Thinking of Chile, one sees a picture of southern orchards and wheat

fields, of cattle pastures, of pine forests; of copper mines in the

inhospitable heights of the mountains; or perhaps of the great, burning

nitrate pampas of the north. Rarely is a thought given to the

southernmost city in the world, Punta Arenas, with its tributary

sheep-raising plains, its beech woods and fisheries, coal and gold

mines, and its extraordinary rise from misery to immense wealth in the

course of a few years.

Nobody, probably, could have wrested wealth from such a region but the

people whose attention was drawn to it after the discovery that

much-abused Patagonia was a fine sheep-raising region. It was the hardy

Falkland Islander, hailing from the islands north and west of the

Scottish coast, who made, and speculated on, this chance, invading the

plains and grassy hills east of the Andes after he had staked out

Western Patagonia, and adding Tierra del Fuego presently to his

conquests. He was swiftly followed by energetic traders and by another

sheep-herding mountaineer, the Jugo-Slav; between them they have done

what the unfortunate Spanish settlers of Pedro de Sarmiento could not

do: they have created a city in the wilderness, strongly-rooted, sturdy,

with the spring of life from within.

The tale of settlement of the Straits of Magellan, today an accepted

achievement, is built upon gallantry and tragedy. The thriving regions

of Patagonia and Magellan Territory have been erected upon the ashes of

the most cruel suffering.

The efforts of the Spanish crown to find a way to the golden East by way

of the West which led to the discovery of the Strait of Magellan were

but extensions of the hunt for Cathay that inspired the greedy fanatic

Cristobal Colón. He died asseverating that he had found the coast of the

Indies, and although the more level-headed navigators knew better the

eyes of Spain continued to be fixed upon a route to the Spice Isles

rather than upon the Americas _per se_. Reached from the west, Spain

could lay an anti-Portuguese claim by virtue of the famous Bull of Pope

Alexander VI of May 4, 1493, which, placing a line 100 miles west of the

Azores, acknowledged all discoveries eastward as Portuguese and all

westward as Spanish.

Fernão de Magalhães, as Captain-General, with Estevan Gomez as Chief

Pilot, sailed in the _Trinidad_, of 110 tons, from San Lucar on

September 12, 1519. Four other smaller vessels completed the expedition

of discovery—the _San Antonio_, the _Victoria_, the _Santiago_, and the

_Concepción_. The latter was commanded by Gaspar de Mendoza, with, as

master, Sebastian del Cano, destined to be the first circumnavigator of

the globe. Magellan, Portuguese-born, shipped a large number of his

countrymen in defiance of the orders of the King of Spain; Sebastian del

Cano, a Basque hidalgo, took eight other Basques in the _Concepción_.

Quarrels quickly broke out, and an outbreak off the Patagonian coast

resulted in the murder of Mendoza, the execution of Quesada, the

marooning of another commander and a too-active priest. The _Santiago_

had been lost at the entrance of the Santa Cruz River, and with the

remaining personnel and vessels captained to his own liking, Magellan

proceeded south.

On October 21 he sighted and named the Cape of Eleven Thousand Virgins,

at the opening of the Strait. Here Estevan Gomez, now on board the _San

Antonio_, overpowered the captain and persuaded other men equally

disapproving of Magellan’s actions to turn back; they sought, vainly,

the men marooned at San Julian, and sailed back to Spain. Meanwhile

Magellan navigated the stormy waters of the Strait, emerged into the

boisterous Pacific, made for the Philippines and there was killed in a

native feud; the slaughter of thirty-nine others of the expedition made

it necessary to get rid of another vessel, the _Concepción_, while the

two remaining vessels made their way to the coveted Spice Islands. Here

magnificent cargoes of spice were bartered from the Kings of Tidore and

Gilolo, and, leaving the leaking _Trinidad_ to be careened, Sebastian

del Cano after building storehouses for spices at Tidore, sailed on

westward in the little _Victoria_ and reached San Lucar as the first

circumnavigator of the globe.

Del Cano with thirty-five men were the chief survivors, for the

_Trinidad_ never returned, and only a few of her crew reached Spain

years afterwards. It was to find her and rescue the members of the

expedition left in Tidore that the second expedition to Magellan Straits

was despatched. The great merits of Sebastian del Cano as organizer and

navigator were, meanwhile, greatly applauded in Spain, and the coat of

arms granted bore a globe as crest, with the motto _Primus circumdedisti

me_.

Portugal was roused by the exciting story of the _Victoria_’s feat and

her return laden with cinnamon, cloves, nutmegs, mace and sandalwood. To

understand the feeling roused it is necessary to remember the extent to

which mediæval Europe was dependent upon spices for rendering foods

palatable. Sugar was not then in general use, and honey, scarce and

expensive, was the chief sweetener. Meat was preserved with salt, and

its untempting quality was redeemed by Eastern spices. Puddings were

saturated with the same heavy aromatics; wearing apparel and beds were

perfumed with them. It is a taste that has yielded before the skill of

the distiller and the synthetic chemist, and the general development of

a “sweet tooth,” but it was sufficiently enthusiastic during the Middle

Ages to warrant international disputes.

Following Sebastian del Cano’s exploit, therefore, need for a decision

as to the ownership of the Moluccas became acute: finally, the King of

Portugal and Charles I of Spain arranged the Conference of Badajos to

settle the matter, taking the evidence of the best navigators,

cartographers and pilots. Meetings began in early 1524, continued for

five years without result, and were ended when Charles V sold his claim

in April, 1529, to the Portuguese for 350,000 ducats. This sale worked a

hardship upon the plucky Spaniards engaged in trying to uphold the

Spanish flag in the Islands, for meanwhile a new expedition under the

Comendador Garcia de Loaysa, with Sebastian del Cano as second in

command, was fitted out to follow the same course as Magellan’s to the

Spice Isles and to rescue the survivors of the _Trinidad_. They set sail

from Coruña in July, 1524, reached Cape Virgins in January, encountered

the usual terrible gales off the Strait, lost a ship, and saw tall

Patagonians, dressed in guanaco skins, with headdresses of ostrich

(rhea) plumes. They noted the laurel-like leaves of Winter’s Bark, with

its sweet scent. In bad condition, with the small boats destroyed, they

went north to the Santa Cruz River; repaired them, returned to the

Strait, and finally got out into the Pacific in May, 1526. Besides the

wreck of the _Santi Spiritus_ they had now been deserted by two other

ships, so that only the flagship _Victoria_, the caravels _Lesmes_ and

_Parrel_ and the pinnace _Pataca_ reached the South Sea. Of these, the

_Pataca_ found her way to Mexico, and the _Lesmes_ disappeared.

