is unknown to him. He will not endure a siege, nor can he be made to
fight at long range; but as soon as he sees the enemy he fires one
volley, drops his gun, and rushes in with his curvo. His endurance is as
great as his courage, and no North American Indian can travel so far
without rest or go so long without food and water as the Chillano peon,
or _roto_, as the mixed race is called. As the cholo in Peru is the
descendant of the Spaniards and the Incas, so is the roto in Chili the
child of the Spaniards and the Araucanian Indians, the race of giants
with which the early explorers reported that Patagonia was
peopled--“Menne of that bigginess,” as Sir Francis Drake reported, “that
it seemed the trees of the forests were uprooted and were moving away.”
They have the Spanish tenacity of purpose, the Indian endurance, and the
cruelty of both. Each soldier, in the mountains or the desert, carries
on his breast two buckskin bags. In one are the leaves of the
coca-plant, in the other powdered lime made of the ashes of
potato-skins. The coca is the strongest sort of a tonic, and by chewing
it the Chillano soldier can abstain from food or drink for a week or ten
days at a stretch. He takes a bunch of leaves as big as a quid of
tobacco in his mouth, and occasionally mixes the potato-ashes with the
saliva to give the juice a relish. Canon Kingsley, in that remarkable
novel, “Westward Ho!” describes two of the band of Amyas Leigh as
deserting their companions at the sources of the Amazon, and takes them
into a beautiful bower with two Dianas of the Indian type. There they
chew coca-leaves with the girls, sink into a voluptuous stupor, and give
themselves up to love, like the lotos-eaters, until Amyas comes to
remonstrate. The men recommend him to follow their example with the
Venus who has been found in an Indian queen and admires the young
commander; and the Puritan is on the point of yielding to the
fascination of the scene, when a reptile comes, strangles one of the
girls, and revives the moral instincts of the men. The reverend
word-painter was misinformed as to the peculiar influence of the drug,
as it does not produce a stupor in those who use it. It is not a
narcotic, but a stimulant.
The Chillano soldier is not easily subjected to discipline, and
outvandals the Vandals in the destruction of property, as the present
condition of Peru will prove. He burns and destroys everything within
his reach that has sheltered an enemy. No authority can restrain his
hand. The awful scenes of devastation that took place have nothing to
parallel them in the annals of modern warfare. On the battle-fields
nine-tenths of the dead were found with their throats cut, and the
Chillanos took no prisoners except when a whole army capitulated. They
ask no quarter and give none. The knowledge of this characteristic, and
the fear of the Chillano knife, were powerful factors in the subjugation
of the more humane Peruvians.
The Chillanos are cruel to beasts as well as to men. Horses are very
cheap in Chili. A good native broncho can be purchased for five dollars,
and his owner knows no mercy. The beasts are driven until they drop, and
then new ones are sought and subjected to the same treatment. No care is
taken to protect or make the animals comfortable. Although the weather
is usually cold, stables for horses or cattle are almost unknown. When
their labor is over they are turned into a corral, or a pasture, or the
street, to seek their own food.
The Chillanos are also careless of machinery. While they are quick to
learn, and have much native mechanical ingenuity, they cannot be trusted
as machinists. The magnificent cruiser _Esmeralda_, one of the finest
ships-of-war afloat, was built in England for the Chillian Government at
a cost of one and a half million dollars, but she had not been in the
hands of native engineers six weeks before her engines needed repairs
and her boilers were ruined. In 1885, during the troubles between
England and Russia, she was chartered by the British Government, but
afterwards returned to Chili. The Chillanos have a line of steamers
running from Valparaiso up and down the coast. They are the finest ships
on the Pacific, built on the Clyde, with all modern improvements, but
the engineers and captains are Englishmen or Scotchmen. The Government
owns and manages the railroads in the republic, but the locomotive
drivers are foreigners. Every three or four years--usually before a
Presidential election--these men are discharged and natives employed in
their stead; but until election is over, and the old engineers are
restored to their places, there is a carnival of accidents, and
passenger travel is practically suspended. On all railroads are heavy
grades and dangerous curves, requiring the greatest care on the part of
locomotive drivers. The reckless Chillano thinks it great fun to run a
train down a grade at full speed, and a collision is his delight. He
enjoys seeing things smashed up, and knows nothing of the necessity of
operating trains on schedule time.
