The rivers in Chile all have their source in the Andes and empty
into the Pacific. Unvexed by fretting wheels of commerce, they flow
peacefully on from mountains to the sea. The distance being short and
the declivity great, the current of the streams is swift, affording
excellent power for manufacturing purposes. Sometimes in the rainy
season, when the rivers are flushed from excessive rains, or in summer
when their waters are augmented by melting snows, they become raging
torrents, sweeping everything before them, frequently causing much loss
of life and great damage to property. Among the more important rivers
in Chile are the Aconcagua, Mapocho, Maipo, Cachapoal, Tinguiririca,
Teno, Lontue, Mataquito, Rapel, Claro, Maule, Nuble, and Bio Bio.
Some of these rivers are navigable for light-draft vessels for a
short distance from the sea, but the winding course of the streams,
irregular depth of water and the swift current make traffic unsafe,
impracticable and unprofitable. The most peculiar and complicated river
system on the continent is formed by the converging of the numerous
streams that empty into the bay of Corral, near Valdivia. In some
places as many as four rivers converge at one point. The scenery along
these rivers presents a panorama of constantly changing views. Wooded
hills rise abruptly along the banks, and in many places trees lean out
over the streams, in the crystal waters of which are reflected their
inverted images. Islands, overrun with creepers and brilliant with
the scarlet bloom of coiphues and fuchsias, and the yellow hues of
goldenrod, are some of the features of the picturesque scenery along
this peculiar river system.
The fact that the rivers of Chile afford practically no transportation
facilities is a matter of little commercial importance, because of the
narrow territorial limits of the country from east to west, the general
course of all the streams. As a compensation for this lack of natural
transportation routes to the interior, the coast of southern Chile is a
succession of bays, sounds, gulfs and channels, including the historic
Straits of Magellan, which separate Tierra del Fuego from the mainland,
and Smyth’s Channel, dangerous to navigate because of the swift
currents flowing through the narrow, tortuous ways. In many places
along the coast the descent of the shore is so abrupt that heavy-draft
vessels are enabled to pass within a few yards of the embankments, and
directly under overhanging trees. This southern archipelago, with
its hundreds of islands, presents a panorama of scenes peculiarly
picturesque and interesting. Among the more important islands of the
coast are Chiloe, the original habitat of the potato, Wellington,
Hanover, Queen Adelaide, St. Ines, and Desolation, so-called because of
the lack of vegetation and desolate aspect of this long narrow strip of
land lying at the western entrance to the Straits of Magellan. In some
of the narrow channels separating the islands from the mainland and
from each other, the currents are so swift, the waters so disturbed and
the storms so fierce in certain seasons, that the sea seems a boiling,
seething caldron, terrifying to passengers and mariners on passing
ships. But those dangerous passages add a fascinating feature to the
scenic effects of the most picturesque portion of the coast country.
The Straits of Magellan are a wise and beneficent provision of nature,
forming a great canal or natural transportation route across the
southern portion of the continent, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans. Ships pass through the Straits instead of around Cape Horn,
one of the most dangerous seas in the world to navigate. The Andean
range of mountains, extending from the Arctic Ocean, and stretching its
vast, rugged length across the two Americas, ends at the Straits, Mount
Victoria, a massive pile of gleaming ice and snow, being the last link
in the jagged chain. South of the Straits is Tierra del Fuego, “Land of
Fire,” the hills and mountains of which, including the great pyramidal
cone of Mount Sarmiento, perpetually covered with a mantle of snow,
stretch away hundreds of miles to Cape Horn, the most southern point
of the Continent.
The scenery as well as the topographical and geographical conditions
of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, in fact all the southern
archipelago, are different from those in the arctic regions. There is
more vegetation and a greater variety of scenery than in the coast
countries of a corresponding latitude north. There are the beauties
of the Thousand Islands, and Darwin, in describing a voyage through
the Straits, compared the glaciers of Tierra del Fuego to a thousand
frozen Niagaras. All the beautiful tints and combinations of coloring
to be found in lakes Como and Lucerne, of the Mediterranean and the
bay of Naples, are equaled, if not surpassed by, the hues reflected in
the deep waters of those channels. Huge glaciers crowding down into
the sea; giant rocks, rising like sheer walls of masonry for thousands
of feet above the water, sometimes ending in shapes resembling church
pinnacles and cathedral domes; mountains, whose forest-fringed bases
are washed by the sea, their snow-mantled heads in the clouds; islands,
frosted with snow and bejeweled with ice, in which is mingled the hues
of gray-green moss and verdant vegetation; numerous winding, tortuous
water-ways, dividing the islands from each other and separating them
from the mainland, are some of the features of the panoramic view of
coast-line, mountains and islands, presented in a landscape that is
wonderfully picturesque and prepossessing. When storms sweep through
these narrow channels, driving seas mountain-high against rocky
shores, increasing the force of natural currents, obscuring the view
with a shroud of snow and sleet and mist, a wild aspect is added to the
scene. Mountains and islands rise ghostlike out of the water, their
forms dimly outlined against the angry sky; and the din of booming seas
and swiftly rushing waters adds terrifying confusion to the dangers of
navigation.
In Patagonia the Andes differ in many of the essential features
of their geographical conformation from that magnificent mountain
system which further north is the pride and despair of the western
countries of South America. The grand simplicity of structure in the
northern system, the magnificent continuity and lofty grandeur of
its main ranges, the altitude of its dominating peaks, its terrible
and forbidding wastes of desolate and highly elevated table-land are
wanting in the mountain masses of the far south. The topographical
condition of the Patagonian country represents an immense system of
ancient lake beds, and sea inlets separated and divided by groups of
mountain peaks, sometimes piled upon a massive pedestal of crystalline
rock, sometimes strung out in jagged lines of sierra or ridge, fringed
with moraines or terraces, shaped and reshaped by the ice-agency of
more than one glacial period; mountains which have been split again and
again by stupendous volcanic action, and enormous masses of volcanic
deposits.