Broken down by hardships, Loaysa died at sea on July 30; and six days

later the great navigator Sebastian del Cano also died. When the

survivors reached the Moluccas at the end of the year they had buried 40

men in the Pacific since leaving the Strait, 105 remaining to carry on

unsupported contest against the Portuguese in the islands. In 1532, when

the abandonment of the Spanish claims was definitely known, the

Spaniards surrendered to their rivals and a few survivors did eventually

get back to Spain, including the able captain Andres de Urdaneta, whose

careful report was made to the king.

The next expedition to the stormy Strait was that of Simon de Alcazaba,

a Portuguese navigator in the service of Spain who asked for and

obtained a grant of land in what is today South Chile. The territory of

which he was nominally made Governor was to commence immediately south

of the strip allotted to the Adelantado Diego de Almagro, Nueva

Estramadura, and to extend 300 leagues. Alcazaba’s grant included the

present Argentine Patagonia, and was called Nueva Leon; the narrative of

the Veedor Alonso has been preserved and tells of the misfortune, crime

and suffering that seemed to pursue every expedition to the troubled

waterways.

With two ships, Alcazaba set sail from San Lucar in September, 1534,

reaching the entrance of the Strait four months later; the weather was

threatening, so after stocking up with 300 penguins they sailed north to

parallel 45, and anchored in the Puerto de Leones, which Alcazaba

considered as in the middle of his land grant, and from which he

proposed to march overland. They started on March 9, marched some

thirty-six miles in inhospitable country “desert and uninhabited, where

we found neither roots nor herbs to use as food, nor fuel to make a

fire, nor water to drink.” The Governor, stout and old, had to turn back

with a captain, while the rest went on until having marched 300 miles in

twenty-two days, with nothing but desert still in sight, they decided to

return to the ships. They had lived on the roots of big thistles, wild

celery and fish.

During the return journey two captains, Arias and Sotelo, mutinied, and

the expedition straggled back in disorder, losing more than fifty men on

the way. Arias and his friends reached the coast first, swam to the

flagship, murdered the Governor and pilot, then seized the second ship

and robbed both. Quarrels broke out between the two ringleaders, Arias

wishing to turn the flagship into a roving privateer while Sotelo[4]

preferred to go north and join, at the Plata, the expedition of the

Governor Pedro de Mendoza; the loyalists were able to turn the tables on

them, retake possession of the vessels, and to appoint new officials.

The latter tried and sentenced the mutineers; some were hanged at the

yardarm, others thrown overboard with weights round their necks, and

others “banished on shore for ten years.” At last, with provisions

exhausted, they set sail in July for Brazil, reached Bahia, where a ship

was wrecked and eighty men killed by the natives, the survivors reaching

Santo Domingo in September, 1535. So ended the first Spanish official

attempt to colonise the extreme south of Chile.

Footnote 4:

Founder of the City of Buenos Aires, 1535.

With the Spice Isles definitely abandoned, the route to the “South Seas”

discovered by Magellan was still valuable as offering an all-sea route

to the coast of Peru, and the next expedition was sent from Spain at the

instance of the Viceroy of Mexico, Antonio de Mendoza, in 1539. At this

time, and for many years to come, the chief route to Lima was by the

fever and pirate infested Isthmus of Panama, and the vessels seen in the

Pacific were brought in pieces and set up, or, later, built of native

timber, chiefly at Guayaquil.

The new mission was headed by Captain Alonso de Camargo, who lost his

flagship in the first narrows of the Strait; another vessel lost touch,

wintered in a bay of Tierra del Fuego, and then sailed back to Spain;

Camargo succeeded in getting the remaining vessel through the storms of

the Strait, and reached the Bay of Valparaiso at the time when Captain

Pedro de Valdivia was pushing south against the Araucanians. But he did

not return to Spain, was killed in the Almagro-Pizarro feuds, and the

chief result of his journey seems to have been discouraging; for a long

time no attempt was made by Spain to use the Strait. Juan de

Ladrilleros, sent in 1557 from Chile to examine the Strait from the

Pacific side, discovered Chiloé and the Chonos Archipelago and surveyed

as far as Cape Virgins. Including the leader, but three men returned to

Valdivia to report to the Governor, Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza.

_Sarmiento_

In 1579 the West Coast was electrified with the appearance of Francis

Drake in the _Golden Hind_, and when it was said that he had entered the

Pacific by way of Magellan Strait the Spanish determined to fortify and

close the passage to all foreign vessels. It was still believed that

south of the strait lay a great continent, divided from Patagonia only

by narrow waterways.

With a view to shutting the channel, the Viceroy of Peru, Francisco de

Toledo, equipped an expedition under the command of Captain Pedro de

Sarmiento de Gamboa, to survey the southerly regions and sail through

the Strait to Spain. Sarmiento was a fine seaman, with the discovery of

the Galapagos Islands already to his credit, an acute observer, good

historian, and a tireless and resourceful leader. He remarks, in the

beginning of his narrative, that it was then “held to be almost

impossible to discover” the entrance from the Pacific side, “owing to

the innumerable openings and channels which there are before arriving at

it, where many discoverers have been lost who had been sent by the

Governors of Peru and Chile.” Even the people who entered from the North

Sea (Atlantic) “never succeeded. Some were lost, and others returned, so

tossed about by storms and uncertain of what could be discovered, that

there was a general dread of that navigation.” The viceroy’s object now

was to dispel that fear, and to find the best means of closing the

Strait; Philip II’s suggestion of a stout chain was no doubt considered.

Two ships were selected and fitted; the crew of 112 was collected with

difficulty, for “nobody wished to embark, and many ran away and hid

themselves,” but the expedition set sail on October 11, 1579, from

Callao. By November 11 they had sailed 573 leagues, and were off Chiloé;

ten days later Sarmiento formally took possession of land off what is

today called Wolsey Sound; and, climbing to the top of a very rugged

mountain, often found it easier to “go along the tops of the trees, from

branch to branch, like monkeys” until, reaching the top, they counted 85

islands in the broken archipelago below. Deserted by the second ship,

Sarmiento found, in the flagship, _Nuestra Señora de Esperanza_, his way

into the Strait on Feb. 2, 1580, after much experience of bad weather

when surveying the westerly channels, and next day made another formal

landing and proclamation of possession. They got into touch with

Indians, who told them by signs of the visit of other bearded strangers,

probably the men of Drake’s three ships; it was not until February 9

that they encountered the big Patagonians of the east, users of the bow.

On the 13th they passed Cape Froward and the Bay of the Natives, “Bahia

de la Gente,” where the little river San Juan was named, and where two

years later the ill-fated City of Philip was founded. Sarmiento took

possession and set up a cross at this spot, leaving a letter with orders

for the missing ship, the _Almirante_, in case she came that way.

[Illustration: Balmaceda Glacier, South Chile.]