[Illustration: THE “ESMERALDA.”]
In trade the Chillano is a Yankee. At market or in the native shops the
buyer is not expected to pay the price first asked. He is expected to
enter into a _negotio_, and the seller is disappointed if he loses an
opportunity to show his shrewdness in the barter. There is no regularly
established price for any article. A market-woman will ask two dollars
for a basket of fruit for which she expects to get fifty cents. She
will haggle and chatter, plead and remonstrate, and if you start towards
another stall, will abandon half a dozen other customers and follow you
around, until she finally “splits the difference,” and goes away smiling
at her success. The traveller meets with this experience everywhere,
particularly at the posadas; and the only safe way to avoid being
mercilessly swindled is to make a bargain in writing beforehand.
Most of the hotel-keepers are women, whose husbands are engaged in other
occupations; but all the servants, including the cooks and
chamber-“maids,” are men. There are better cooks and better classes of
food than in other South American countries, and one seldom fails to
find a good inn even in the country villages. The markets of Chili, too,
are better. The beef, mutton, and other meats have the flavor that is
found only in temperate climates; the fish are not so rank and coarse as
those caught in tropical waters; and while vegetation is not so
prolific, the fruits of the earth have a finer taste. There are oysters
equal to those of New Orleans or Mobile, clams and lobsters, and plenty
of shrimps, called _camarons_.
Another oddity is the milk stations. At distances of a few blocks on all
but the principal business streets is a platform where a cow is tied,
which is milked to order by a dairy-maid whenever a customer calls. On a
table near by are found measures, cans, and glasses, and often a bottle
of brandy, so that a thirsty man can mix a glass of punch if he chooses.
In the morning these stands are surrounded by servants from the
aristocratic houses, women and children, with cups and buckets, awaiting
their turn; and as fast as one cow is exhausted another is driven upon
the platform.
The scarcity of lumber has caused the poorer classes to use corrugated
sheet-iron as a building material, while the rich use stone for exterior
walls, and sun-dried brick or adobe for partitions. There are whole
blocks in Valparaiso in which nothing but corrugated-iron houses can be
seen, both roof and walls being of the same material. It is said to bear
the effects of earthquakes well. People expect an earthquake about once
in ten days the year round, and more frequently during the changes of
season; but great damage is seldom done. There are two kinds of
earthquake, the _terremoto_ and the _temblor_. The latter is only a
quivering or shaking of the ground, and is quite common; the other
describes the convulsions of the earth when it cracks and rolls like the
swell of the sea, overthrows cities, and buries towns in their own
ruins. Valparaiso and Santiago have never known any of the latter sort,
which are confined to the mountain districts and the neighborhood of
volcanoes.
There are more comforts among the people than elsewhere upon the
continent, and a higher degree of taste, as is shown by the articles
offered for sale in the shops as well as in the houses of the residents,
which is owing in a great degree to the example of the large foreign
population. The Rev. Dr. Trumbull, who has been in Chili forty-five
years, says that he has noticed a marked change in this respect within
the last decade, and has seen a gradual and permanent growth in
refinement and honesty.
In Chili, as in all the Spanish-American countries, every man and woman
is named after the saint whose anniversary is nearest the day on which
he or she was born, and that saint is expected to look after the welfare
of those christened in his or her honor. These names sound well in
Spanish, but when they come to be translated into unpoetic English there
is an oddity, and often something comical, about them. For example, the
name of the recent President of Chili is Domingo Santa Maria--which,
being interpreted, means Sunday St. Mary. The name of the President of
Ecuador is Jesus Mary Caamaño (apple), and that of the Governor of the
Province of Valparaiso is Domingo Torres (Sunday Bull). A waiter at the
hotel happened to be a Christmas gift to his parents, whose family name
was Vaca (cow), and in honor of the day they called him Jesu Christo
Vaca. Such blasphemy would not be tolerated in any other country; but
the use of the Saviour’s name is very common, even upon the signs of
stores and saloons in cities, and in the nomenclature of the streets. I
met a girl once whose name was Dolores Digerier (sorrowful stomach).
