LIFE IN THE CHILEAN CAPITAL
_Railway along Aconcagua River Valley--Project of Wheelright,
the Yankee--Santiago’s Craggy Height of Santa Lucia--A
Walk along the Alameda--Historic and Other Statues--The
Capital a Fanlike City--Public Edifices--Dwellings of the
Poor--Impression of the People at the Celebration of Corpus
Christi--Some Notes on the Climate--Habits and Customs--“The
Morning for Sleep”--Independence of Chilean Women--Sunday for
Society--Fondness for Athletic Sports--Newspapers an Institution
of the Country._
In places the river Aconcagua is like the Platte of Nebraska, which
is famous for spreading out so that it is all bed and no depth. Yet
the stream is more picturesque than the flat top of Mt. Aconcagua,
22,425 feet high, for the monarch of the snow-covered Cordilleras
lacks the majesty of the apex peaks, which are 2,000 or 3,000 feet
lower. The railroad creeps along the valley from Valparaiso, cuts
across the ravines and transverse spurs into a narrow pass, following
the watercourse and clinging to the mountain-side like the rim of
a wheel. The vegetation is both temperate and tropical. In making
the journey on a June day I passed from the balminess of perpetual
Spring to the chill of Winter, but Nature was not stern and there
was no bleakness. A little back from the seacoast were short and
stocky palms, fields carpeted with yellow cowslips, milk-white nut
trees, green willows, silver poplars, young apple orchards side
by side with orange groves, firs, and the taller forest trees.
[Illustration: Scene on the Aconcagua River]
After the main valley is left and the gorge entered, it is a steady,
curved climb to Llai-Llai. The place is an eating-station, and a
very good one too. The name is Indian and not Welsh. Though it was
midwinter, the breath of the tropics lingered and the dews had
freshened the vines and trees. The railway splits at this point,
one branch going south to Santiago and another straight on to Los
Andes, where the mule-path leads across the _cumbre_, or summit,
but where in a few years the big spiral tunnel will complete the
through rail connection via the Uspallata Pass between Valparaiso
and Buenos Ayres. In this region I had glimpses of vineyards, of
pretty farms, and of pasturing cattle and sheep. The valley below
is an agricultural Arcadia. Coming out of the gorge in the wildest
part, the beauties of the scenery were temporarily lost, for a big,
staring coffin sign greeted my eye. Sometimes the Chileans call
themselves the English of South America; sometimes the Yankees.
The advertiser’s art here is both English and Yankee--it stops at
nothing.
[Illustration: View of Los Andes]
But the snow-peaks, the overhanging vaporous milky masses on the
summit, and the darker purple masses on the mountain-sides, make it
possible to forget the coffin man and his wares, though his sign
at first jars the æsthetic sensibilities so disagreeably.
Railroad travel is comfortable on the line from Valparaiso to the
capital. There are Pullman cars and other conveniences. But though
it is midwinter, the cars are not heated. Every one unrolls blankets
and robes. The women settle back to a nap or a little gossip.
The men light their cigars, and between the intervals of newspaper
reading, talk politics and the weather. Two or three peruse French
novels. The five hours consumed in the journey pass quickly.
This railroad was projected by William Wheelright. The opposition
the enterprise met in the Chilean Congress reads like a chapter of
George Stephenson’s struggles with the English Parliament. Wheelright
carried the line as far as Llai-Llai. Then came a long wait, till
Henry Meiggs arrived in the first flush of his exile, and with his
extraordinary mental activities thirsting for a field for their
employment. For ten years the government had been deciding to have
the remaining sections of the railway completed “to-morrow.” It
was in 1861 that they made the contract. They had no idea of quick
work. Meiggs, shrewd California Yankee, got a clause inserted giving
a premium if Section A should be finished within one year instead
of three years, and so forth. Then he built the railroad in the
shortest period and collected the largest premium. The authorities,
wondering, paid, but allowed no rush clauses in subsequent contracts.
Few big cities can boast the possession of a craggy mountain.