[Illustration: In Smyth Channel, heading North from Magellan Strait.]

Six days later they passed the Second Narrows, and the First Narrows on

Feb. 23, coming out of the Strait on the next day; they reached Spain,

after a number of adventures, on August 15. Here Sarmiento reported to

the King of Spain, and it was determined that a well-provisioned fleet

should be sent to the Strait, with stores, building materials, guns, and

100 married and single colonists, the former taking their families with

them. Two forts were to be constructed in the First Narrows, each

garrisoned with 200 soldiers. With the expedition also went the new

Governor of Chile, Alonso de Sotomayor, taking 600 married and single

men as settlers. Twenty-three vessels, carrying 3000 people, comprised

the imposing fleet that sailed from San Lucar on Sept. 25, 1581.

Sarmiento himself went as Governor and Captain-general of the Strait,

with command over the forts and settlements; but until they arrived the

chief authority lay with Diego Flores de Valdes, commanding the fleet,

an unfortunate choice on the part of the Crown, for Flores would not

work with Sarmiento, and seems to have been a coward. The ruin of the

expedition was certainly attributable in part to his actions.

Ill luck dogged them from the start. A storm assailed the fleet outside

San Lucar, and five ships, with 800 men, were lost; of these, 171 were

settlers, out of 357 who set out for the Strait. Another frigate was

lost as they left Cadiz on December 9, and on the voyage to Rio de

Janeiro, where they were to winter, 150 people died. During the fleet’s

stay in Rio, from March to November, 1582, another 150 died, and others

deserted; an unseaworthy ship had to be sunk here, 16 vessels eventually

sailing south, in poor condition. A few days later a large ship, the

_Arriola_, sank with 350 people and quantities of stores, and the _Santa

Marta_ followed her; and from this time Diego Flores almost openly tried

to impede a farther voyage southwards. He insisted on leaving three

ships, with soldiers, settlers and stores, behind at Santa Catalina

Island; another vessel was lost on leaving the port; and the next loss

of help was occasioned by Alonso de Sotomayor’s decision to disembark at

the River Plate and march overland to Chile, instead of aiding with

erection of forts and settlements in the Strait. He took three ships and

many of the diminishing stores intended for the new colony; and when the

Strait’s entrance was reached at last there were left only five vessels

of the twenty-three that sailed from San Lucar. When strong winds and

currents were encountered, Diego Flores put his ship about and frankly

fled, signalling to the other ships to follow him back to Brazil.

Arrived in S. Vicente (Santos) they found two of the three ships that

had been left at Catalina Island, the _Begoña_ having been sunk by

English pirates, while the officials were openly selling the Straits

stores in the town and the wretched intended settlers were bartering

their clothes for food. Sarmiento saved what he could, was rejoiced to

find four vessels fresh from Spain with new provisions for the Straits,

and, after Diego Flores had definitely refused to go south again

(sailing north with a large quantity of provisions and all the men he

could induce to desert), Sarmiento left Rio on Dec. 2, 1583, with five

vessels, and again set his course for the Strait. He reached the

entrance on Feb. 1, 1584, met with fierce winds and currents, lost

anchors and many cables, and was driven out of the Strait again. The

Indians of the mainland “made such a smoke that it concealed sea and

land.” Nothing daunted, Sarmiento went ashore as soon as he could anchor

under the low land of the Virgins Cape, on February 5, taking a cross

which they planted on a “large plain clothed with odoriferous and

consoling herbs.” Soldiers, settlers and stores were landed, tents set

up, 300 people housed; five springs of water were found three-quarters

of a mile away, and the colonists began to search for food, having

little but mandioca flour from Brazil and a small amount of biscuit.

They found “roots sweet and well-tasting, like turnips” and others as

pleasant as conserved pine nuts; and quantities of small black berries,

probably the fruit of the berberry (_Empetrum rubrum_) or the myrtle

(_Myrtus nummularia_) that still abound on the mainland and islands of

the region. The ephemeral settlement was bravely named the “City of the

Name of Jesus,” with due ceremonies of sod-turning, and the burial of

coins and witnessed documents; an altar was set up and the litany sung

by a procession. Streets and plazas were marked out by Sarmiento, and

huts of grass and poles, earth-covered, built; beans, vines, fruit trees

and seeds from Spain were planted near the sweet springs. Meanwhile the

settlers had to subsist partly on the inadequate fish they could catch.

The ships lying at the mouth of the Strait were a constant anxiety,

driven out repeatedly by gales, and at last the _Trinidad_ ran ashore

and was lost. Alarmed, the admiral, Diego de la Ribera, took three of

the remaining four vessels and fled north, carrying the remainder of the

provisions, and many settlers. Ribera made no farewells and did not wait

for the formal despatches of Sarmiento for the King; it was a mean

desertion of gallant countrymen.

Sarmiento rescued the stores from the _Trinidad_, put the colony into a

fair state of defence, with a rampart, arquebuses and guns, against the

audacious natives who frequently attacked with arrows, and then sent the

remaining ship, the _Maria_, into the Strait with instructions to make

for Cape Santa Ana, while he took a part of 100 soldiers by land to the

same spot in order to found a second settlement.

They set out on March 4; two weeks later their track was to be followed

by a party of thirty or forty others. It was a hard journey through

utter wilderness, and Sarmiento remarks that in forty leagues they saw

neither a human being nor signs of fire, although when he had traversed

the Strait on his voyage from Peru the plains were full of smoke. They

saw deer, skunks, and vultures, found berries, and at the coast obtained

shell-fish and edible sea-weed, but were short of fresh water, as the

streams flow under the sands when approaching the Strait; at the First

Narrow Sarmiento found a suitable spot for a fort, with nearby pasture

land “very pleasant to behold, with grass suitable for sheep” an

observation which was proved correct three hundred years later. They

noticed whales’ bones in a bay beyond the first Narrow, and quantities

of large, nourishing mussels.

Tall natives, naked, armed with bows and arrows and accompanied by

fighting dogs, met them near Gregory Cape, pretended friendship, but

later tried to ambush the Spaniards. Several Spaniards were wounded, and

one killed, but Sarmiento killed the Chief with a sword thrust and the

attackers fled. After seventy leagues’ marching they reached the wooded

country, where the “small people” lived. But the expedition suffered

from hunger and fatigue, and several men, discouraged, ran away to the

woods and were never seen again. On March 24 the limping, half-starved

party reached Santa Ana and met the _Maria’s_ boat, sent to look for

them. The ship’s company were camped in a nearby bay. Here they found

large deer, plenty of shell-fish that they stewed with “wild cinnamon”

(Winter’s Bark), and saw flocks of green parroquets. It was decided to

found the second settlement at this spot, and on March 25, 1584, the

formalities were carried out, the “tree of justice” was erected and the

municipality was traced out, and named the City of the King Don Felipe.