In Chili women are employed not only as street-car conductors, but they
do all the street-cleaning, and gangs of them with willow brooms
sweeping the dirt into the ditches can be seen by any one who has
curiosity enough to get up at daylight. They occupy the markets, too,
selling meats as well as vegetables. On the streets they keep
fruit-stands, and have canvas awnings under which, if you choose, you
can sit and eat watermelons, a fruit much esteemed in Chili. Outside of
the cities the women keep the shops and the drinking-places, and do all
the garden work. The laundry work is done at public fountains, as in
other of the Spanish-American countries; but the washer-women of Chili
do not go almost naked, as some of their neighbors do.
The native Peruvian, the descendant of the ancient Incas, has learned
nothing since the Conquest, and has forgotten most of the arts his
fathers knew, among them being the process by which the ancient race
rendered copper as hard as steel. Thousands of dollars have been offered
for that secret by modern bidders, but it is lost forever, and the
ingenuity and knowledge of modern chemists cannot discover the process.
The modern Inca wears the same blanket, or poncho, made of vicuña hair,
that his fathers did, and the same shoes made of raw hide. He has
rougher roads to travel than has the native of Central America, hence
his shoe is made to curl over on the sides and behind, so as to protect
the toes and the heel from contact with the rocks. It is cut in a single
piece from hide when green, and is made to curl by stretching it over a
primitive sort of last and keeping it in position until dry. The shoe is
attached to the foot by a thong, which passes along the entire top of
the shoe, laced through holes cut in the hide, and ending at the heel in
two strips, which are secured around the ankle. The evolution of the
native shoe is found in Chili; and although it lacks the maturity and
sanctity of age, which the Peruvian article enjoys, is a rather more
nobby
[Illustration: INCA QUEEN AND PRINCESS.]
affair. The sole is made of wood, rudely cut by hand with a knife, and
over the instep passes a piece of patent leather reaching from the toes
to the ankle, which is nailed to the sole by rows of brass-headed tacks.
The toes and heel are entirely without protection, and it requires a
great deal of experience to keep the shoe on. It is worn in the coldest
weather, over a very heavy and thick stocking knit of llama wool, and an
uglier pair of feet and legs than are shown by the short-skirted peasant
women of Chili were never seen. The men wear the same sort of shoe--not
quite so fancy in design nor of such fine materials, however; but as
they spend most of their time in the saddle it is not so bad.
The Crœsus of South America is a woman, Donna Isadora Cousino, of
Santiago, Chili, and there are few men or women in the world richer than
she. There is no end to her money and no limit to her extravagance, and
the people call her the Countess of Monte Cristo. She traces her
ancestry back to the days of the Conquest, and has the record of the
first of her fathers who landed early on the shores of the New World.
His family was already famous, for his sire fought under the ensign of
the Arragons before the alliance with Castile. But the branch of the
family that remained in Spain was lost in the world’s great shuffle two
or three centuries ago, and none of them distinguished themselves
sufficiently to get their portraits into the collection which Señora
Cousino has made of the lineage she claims.