Santiago has such a treasure in Santa Lucia, an alluvial outcropping,
isolated, and apparently not kin to the granite spur of San Cristobal
near by. After waiting many years, the municipality converted it from
a sterile mass of rugged rock into a park with drives and gardens,
serpentine paths, statues, terraces, parapets, bowers, grottoes,
basins, cascades, and aquariums. There is a statue to Pedro Valdivia,
the first of the Spanish conquerors, whose conquering career was
ended by the unconquerable Araucanians, and a chapel and monument
to the public-spirited Archbishop Vicuña. A theatre, a _café_,
and some other structures also have been erected. Their value in
beautifying the mountain is not great, yet art and advertising have
not been allowed altogether to spoil Nature.
Santa Lucia is Santiago’s crown jewel, her Kohinoor. Every day during
my stay I went to walk there, often through the clouds, but always
with a freshened sense of enjoyment. The approach is like Chapultepec
in the City of Mexico, but this isolated mountain mass, while less
extensive, is more dominating than Mexico’s pride. Though it does
not afford the splendid sight of two volcanic snow-clad peaks, as
Chapultepec does in the vista of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, yet
the circular snow profile of the Andes through the violet mist is
an always pleasing vision.
[Illustration: The Roman Aqueduct on Santa Lucia, Santiago]
A morning or an evening stroll along the Alameda de las
Delicias--Delicious Walk, in English--shows much of Chilean life.
It is a shaded avenue with a central _paseo_, or walk, a roadway
on either side between rows of poplar trees,--the roadway being
given over to the trolley cars, and then the main thoroughfares
which form the street. There are some handsome residences and many
commonplace ones. The stores are not fine. The Alameda is too long
(three miles) and too broad for trade, and the shopping district
locates itself elsewhere.
Chilean patriotism is rampant on the Alameda, though it is not always
artistic. The avenue has statues to O’Higgins and other national
heroes, with groups commemorative of incidents in the war for
independence. A statue has been erected to the international hero,
San Martin, the Argentine chieftain who led the allied armies of
the patriots to victory against Spain. An unambitious monument to
Buenos Ayres typifies the completion of the telegraph line between
Chile and the Argentine Republic across the Andes in 1865.
While many of the groups on the Alameda commemorate war heroes
and war incidents, peace also is recognized. There is a statue to
Benjamin Victor MacKenna, the historian, with the inscription that
the heroes thus pay tribute to the chronicler of their prowess. He
was defeated for the Presidency by a soldier. I like even better
the memorial to Father Molina, the Jesuit naturalist, who rendered
distinguished service to science. It is an obscure little statue,
yet it shows that the warlike nation has thoughts of the sacrifices
and the achievements of science as well as of arms.
Santiago is an ancient capital, for when the Boston tea party was
held, its population was larger than that of either Boston or
Philadelphia. With its suburbs included, it numbers about 300,000
inhabitants. It was laid out by the old Spanish town-makers with
the customary regularity of streets and plazas, but not in the
usual checkerboard form. The Alameda and the Mapocho River form a
triangle which encloses the most densely populated sections like
a fan, so that the east and west streets are not parallel. Santa
Lucia is at the vertex or the rivet. The fan opens from the Alameda,
and spreads over Cousiño Park, the race-track, and various public
institutions.
The principal square is the Plaza of Arms, one corner of which is
occupied by the Cathedral. Nothing about the Cathedral is especial,
nor are the churches themselves particularly striking, for they
are not mediævally ecclesiastical. Some of them are Florentine.
Santiago as a whole has less of the typical Spanish architectural
appearance than any other large city in South America. The business
blocks are substantial structures of two and three stories, with many
arcades and portals. The private residences have fronts with many
_façades_, and are quite ornate. The _patios_, or courts, within
are paved with variegated tiles. The glimpses of the fountains and
of green trees and yellow oranges afford a pleasing picture to the
stranger. He longs to enter and be at home in these secluded orange
groves, set, as they are, in the amphitheatre of the snow-covered
Cordilleras.
Some of the public edifices are comparatively new, while many
are of the Spanish and colonial epoch. The Moneda, or Government
Building, belongs to the latter class. It is rambling and old, with
no exterior pretensions, but with many courts, circular balconies,
and grilled windows. The President occupies a smaller house for his
residence. The Congress building is new, and is of the architecture
of the Renaissance. It is on the site of the Jesuit Church that
was burned in 1863,--one of the world’s holocausts, in which 2,300
persons lost their lives. In front of the Supreme Court building
is a statue to Andre Bello, the author of the Chilean Civil Code
and an eminent authority on international law.