A church was built; next, the royal storehouse, large enough to hold 500

men, and the precious provisions secured; they had but 50 casks of

flour, 12 of biscuit, 4 of beans, and a little salt meat, dried fish and

bacon. At the end of April, clay-coated huts were ready for the

approaching storms of winter; vegetable seeds had been planted, the city

palisaded and defended by 6 guns, mounted on platforms. On May 25

Sarmiento embarked in the _Maria_ with thirty men, arrived outside the

City of the Name of Jesus on the same night, sent to and received

messengers from it, but was driven out to sea by a furious twenty-day

storm before which he was forced to run north. He could not return, and

reached Santos on June 25, with all food long exhausted and the starving

men, some of whom were blind and frostbitten, gnawing their sandals and

the leather of the pumps.

He left for Rio on July 3, got help from Governor Salvador Correa and

sent a ship laden with flour to the Strait; went to Pernambuco and

Bahia, where his ship was wrecked and he got ashore on a couple of

planks. The Governor received him kindly, gave him a ship of 160 tons,

and a load of mandioca flour, cloth and provisions for the settlement.

With this ship he sailed to Espirito Santo (Victoria Port), got dried

beef and cotton cloth, and proceeded south in mid-January, 1585, to

visit his settlements. But in 33 degrees of south latitude a frightful

gale burst upon them, most of the sheep, flour, etc., had to be thrown

overboard, and the battered vessel made her way back to Rio after

fifty-one ruinous days, finding here, as a final blow, the ship

despatched to the Strait with flour in December, put back on account of

terrible weather. At the end of his resources, and unable to get further

help from the well-disposed Portuguese Governor, Sarmiento determined to

go to Spain to report; but on his way he was captured (August, 1586) by

the little fleet of Sir Richard Grenville returning from Virginia, and

taken to England. Here he was received by Queen Elizabeth, who conversed

with him in Latin for two hours and a half, with Lord Burleigh, and was

specially well treated by Lord Howard and Sir Walter Raleigh, who gave

the old sailor a present of 1000 escudos and helped him to obtain a

passport. He was, in fact, used most kindly, and probably carried

conciliatory messages to Philip II. But his ill-luck followed him

relentlessly; while crossing France in December, 1586, he was

imprisoned, and a big ransom demanded. Sarmiento was compelled to appeal

to the King of Spain, and when the 6000 ducats and four select horses

had been provided he was released, in October, 1589, grey-haired and

crippled, after nearly three years’ confinement in fetid dungeons “in

infernal darkness, accompanied by the music of toads and rats.” His

first act was to make his report to the Crown, begging for help to be

sent to the settlements in the Strait.

_The City of Philip_

But, long before Sarmiento was released from the French prison, none but

ghosts walked in the City of Philip. Their fate would be wrapped in

darkness had it not chanced that in the year 1586 an English captain

named Thomas Cavendish threaded the Strait, was hailed from the shore by

a half-naked band of eighteen people, of whom three were women, and

picked up one Tomé Hernandez. This man afterwards made a deposition

before the Viceroy of Peru, but this did not occur until the year 1620,

when all chance of rescue had long passed. The statement of Hernandez,

then sixty-two years old, displays no feeling; it is a matter-of-fact

narrative, and it is remarkable that none of the interrogatories put to

him denote the least concern regarding the fate of the settlers, but

bore solely upon topographical points, questions of winds and currents,

products of the regions, etc. But reading between the lines of the

declaration, the tale is heart-rending. It was made by order of Don

Francisco de Borja, Prince of Esquilache, the son of a canonised father,

and himself a poet, scholar, and excellent Viceroy, the founder of a

college for noble Indians.

Hernandez gave an ingenuous and straightforward account, from the

soldier’s viewpoint, of the objects and fortunes of the expedition, of

the founding of the City of Philip and the departure of Sarmiento to

fetch the colonists of the first settlement, an attempt from which, so

far as the settlers of the second city were concerned, “he never more

returned,” as Hernandez simply said. Two months after Sarmiento had

gone, the people from Nombre de Jesus came to join the City of Philip.

It was then August, and they told of the storm that blew Sarmiento’s

ship out to sea. Andres de Viedma was now in charge, and he tried to

provide for the hunger of the settlers by organising 200 soldiers into a

band of shell-fish-hunters.

During all the winter and the following summer they waited, hoping for

help, and with no food but the wild berries and such sea-food as they

could secure. Then they built two boats, and the survivors, fifty men

and five women, started out towards the eastern end of the Strait. But,

no sailors, they could not navigate well, and one boat ran ashore and

was lost; the surviving boat could not carry all the people, so some

returned to the City of Philip and the rest scattered along the shore to

pick up shell-fish to preserve their lives during the winter.

When summer came, Viedma assembled the survivors, fifteen men, and,

astonishing witness to mental and physical endurance, three women. “All

the rest had died of hunger and sickness.” They agreed to return to the

first settlement, as nearer possible rescue, and began to make their way

by land, finding many dead bodies of their comrades by the way. Twelve

miles beyond Cape Geronimo they saw four ships, which they thought were

Spanish, but which were actually the boats of Cavendish. A boat came off

to the beach, and the settlers were told the nationality of the ships

and offered a passage to Peru; the men on shore replied that they were

afraid of being thrown overboard, getting the response that they might

well embark, as those on the ships “were better Christians than we

were.” After some parleying Hernandez was taken aboard, to Cavendish

himself, who, upon hearing that these folk were survivors of the

settlement, said he would take them all in his vessels. But this, in the

end, he did not do, taking advantage of the rare good weather in the

Strait to go to Penguin Island for birds, which he salted down in casks.

He sailed thence to the abandoned City of Philip, stayed there four days

taking on wood and water, and brought away the six pieces of artillery

that Sarmiento had placed there for the colony’s defence. Storms met the

ships at the western end, Valparaiso was missed in the fog, and when a

landing was made at the port of Quintero, the rescued Hernandez was sent

ashore to pretend to the Spanish that the ships were from Spain. But

Hernandez gave secret warning to his kinsfolk, and next day when the

English went ashore they were ambushed, some being killed and others

taken prisoner. The latter were sent to Lima and there hanged.

Cavendish has been blamed for leaving the survivors of Sarmiento’s

ill-fated colony in the Strait, but if any excuse were needed besides

the fact that he did not know their desperate plight, it exists in the

ungrateful conduct of the one man he took away, whose thanks took the

form of sending a number of his helpers to the scaffold.

