arid desert of Atacama, and its tail coiled about the
wood-crowned hills and ice-bound islands of Tierra del Fuego. Upon
one side loom the Andes Mountains, their snow-capped heads in the
clouds and their feet in the ocean; upon the other stretches the
vast expanse of the Pacific. Bordered as it is by the ocean on one
side, and including within its limits a range of mountains reaching
in some places an altitude of 24,000 feet, Chile presents a variety
of geological, geographical and climatic conditions possessed by few
countries in the world. Being isolated by great natural barriers it
faces away from all the centers of population and ancient homes of
civilization, and of all the countries of South America it occupies the
most unfavorable position geographically, and is the most inaccessible
from Europe, North America and the Ear East. But with all its
isolation, its long struggle to gain a place among civilized nations,
its history of cruel and uncivilized warfare, Chile possesses natural
resources and attractions which intervening years have made known, and
which in the short period of her national life have won for this long
neglected daughter of the Spanish colonial family, a reputation for
wealth and beauty that has given to it a fame as wide as the world.