Like her own, the ancestors of her late husband came over in the early
days, and in the partition of the lands and spoils of the Conquest both
got a large share, which they kept and increased by adding the portions
given to their less thrifty and less enterprising associates, until the
two estates became the largest, most productive, and most valuable of
all the haciendas of Chili, and were finally united into one by the
marriage, twenty-four years ago, of the late Don and his surviving
widow. While he lived he was considered the richest man in Chili, and
she the richest woman, for their property was kept separate, the husband
managing his estate and the wife her own, and the people say that she
was altogether the better “administrator” of the two. This fact he
acknowledged in his will when he bequeathed all of his possessions to
her, and piled his Pelion upon her Ossa; so that she has millions of
acres of land, millions of money; flocks and herds that are numbered by
the hundreds of thousands; coal, copper, and silver mines; acres of real
estate in the cities of Santiago and Valparaiso; a fleet of iron
steamships, smelting-works, a railroad, and various other trifles in the
way of productive property, which yield her an income of several
millions a year that she tries very hard to spend, and under the
circumstances succeeds as well as could be expected. From her coal-mines
alone Señora Cousino has an income of eighty thousand dollars a month;
and there is no reason why this should not be perpetual, as they are the
only source in all South America from which fuel can be obtained, and
those who do not buy of her have to import their coal from Great
Britain. She has a fleet of eight iron steamships, of capacities varying
from two thousand to three thousand six hundred tons, which were built
in England, and are used to carry the coal up the coast as far as
Panama, and around the Strait of Magellan to Buenos Ayres and
Montevideo. At Lota she has copper and silver smelting-works, besides
coal-mines, and her coaling ships bring ore down the coast as a return
cargo from upper Chili, Peru, and Ecuador; while those that go to Buenos
Ayres bring back beef and flour and merchandise for the consumption of
her people.
Although Lota is only a mining town, as dirty and smoky as any of its
counterparts in Pennsylvania, it is the widow’s favorite place of
residence, and she is now building a mansion that will cost at least a
million dollars. The architect and the chief builder are Frenchmen, whom
she imported from Paris, and much of the material is also imported. Not
long ago she shipped a cargo of hides and wool in one of her own
steamers to Bordeaux, and it is to return laden with building supplies
for this mansion. She herself has no time to go across the sea, but the
captain of her ship will bring with him decorators and designers and
upholstery men, who will finish the interior of her mansion regardless
of expense.
The structure stands in the centre of what is undoubtedly the finest
private park in the world--an area of two hundred and fifty acres of
land laid out in the most elaborate manner, containing statuary,
fountains, caves, cascades, and no end of beautiful trees and plants.
The improvement of the natural beauty of the place is said to have cost
Señora Cousino nearly a million dollars, and she has a force of thirty
gardeners constantly at work. The superintendent is a Scotchman, and he
informed me that his orders were to make the place a paradise, without
regard to cost. In this park there are many wild animals and
domesticated pets, some of which are natives of the country, others
imported; and the flowers are something wonderful.
Señora Cousino has another park and palace an hour’s drive from
Santiago, the finest estancia in Chili, perhaps in all South America;
nor do I know of one in North America or Europe that will equal it. This
is “Macul,” and the estate stretches from the boundaries of the city of
Santiago far into the Cordilleras, whose glittering caps of everlasting
snow mark the limit of her lands. In the valleys are her fields of
grain, her orchards, and her vineyards, while in the foot-hills of the
mountains her flocks of sheep and herds of cattle feed. Here she gives
employment to three or four hundred men, all organized under the
direction of superintendents, most of whom are Scotchmen. She has in her
employ at “Macul” one American, whose business is that of a general
farmer; but his time is mostly occupied in teaching the natives how to
operate labor-saving agricultural machinery.
Farming in Chili is conducted very much as it was in Europe in old
feudal times, each estate having its retainers, who are given houses or
tenements, and are paid for the amount of labor they perform. It is said
that Señora Cousino can marshal a thousand men from her two farms if she
needs them. The vineyard of “Macul” supplies nearly all the markets of
Chili with claret and sherry wines, and the cellar of the place, an
enormous building five hundred feet long by one hundred wide, is kept
constantly full. Señora Cousino makes her own bottles, but imports her
labels from France. On this farm she has some very valuable imported
stock, both cattle and horses, and her racing stable is the most
extensive and successful in South America. She takes great interest in
the turf, attends every racing meeting in Chili, and always bets very
heavily on her own horses. At the last meeting her winnings are reported
to have been over one hundred thousand dollars outside of the purses won
by her horses, which are always divided among the employés of the
stables.
In addition to “Macul” Señora Cousino has another large estate about
thirty miles from Santiago; but she gives it very little attention, and
has not been there for a number of years. In the city she has two large
and fine houses, one of them being the former residence of Henry
Meiggs--the finest in Santiago at the time it was built. All the timber
and other materials used in its erection was brought from California. It
is built mostly of red cedar. The construction and architecture are
after the American plan, and in appearance and arrangement it resembles
the villas of Newport.