Of the fate of these last members of the large band of settlers who had

set out from Spain with such high hopes, we know only that in 1590 one

man signalled to the _Delight_ of Bristol, was taken on board, and died

on the way to Europe, without leaving his name or story. But whether

they died of starvation or were taken into the roving camps of Indians,

their blood was lost, although traces may have been mingled with that of

the natives, who were not invariably hostile. Hernandez, answering his

questioners in Lima, stated that for three months a Spanish woman,

captured on the seashore by the Indians, was kept by them, but that then

she was sent back. Savage nomads, perpetually short of food, the Indians

of the Straits had nothing with which to hold nor help the unfortunate

Europeans.

_Port Famine and Punta Arenas_

A brief side-light is thrown upon the settlement by the records of

Cavendish’s expedition. He was in “King Philip’s Citie” on January 9,

1586, and gave it the name of “Port Famine” by which the spot was ever

afterwards known. The town was full of dead people, the bodies lying

clothed in the houses, and the explorations of his sailors resulted in

finding only “muskles and lympits” for food, with a few small deer. In

1600 the Dutchman, Oliver Noort, came this way and saw Port Famine, but

Purchas’ account says that “heere they found no footprints of the late

Philip-Citie, now liker a heap of stones.”

Yet today, a few miles to the northward, stands the prosperous city of

Punta Arenas. Its sturdy existence justifies, after three and a half

centuries, Sarmiento’s belief that this stormy region was neither

unhealthy nor unproductive, and that a colony of white men could live

there securely were it properly supported.

CHAPTER VI

THE TACNA QUESTION

_The Storm Centre.—Indeterminate Position of Tacna.—Peru and

Chile.—Boundary Problem.—Guano and Nitrate.—The War of

1879.—Treaties.—Appeal to the League of Nations.—Discussions at

Washington._

Tacna is the political storm centre of the Pacific Coast of South

America. It is a little province consisting chiefly of sun-bleached

desert scored by a few extraordinarily fertile valleys, lying north of

the great nitrate area of Tarapacá. It is tilted to the sea, the coast

range diminishing to a tawny cliff’s edge, and rises to long interior

plains that merge into Andean spurs, with the Bolivian province of Oruro

just across the snow-crowned mountain wall. The area is 23,000 square

kilometres; the population was estimated in 1919 at 40,000, and counted

as a thousand less in 1920, a diminution probably due to the departure

of Peruvians.

This territory’s fate has been indeterminate since the close of the War

of the Pacific, 1879–83, and with its fertile causes for agitation has

been the focus of endless quantities of argument emanating mainly from

the former owner, Peru, to whom no solution is declared to be

satisfactory but the unqualified restoration of the province. The

interest of Bolivia in the matter is also recognised: she has brought

her need for a new outlet to the Pacific before the League of Nations,

although without result; and while there is force in the reminder of

Chile that Bolivia was able to make little or no use of the Antofagasta

littoral while in her possession, and that her great prosperity dates

from the time when she lost it and obtained as a kind of solatium an

efficient railroad, national pride urges a political group of La Paz to

make recovery of a coastal strip one of the planks of the oratorical

platform.

Between Bolivia and her two sister republics of the west there is no

ill-feeling. She trades freely with both, and in particular has derived

a great deal of technical and financial help from Chilean men of

enterprise in developing important mining regions. Bolivia’s relations

with Peru are equally friendly, although intellectual rather than

economic; but the writer’s experience of Bolivia has developed the

opinion that Bolivians are extremely unlikely to do what is occasionally

urged by the Peruvian press, to take up arms with the object of

regaining territory definitely ceded, without question or reservation,

by the Treaty of 1904.

The dispute, actually, lies between Peru and Chile. It is utilised by

adroit politicians in South America, and farther afield, to divert

attention from other inconvenient problems, and the recurrent flurry is

a cause of anxiety to the industrialist and investor, whether

native-born or foreign, of the West Coast. It demands settlement, and

probably could be settled as other territorial questions have been

solved, by the exercise of goodwill and discretion and in the spirit of

compromise. But the truth is that few public men are sufficiently

courageous to adopt a moderate attitude on this subject; the bellicose

attitude is easier and more popular. Inflammatory newspaper articles and

speeches upon the subject are rarely of Chilean origin, it is but fair

to say; but the situation is a standing invitation to the extremist and

the path of the mediator is not smoothed by long postponement.

Arica port, a pretty little oasis in the desert, was the centuries-old

outlet for Bolivian products; Potosí’s silver came out in a rich stream

during colonial days. Charcas Province, or Alto Peru, afterwards part of

the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires, had no other western port. Forty miles

inland lies the old city of Tacna, also succeeding an Inca settlement,

and an ancient stopping-place on the highway to the Andes.

The desert, veiled by the strange mist of this region, the _camanchaca_,

lies all about these little cities; they are connected by an old strip

of railway, and there are no other sizable towns. Tarata, in the spurs

of the mountains, is reached only by horseback, is chiefly important as

head of the department of the same name, and is only a degree nearer

modern life than the villages of sturdy mountaineers that cling to the

Andean folds above it. Here the llama is still the chief means of

transport.

Nitrate has not been found in workable quantities in Tacna province, nor

any precious mineral deposits of consequence, although silver and copper

are known. The value of the territory, politically unified by Chile as

one province, Tacna, 23,000 square kilometres in area, with three

departments, Tacna, Arica and Tarata, and the city of Arica as the chief

centre of the province, is thus not great, until irrigation permits

agricultural development upon a big scale. But strategically it acts as

a buffer between Chile and Peru, and it was with the object of erecting

such a buffer that Chile refrained from doing what her dominant position

after the War of the Pacific permitted, taking the little provinces

finally, at the same time that she secured Tarapacá, a region enormously

rich in nitrate.

Peru was obliged to accept definitely the cession of Tarapacá: that loss

is beyond discussion. But the indeterminate position of Tacna permits

national feeling, irritation and sentiment full sway.

It is common to hear of the old unity of Peru and Chile, of the mutual

sacrifices during Independence struggles, their like origin and present

intertwined interests. Undoubtedly, the two states are commercially

necessary one to the other; the traders of the communities are little

disturbed by political aspects and own a brotherly kinship so far as the

Spanish language, religion, and culture are concerned. But there are

also marked divergences. There has been a much greater proportion of

west European blood in Chile than in Peru; the native races were of

completely different speech and customs; and climate has done its share

in modifying the modern population of each country. It is a serious

error to class any two South American peoples together, and the

characteristics of Bolivian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Chilean are

strongly marked. Nor, between Peru and Chile, was cordiality invariably

marked in colonial days, from the time when Almagro’s returned followers

opposed the Pizarros and were set apart as “Men of Chile.” The

dominance, political and financial, of Lima during the three hundred

succeeding years in legal, political and religious matters, the use made

of Chile as a dumping-ground, and at the same time the endless and

unproductive expense in blood and treasure of the Araucanian wars,

created irritation that was not all on one side.