The National Library is housed in the old Congress hall. It has a
very extensive collection of manuscript records of the Inquisition,
brought from Lima, and of other rare historical documents, including
the colonial archives. I visited the Library one afternoon,
and was shown some of its treasures by Director Montt. But the
atmosphere of secluded scholarship did not come upon me until in a
remote recess I met the Orientalist of the institution, a priestly
bookworm in his clerical _sotana_, a skull-cap covering his tonsure,
keen eyes peering from the spectacles across a large inquisitive
nose,--altogether a striking figure of the recluse in the midst of
the musty wisdom of the past.
Some sections of the capital city are shabby. A walk in the poorer
parts--and they cover much territory--disclosed to me even more
than shabbiness, grinding poverty. Across the Mapocho, the walled
and bedded river, is a church with a gaudy blue front and a dreary
triangular plaza. Penury stretches on all sides. The dwellings are
low, with floors below the street level and in the cold and rainy
season under water. The interiors are repulsively forbidding and
unsanitary. The comforts of life, let alone the decencies, cannot
be acquired in such squalid surroundings. No subject of municipal
legislation is more pressing than that of sanitary tenements, and no
municipality has shown greater indifference to it heretofore than
Santiago. Until something is done in this direction, the palpitating
social question will continue to palpitate, and purely political
issues will have to be decided under the scowl of the proletariat.
The women conductors on the Santiago tramways have been often
described. They are not many, and they are not all of them the
loveliest of their sex, but they are faithful and obliging. They
collect the fares about as rapidly as men would do. The motorists
on the trolleys are men.
A pleasing view of the poorer class of the population may be had on
a national holiday or a Church celebration. I had it one day when
the festival of Corpus Christi was commemorated. Both Church and
State took part. In the Plaza de Armas were altars with burning
candles. There were the troops in their gayest trappings; the
infantry in blue breeches with yellow stripes, wearing white plumes;
the cavalry with blue plumes, and the military bands with red
plumes,--a gorgeous grouping of colors. It was a fine army showing,
more imposing than the priestly conclave which, approaching from the
adjoining streets, entered the plaza in front of the Cathedral. The
parade was led by the Procession of the Cross, composed of various
societies. Delegations from the different parishes followed. Next
came the religious communities,--the Franciscans, the Dominicans,
the Capuchins, the Mercedarios, and the Augustinians. After them the
parochial clergy brought up by the prebendary under the pallium,
the archbishop being unable to occupy that place on account of
illness. The pallium was preceded by the archbishop’s cross, and
was conducted by local notabilities.
During the procession some of the women and many of the boys knelt
in the streets and a few men doffed their hats, but the crowd as
a whole was not devout and the ceremony was not impressive. It
partook more of the nature of a perfunctory official function.
Though the snow of the Cordilleras is always in sight, Santiago
does not have a snow-storm oftener than once in ten years. But it
rains. During June, early Winter, I saw clear skies on not more than
half a dozen days. My Chilean friends told me this was exceptional,
and to prove it they brought the verified weather statistics. These
showed an average of only 35 rainy days out of 365. The largest
proportion was in August, when there were ten days on which rain
fell. But the sky is overcast much oftener than this. There are
very many days which are described by the expressive Spanish word
_triste_, that gives to Nature the element of personality and means
sombre and sorrowful. Besides, while the actual rainfall is not so
great, there are seasons when the humidity is very disagreeable,
and this is in Winter instead of in Summer. In January the relative
humidity was 64.6, while in July (midwinter) it was 83.7. The
average for the year was 73.29. The temperature is quite variable,
and the difference between sun and shade is marked. In January the
maximum in the shade was 68° Fahrenheit, and in the sun 85°. In
July it was 46° in the shade and 57° in the sun. The mean average
for the year was 69°.
The Chilean of the upper class is as indifferent as he thinks the
humbler class ought to be to mere physical comfort. He resents the
statement that not more than half a dozen dwellings in the capital
have chimneys, and he is right in doing so, for that is a libellous
exaggeration. Yet the majority of them are without chimneys, and
their occupants get through the villanous Winter season with
oil-stoves or perhaps even without this means of artificial warmth.