The other city residence of Señora Cousino is a stone mansion erected on
the Spanish plan, with a court in the centre, and is ornamented with
some very elaborate carving. The interior was decorated and furnished
many years ago by Parisian artists at an enormous cost, and the house is
fitting for a king. There is no more elaborate or extensive residence in
America, and the money expended upon it would build as fine a house as
that of W. H. Vanderbilt in New York. The widow, however, spends but
very little time within its walls, as she prefers her home at Lota,
where most of her business is.
Her ability as a manager is remarkable, and she directs every detail,
receiving weekly reports from ten or twelve superintendents who have
immediate charge of affairs. While she is generous to profligacy, she
requires a strict account of every dollar earned or spent upon her vast
estates, and is very sharp at driving a bargain. One of her Scotch
superintendents told me that there was no use in trying to get ahead of
the señora. “You cannot move a stone or a stick but she knows it,” he
said. In addition to her landed property and her mines she owns much
city real estate, from which her rentals amount to several hundred
thousand dollars a year. She is also the principal stockholder in the
largest bank in Santiago. Not long ago she presented the people of that
city with a park of one hundred acres, and a race-course adjoining it.
[Illustration: SEÑORA COUSINO.]
Fabulous stories of the señora’s extravagance are told. A million of
dollars is a trifle to a woman whose income is so enormous, and there is
nothing in the world that she will not buy if she happens to want it.
She does not care much for art, but has a collection of diamonds that is
very large and valuable, and she sometimes appears loaded down with
them. Usually she looks quite shabby, as she has no taste or ambition
for dress, and her party toilets, which are ordered from Paris, are
seldom worn. Of late she has been a sufferer from sciatica, which has
not only destroyed the señora’s own pleasure, but has seriously impaired
the comfort of those who have relations with her. Although a
comparatively young woman, being somewhere between forty-five and fifty
years of age, she declares that she will never marry again; and there is
not a man in Chili who has the courage to ask her. Not long since she
took a fancy to a young German with a very blond beard and hair, and
insisted that he should give up his business and make his home with her.
The inducements she offered were sufficient, and for several months the
young man has been tied to her apron-strings, having the ostensible
employment of a private secretary. But the señora is very fickle, and
will probably throw him overboard, as she has many others, when the whim
seizes her.
Señora Cousino has two daughters and one son. Neither of the girls
inherits her mother’s business ability, or at least has not developed
it; but they are very popular in society. Señorita Isadora, the elder,
has a great deal of musical talent, and performs on the violin and
piano. Both are bright and pretty. One is about seventeen, and the other
nineteen years of age. Their brother, a young man of twenty-three or
twenty-four, will share the property with them. It is quite an unusual
thing for a youth with so much money to develop the business capacity
and industry which he shows. He looks after the estancia at “Macul,” and
spends from six to eight hours a day in the saddle, riding about the
place. He seldom joins in the festivities that his mother enjoys so
much, and is quite pronounced in his disapproval of her extravagance.
He is to marry a young lady of rather humble station, and it is
expected that the Meiggs mansion, which has been previously described,
will be presented to the bride by his mother as a wedding-gift.
The struggle between the Catholic Church and the liberal progressive
element in Chili, which has been going on for a number of years, is now
at its height. In all of the nations of Central and South America a
similar struggle has occurred. In Mexico and all Central America, in
Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Chili, the Argentine Republic, and Uruguay
the Liberals are uppermost, and have control of the State. Ecuador and
Bolivia are still in the hands of the priests, and are ruled at Rome.
But even in these republics there is a growing tendency towards
liberalism, and the day will soon arrive when the power of the Church in
politics will be overcome, and its authority over temporal affairs
denied. The Clerical party is growing in Peru. It has revived during the
prostration of that republic, and although the liberal element is still
in power, the Government is so weak that it cannot defy the Church as it
once could. Therefore, the priests and monks and Jesuits, who were
driven out years ago, are returning in large numbers to resume their
authority over the common people and intrigue for an administration
favorable to them.