Peru was rich and proud, Chile and Buenos Aires were comparatively poor:

yet from the two latter political independence from Spain arrived, borne

upon the swords of San Martin’s army. An ocean of tact has been needed

to smooth similar situations in other regions and times, and San

Martin’s arbitrary conduct, although objectionable to Chileans and

Peruvians alike, did not ease the situation. Later, when South America’s

freedom from Spain had become a fact accepted by the world at large, a

result due in great measure to Canning’s long vision, the eyes of the

new countries turned to their nebulous boundaries. Settlement of the

exact frontiers has been so difficult that the disputes and efforts of a

century have not, in some cases, yet decided the question. When all was

Spain’s, the limits of separate provinces or viceroyalties was of

secondary importance; the hinterlands were frequently wooded,

mountainous, or desert country, where none but Indians penetrated. It

has only been since forestal products such as quinine and rubber were

valorised, the worth of the commoner metals enhanced by great

industries, that great interior regions of the southern continent have

acquired interest, and the marking of boundaries has become a burning

question.

In Chile’s case, her area as a province or “kingdom” during Spanish

times included the present Argentine provinces of Mendoza, San Luis and

San Juan, and all Patagonia. The three first-named provinces went, with

Charcas (part of the modern Bolivia), to Buenos Aires when that

Viceroyalty was erected in 1776, but the possession of Patagonia and the

islands below the Strait of Magellan remained a fertile source of

disagreement with Argentina, narrowly averting war, until 1881. A treaty

then made between the two countries fixed a line in the Andes as the

boundary, to follow the highest peaks dividing the rivers, while all

land south of the fifty-second degree of south latitude went to Chile,

except the eastern part of Tierra del Fuego. This agreement was found

indefinite; the water-parting and the highest peaks were discovered to

be frequently far distant from each other, and the exact boundary was

only settled in 1902 when the award of King Edward VII fixed a new line,

by which 54,000 square kilometres of the disputed area was assigned to

Chile and 40,000 to Argentina. One small point only remains

unsettled—the question as to the exact position of the eastern entrance

to Beagle Channel, involving possession of Picton, New and Lennox

Islands. The senates of Chile and Argentina agreed in 1915 to abide by

an award to be made by the British Government.

So much for the eastern boundary. North lay the Desert of Atacama,

declared by Darwin to be a “barrier far worse than the most turbulent

ocean.” The desert was known from early Spanish times as the boundary of

Chile, but while it remained apparently worthless it was to no one’s

interest to decide whether the north, centre, or south of the desert

formed the line. Peru’s southern limit was fixed as far back as 1628 at

22° 33′ south latitude, the border of Tarapacá, near the present port of

Tocopilla; between the parallels of twenty-two and twenty-five was the

old Province of Atacama, extending from Tocopilla southward, including

then but one port, Cobija, and all the large northerly part of the

Atacama Desert. In 1770 Dr. Cosme Bueno, the Chief Cosmographer of Peru,

wrote in the valuable _Conocimientos de los Tiempos_ that “Peru extends

to 25° 10′ in the centre of the Atacama desert, and here touches

Chile”—Atacama then, as part of Charcas or Alto Peru being included in

the Peruvian Viceroyalty—and in 1776 the northern edge of Chile seems to

have been accepted as touching the little town of Paposo, in almost the

same latitude. But that there was haziness regarding the precise border

is indicated by the fact that Fitzroy’s map of 1836, and Ondanza’s of

1859, and that of Pissis, 1860, all show differing boundary lines for

northern Chile. Had the Paposo latitude been definitely accepted by

Chile and her sisters, it is inconceivable that Bolivia would have

failed to denounce energetically in 1866 the Chilean claim to territory

as far north as parallel 23.

By this time the South American countries were prosperous in the huge

development of commerce with the world at large, and the West Coast had

entered upon a new era; there was an enormous extension of copper and

silver mining, guano was feverishly exploited by Peru with great profit

from 1841, and there was a developing business in nitrate, shipped

chiefly from Iquique and Pisagua, in Tarapacá. In the attack by Spain

upon Peru the four countries of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile were

united in resistance, and causes for trouble appeared remote. It was now

that a glimpse of the hidden wealth of Atacama was revealed. Two

enterprising Chilean engineers, Ossa and Puelma, seeking copper in the

burning desert, obtained from President Melgarejo of Bolivia a wide

concession to operate in the territory, which was neither surveyed nor

utilised by Bolivians at that time, commerce to and from Bolivia still

following the Arica, or Arequipa and Mollendo, route. With industrial

development in sight the question of boundaries became acute, and Chile

laid a formal claim to all land south of parallel 23.

Bolivia admitted the prevailing lack of certainty concerning limits by

compromising; Chile’s boundary was fixed at 24° s. l., while the two

countries were to share customs receipts from the belts 23° and 24°, and

24° and 25° s. l. The arrangement did not work well, and was eventually

revised in 1874 and a new arrangement made by which Bolivia agreed not

to levy taxes upon Chilean industries, nor to impose new customs dues on

exports for the next twenty-five years.

For meanwhile a great development was taking place. In 1870 the silver

mines of Caracoles were discovered, a rush to the locality ensuing. With

4000 claims recorded and a tremendous stream of miners, transport was

needed, and a British-capitalised and operated company registered in

Chile, the Cia. de Salitres y Ferrocarriles de Antofagasta, took over

the rights granted originally to Ossa and Puelma, built a port at

Antofagasta and a railway to the mines, and was also presently working

newly discovered fields of nitrate in the same once-despised territory.

Its concession was extensive, covering all the great Salar del Carmen,

and something like a boom in nitrate followed; engineers poured into

Atacama, and in Tarapacá the energies of foreign companies, chiefly

Chilean and British, began to alarm Peruvians, who saw the supremacy of

guano threatened. Peru and Bolivia formed a secret pact (1873), of

defensive military alliance, and later tried to legislate against the

foreign companies. The Peruvian President, Dr. Pardo, decided to make

nitrate a government monopoly, passed a law enforcing the acquisition of

all nitrate works and strictly limiting its output, while President Daza

in Bolivia first rented all the undeveloped nitrate deposits in

Antofagasta to Henry Meiggs, an American railroad builder in Peru, and,

disavowing the agreements made by Melgarejo, decreed a duty of ten

centavos per hundredweight on all nitrate exported. Both Bolivia and

Peru were, it is frequently contended, within their rights in making

laws dealing with their own territory: the duty suggested by Bolivia

was, it is true, but a fraction of what the industry subsequently

yielded. But the developing companies were exasperated at what they

considered attempts to revoke rights already conceded, and to stifle

nitrate production in Antofagasta. The fact that Bolivia and Peru were

financially embarrassed following periods of internal disturbance and

large spending did not ease the situation.