I went an afternoon in midwinter to call on one of the local
captains of industry. He had a handsome residence, and, happily, a
parlor upholstered in warm colors. No other means of getting warm
were provided. He came down to see me in his overcoat, and I had
gained experience enough not to think of removing mine. “It is only
a few months,” is the smiling explanation of shivering through the
Winter. But the means to provide comfort during those few months are
coming. The wealthy citizen now builds his residence with chimneys
and open grates.
Life in Santiago--that is, social, professional, and business
life--is only for the classes. The gulf between comfort and
poverty--for it is simply comfort, since there are few great
fortunes--is bridged by ignoring poverty. And it has to be confessed
that, with wretchedness blinked out of sight, existence in the
Chilean capital is agreeable. The city is both the heart and the
pulse of the nation. The commercial habit--hardly industrial, for the
factories are few--limits itself to an hour in the morning before
breakfast and rather resents intrusion during that hour. Though
he is at his office, the business man would rather have you come
around after breakfast, since it spoils his mid-day meal to take up
the work of the day before then. Some humorous experiences of my
own, some polite postponements, satisfied me of the fixedness of
this custom. In the afternoon there is real activity, concentration
which in a few hours makes up for apparent slackness.
In professional and official affairs it is the same. An official
appointment or a call of any nature on a public functionary should
be made somewhere between half-past two and half-past four. I
discovered that the official urbanity was greatest if the call
could be made between three and four o’clock.
The social life is more of the clubs than of the home, yet there
are many fine homes where a charming hospitality is dispensed. The
breakfast, preferably on Sunday, is a favorite social function,
beginning at mid-day and conducted with all the formality of an
evening dinner. At a breakfast in the home of Mr. Emilio Bello
Codecido, a colleague in the Pan-American Conference at Mexico, I
met many of the leading people of Santiago, among them Mr. Auguste
Matte, another colleague in that conference. Madame Bello is the
daughter of former President Balmaceda. Again, Mr. Juan Walker
Martinez, the brother of the Chilean minister in Washington, desiring
to give me an opportunity to meet some of the principal men of
the city, arranged a breakfast at the Union Club. When given on
week days, these social breakfast functions presuppose no pressing
business or professional engagements during the afternoon.
The Santiagonian is a night-hawk. His club life, and when he is not
at the club his family life, does not begin till two or three hours
after sundown. Every evening he is found at the Union Club, one of
the best associations of gentlemen in South America. It may be that
he is going to forego this practice for a few hours and accompany
his wife and daughters to the opera or the ball, which celebrates
some charity or a public function. Female society is satisfied
with these diversions and with church-going. At the opera it is
resplendent in Parisian costumes. Charity draws all its members. At
a charitable performance in the Municipal Theatre one night I was
assured I saw all that was lovely in the capital--and very lovely
it was.
The Chilean women are less restricted by traditional Spanish
formalities than their sex in other South American countries. They
shop by themselves, and many are employed in the stores and similar
places, but man is the master, and the women take pleasure in
recognizing this. They go to the ball or the opera to be admired,
and the strangers admire and continue to admire.
The chivalry of the male Chilean, while formal and precise, is rather
commonplace. He gives the lady the inner side of the street, and
will politely describe the arc of a great circle and cheerfully step
off into the sewer that his gallantry in this matter of etiquette
may not be questioned. But this is the limit of his concession,
except that if he be of a literary turn he may write sonnets to
her black eyes. He extends the first greeting. Without it his most
intimate female acquaintance must not manifest the faintest sign of
recognition. This custom is intensely exasperating to the visitor,
who finds the Chilean women look so much alike that he may have
calmly ignored his _vis-à-vis_ at a social function while he has
greeted with effusive politeness a lady who makes it apparent,
though not disagreeably, that she never saw him before.
At the theatre the _zarzuela_, or one-act comedy, is as popular as in
Spain. After the performance the clubs find all the men congregated
there. The gambling is high. It has been said that the Chilean who
forms a part in the social life of the country must be either a
soldier, a priest, or a farmer. With the predominance of the army
and navy, the first class would be certain. The priest is less an
element than formerly, but the farmer is the constant factor. The
latter class includes the professional men, lawyers and doctors,
and the business men, for all are landed proprietors.