Trouble might have been averted with mutual concessions had it not been

for the high-handed act of Bolivian officials who, in December, 1878,

demanded a large sum in back taxes from the Antofagasta company, and

upon the refusal of the English manager, ordered the seizure of the

company’s property. The match had been set to the gunpowder. Chile

immediately seized the ports of Antofagasta, Cobija and Tocopilla, and

by February, 1879, all the Bolivian coast was in Chilean hands

militarily as, previous to that time, it had been in Chilean hands

economically.

Peru offered to mediate, suggesting neutralisation of Antofagasta port

under the triple guarantee of Bolivia, Chile, and Peru, and new

disposition of the territorial revenues; but Chile, aware of the secret

treaty of 1873, demanded first the abrogation of that pact, and next the

cessation of all warlike preparations by Peru and a declaration of her

neutrality. Peru declined, and war was declared upon her in April, 1879.

At this time the population of Peru and Bolivia jointly was double that

of Chile, and she was comparatively a poor country, without either

mineral or great agricultural wealth. But the Chilean navy was excellent

and her men were hardy campaigners and fighters, as Peru, aided by

Chilean troops in the war of independence and at the time of the

forcible seizure of Peruvian territory by Santa Cruz in 1837, well knew.

The course of the war was disastrous from the beginning to the two

allied states. Bolivia was never able to recover a foot of the coastal

strip, and was forced to confine her efforts to contributions of men and

material in the series of battles in which Chilean armies were almost

invariably successful. When Chile had broken the small naval power of

Peru by the sinking of the ironclad _Independencia_ and the capture of

the _Huascar_, the allies had but two wooden vessels, the _Pilcomayo_

and the _Union_, with which to defend the coast. The former was taken

late in 1879, the latter evaded seizure until the end of the war: but

practically the sea-ways were in control of the Chilean navy, headed by

the _Blanco Encalada_ and the _Almirante Cochrane_, two British-built

ironclads, as well as six smaller armed vessels, six months after the

war began.

Sea control rendered all the Chilean forces mobile. They were henceforth

able to strike at any given spot with speed and certainty, while the

harassed allies were obliged to transport troops across deserts to a

score of poorly supplied coastal points; they were further hampered in

December, 1879, by the strange flight of President Prado from Peru, and

the Bolivian Revolution which deposed President Daza. The new leaders in

Peru and Bolivia, Pierola and Campero, could not stem the tide of

disaster; by February, 1880, the Chileans held the littoral as far as

Arica, and in April began the nine-months’ blockade of Lima’s port,

Callao, together with Ancon and Chancay. Inland the allies held out,

notably at Tacna, captured after a desperate struggle at the end of May.

Arica was finally taken in June, the north coast held in submission, and

the blockade of the chief ports rigorously maintained. This war was the

first in which torpedos and torpedo-boats were actively employed, and

while the new inventions enabled Chile to carry out naval operations

with marked effect, Peru did her best to protect Callao by mooring

hundreds of torpedos in the bay, and succeeded in blowing up two Chilean

ships, the _Covadonga_ and the _Loa_.

North American attempts at mediation resulted in October, 1880, in Chile

stating her terms—the cession by Peru of Tarapacá, the relinquishment by

Bolivia of all claims upon the coast, and payment of an indemnity; and

occupation by Chile of Tacna, Arica and Moquegua until the first-named

conditions were carried out. Years later, after much more bloodshed,

ruin and misery, the allies accepted terms practically similar; but they

rejected them in 1880, and Chile organised for the taking of Lima. After

a fierce battle in which the Chileans are said to have lost 1300 and the

Peruvians 6000 dead, the capital was captured in January, 1881, and

occupied by Chile until terms were arranged by the Treaty of Ancon in

1883. This arrangement was made only between Chile and Peru, followed by

a truce with Bolivia in 1884 and a definite peace treaty signed in 1904.

Chile has been blamed for making hard terms with the two sister states,

but the fact is undeniable that despite the struggle made by the allies,

to which Chilean historians have frequently given credit, they were

utterly out-fought. Chile was completely victorious on sea and land, and

she took the fruits of victory; she had, she considered, been menaced,

and she disposed of future menace. If she was severe, she had many great

examples to follow. It is at least a little curious to find the United

States, with the record of acquisitions of Mexican territory, constantly

raising a minatory finger to Chile. This finger appeared during the

progress of the War of the Pacific, and upon several subsequent

occasions including a curious incident in 1920, when a flutter of local

feeling on the West Coast was made the occasion of a tactless message

from the State Department. These admonitions are resented by and are

embarrassing to no one more than American _comerciantes_ and miners

operating in Chile. It is unfortunate both for the United States and the

peace of the West Coast that a non-comprehension of Chilean intentions

and sentiment should not only add fuel to the flame, but should keep

alive ideas of forcible intervention in the minds of the losers in the

war, encouraged to contemplate restoration of part of their former

territory.

It is, however, not the finally ceded provinces, but the uncertain

status of Tacna, that causes the chief heart-burning. The terms made

with Bolivia gave Chile her present great province of Antofagasta, with

its wealth in nitrate, silver and copper, but in order to conciliate

Bolivian feeling and legitimate commercial ambition, Chile agreed to

build, and built, a railway outlet from La Paz to Arica, the Bolivian

section of which will become Bolivian property in 1928. Bolivian

prosperity dates from the operation of this excellent line, and Chilean

commercial and financial relations with Bolivia have been increasingly

cordial. I have yet to see in any Chilean publication or to hear from

any Chilean expressions of other than the greatest goodwill to Bolivia;

it is almost equally the rule to encounter a sincere desire for the

amicable settlement of outstanding questions with Peru, and the display

of a frank and moderate appreciation of Peruvian feeling. But while

Bolivians in general have accepted their loss, for Peru the war is not

yet over. This is chiefly due to the Tacna barrier.

Tarapacá, rich in nitrate and metals, was ceded to Chile absolutely, but

the little provinces of Tacna and Arica went under Chilean control with

the proviso that a plebiscite, to determine by popular vote the final

ownership of the region, should be held after ten years—i.e., after

1894; the gainer of the territory promised to pay ten million pesos to

the loser. This plebiscite has never been held.

In 1894 the two countries mutually agreed to a postponement, and

attempts to hold the plebiscite later have been frustrated by the

difficulty of arranging voting conditions. Questions as to the

nationality of the persons permitted to vote, and of the constitution of

the tribunal of judges, have long awaited solution. Chile has repeatedly

declared that the Chancellery of the Moneda is ready to hold the

plebiscite, and meanwhile occupies and develops the territory, creating

irrigation systems and planning vast extensions of sugar and cotton

production. Since there were in 1907 in Tacna out of a total of 25,000

people only 4000 non-Chileans, it can scarcely be doubted that the

result of a plebiscite held, let us say, in 1923, would leave Tacna

definitely under the Chilean flag.