Sunday is the day for society, for drives to Cousiño Park, and to
the Quinta Normal or Agricultural Experiment Station, which is also
a zoölogical garden. The grounds are extensive and well wooded
with sycamores and cypresses, but they impressed me as being badly
neglected. Cousiño Park also had the appearance of unkemptness.
Chile long ago abolished the bull-fight, and she does not permit a
national lottery, though there is no interference with the sale of
tickets for the Buenos Ayres drawing. Football and other athletic
sports are in high favor. Santiago in this respect is an English
town. The great attraction is the racing, and on a Sunday afternoon
in the season the Carrera, or Club Hipico, gathers all that is
fashionable and all that is animated.
Though Santiago has a delightful Summer climate,--the thermometer
never gets above 85° Fahrenheit,--every one who is anybody has a
_fundo_, or country estate, to which the family flits at the first
approach of the heated season. Later in November all move to the
seashore resort of Viña del Mar, near Valparaiso, and play golf.
The English group in Santiago is the largest of the foreign colonies,
but it is not so extensive as the many English and Scotch names
would lead one to suppose. These names are borne by Chileans whose
great-grandfathers were from the British Isles, or a very few of
whom were from the United States.
Newspapers in Chile are as much an institution as in the United
States. This is true both of Santiago and of Valparaiso. _El
Mercurio_, “The Mercury,” which is published in both cities, has
fine buildings, superior in their conveniences to newspaper offices
in the United States, and with provisions for editors, reporters,
printers, and other employees that the Land of Journalism (I mean the
United States) is a century behind in. Dining-rooms, private parlors,
working-offices with baths, bedrooms, chess, for the working-staff of
a daily newspaper! The Santiago office of _El Mercurio_ is notable
not only for its own facilities, which are very complete, but for
its salons and other rooms which are maintained for the benefit of
the public. In a newspaper office in the United States the patron
is lucky if he can get standing-room against any kind of counter or
railing in order to write his advertisement. In Santiago he may have
a table and chair and take his time. In consulting the files he has
all the luxury of a modern library reading-room. The salons in the
“Mercury” building are thrown open to the public for receptions and
similar functions. One afternoon I attended by invitation a concert
given by the members of the visiting Italian Opera Company in the
music-room. Members of the Diplomatic Corps, public functionaries,
and all that was distinguished in professional and social life in
the capital were present by invitation of the newspaper management.
The owner of _El Mercurio_, Mr. Augustin Edwards, is a young man. He
is of the banking family of that name, is a member of the Congress,
and has been Minister of Foreign Affairs. His journals publish more
foreign and cable intelligence than any two newspapers in any
city of a quarter of a million inhabitants in the United States.
While a large amount of telegraphic and local news is printed,
the leader, or editorial on the foremost topic of the day, is a
prominent feature of the daily issue, and one that carries great
weight with the reading public. One evening at dinner, at the house
of Mr. Alejandro Bertrand, the distinguished Chilean civil engineer,
who was his country’s expert commissioner in the boundary dispute
with Argentina, the talk turned on the negro question. There are
no blacks in Chile, and one of the guests, a man of prominence
in finance and politics, who had lived much in Europe, confessed
his perplexity over the negro issue, and wanted to know something
about the African race. The clearest exposition that I ever heard
of the life-work of Booker Washington, and the most discriminating
explanation of the race problem in the United States, were given by
Mr. Silva, the leader writer on _El Mercurio_. Though he had spent
some years in England, he never had visited the United States,
yet he was thoroughly conversant with our national perplexity. It
therefore may be understood that the leading problems of the United
States are discussed with intelligence in Chile, though Chilean
subjects may not always receive the same treatment in the journals
of the United States.
Besides _El Mercurio_, Santiago has other vigorous papers. One of
them is _La Lei_, “The Law.” The name is misleading, for it is
merely a daily journal devoted to current topics. It represents
radical political tendencies. Its editor, Mr. Phillips, was declared
to me to be either feared or loved by every public man in Chile,
and the alternations of fear and love were said to be as regular
as the seasons. Here, then, was the ideal editor. In a call on
Editor Phillips I was impressed with this feeling. His aggressive
personality would be bound to make friends and enemies, and his
independence in discussing public questions would be certain to
insure ideal journalism.