In November, 1920, Peru and Bolivia asked the League of Nations

assembled at Geneva to examine the treaties signed with Chile in 1884

and 1904—with a view to obtaining international influence in the

direction of modification of terms. Peru afterwards withdrew her

request, while the commission appointed to consider Bolivia’s case came

unanimously to the conclusion that no intervention was possible in the

case of a definitely signed treaty, handing down this decision in

November, 1921. But the Chilean delegate, Don Agustin Edwards, made it

clear that Chile was always ready to discuss amicably with Bolivia any

suggestion for the economic improvement of Bolivia’s position compatible

with Chilean interests, and the way was paved for friendly discussions.

Shortly afterwards Chile made a direct offer to the Peruvian

administration (in the absence of diplomatic representatives) that the

plebiscite should be held in accord with the terms agreed upon during

discussions in 1912, when 1923 was fixed as the voting year. Peru did

not find this suggestion acceptable, in view of the fact that

Chileanisation of Tacna proceeds with such rapidity that the Peruvian

vote would be practically non-existent. All children born in the

province since 1883 are counted as Chilean citizens, and the exodus of

adult Peruvians from this and other regions has been marked since 1920,

when a sudden access of local friction brought about the mutual

withdrawal of consular officials.

At this moment, when it seemed unfortunately probable that the new

attempt at settlement would meet with the fate of previous efforts, the

United States interposed with the suggestion that representatives of

Peru and Chile should meet for friendly discussions in Washington. This

offer was accepted by both Lima and Santiago, and delegates were

appointed in early 1922.

Peru wished to re-open the whole Treaty of Ancon, but Chile emphatically

declared that only the terms of the Tacna plebiscite were matters for

discussion; she also declined Bolivia’s request to take part in the

meetings, although reiterating her readiness to exchange views directly

with Bolivia.

Conversations between the able diplomats of the two countries took place

in Washington during May, 1922, but without a decisive result, the

delegates announcing early in June that no agreement concerning the

holding of the plebiscite in Tacna had been reached.

The break-up of the conference appeared to be inevitable when the United

States Government, in the person of Mr. Hughes, Secretary of State,

offered to exchange its position of benevolent host of the delegates to

that of mediator. An interchange of suggestions took place between

Chile, Peru and the United States, ending in a hopeful agreement signed

by the two former in July; this agreement terminated the first stage of

the road to peace, and practically amounted to the acceptance of

arbitration.

The immediate question laid before the American arbitrators is whether

or no the plebiscite should be held, and, if so, upon what terms the

voting should take place. But it was further agreed, Chile cheerfully

accepting a Peruvian suggestion, that if a decision should be reached

precluding a plebiscite, nevertheless negotiations should be continued

under United States auspices, with a view to another form of settlement.

At the time of writing, a close study is being made in Washington of the

historical, political and economic aspects of the situation, and an

interval of some months must take place before any decision is

announced. But the outlook has undoubtedly been lightened by the very

fact of amicable discussions having taken place between the delegate of

the two countries, and a newer and more friendly atmosphere promises the

lifting of the forty years’ old shadow.

CHAPTER VII

MINING

_The Nitrate Industry.—Copper.—Iron.—Gold and

Silver.—Coal.—Petroleum.—Borax, Sulphur, Manganese, etc._

International agriculturists did not begin to call for nitrate of soda

until the scientific study of soils was seriously attempted and

experiments demonstrated the value of this chemical as a crop

fertiliser. Young countries may produce grain and fruits from soil that

is almost untended, but some soils of special characteristics, and old

lands cultivated for two or three thousand years, respond gratefully to

the stimulus offered by supplies of nitrogen, phosphate and potash. From

the time that this axiom was accepted, the West Coast of South America

began to ship the product of her unique deposits overseas in big

quantities.

But the nitrate pampas had been known for what they were for several

hundred years before the industrial boom of the late nineteenth century;

small amounts were used throughout the Spanish colonial period. This

employment was confined to the manufacture of fireworks and gunpowder,

some of the deposits remaining in the hands of the Viceregal Government

and others being operated by Jesuits and other religious orders. The

Government chiefly used the “saltpetre” in making gunpowder for

firearms, and for blasting purposes in mines of precious metals; as, for

example, in the silver mines of Huantajaya, some fifteen miles inland

from Iquique. Early voyagers upon the coast noted that the gunpowder of

Peru was better than that made in other parts of the colonies, and

penalties were inflicted to prevent the illegal extraction of nitrate by

unauthorised persons. Juan and Ulloa, writing in 1741, speak of the

contraband gunpowder manufacture carried on near the _salitre_ (nitrate

of soda) field of Guancarama, and the efforts of the Lima treasury to

stop similar use being made of the beds near Zayla. The good fathers of

the religious missions had another destination for the explosive; it was

used to make the immense quantity of fireworks burnt at times of

festival, a custom that is not yet extinct in Spanish America.

A simple method of obtaining the nitrate of sodium from the rocky beds

of mixed composition (the _caliche_) was employed by these early

manufacturers, who used chiefly Indian workers. The whitish, hard

substance was broken up into small pieces and thrown into huge copper

cauldrons filled with boiling water. When the caliche was dissolved the

liquor was dipped off with enormous spoons into first one and then

another vat, and there it crystallised.

Exactly the same principle is the basis of the modern method. The

caliche yields to dynamite charges, successor of the pickaxe; is brought

to the nitrate plant (_oficina_), in wagons instead of being laboriously

carried on the backs of Indians; the copper cauldron is replaced by a

large tank, and coils containing steam at a high temperature are passed

through the water; the liquor is drawn off by pipes at a carefully

considered moment, and the final drying process takes place upon

prepared cement floors; coal or oil fuel is used instead of wood. There

is less waste of material today and the quantities produced are immense:

but the ancient empirical nitrate extractors were not very far wrong as

regards system.

After independence from Spain, small sales of nitrate to foreign

countries commenced, for the manufacture of nitric acid; 800 tons were

exported in 1830, but in the four-year period between 1840 and 1844 an

average of 15,000 tons was maintained. Shipments rose steadily after the

introduction of new methods in 1855, when steam was first used in the

dissolving process and the construction of vats was changed from the

system of 1812. By the year 1869 nitrate exports had risen to about

115,000 tons a year; in 1873 the figures reached over 285,000 tons; in

1876, to more than 320,000 tons.

After the War of the Pacific left Chile with the Bolivian fields of

Antofagasta and the Peruvian beds of Tarapacá in her hands, a tremendous

impetus was given to the nitrate industry. Great amounts of foreign

capital were brought in, railways and ports constructed. Production rose

steadily. In 1884 the export stood at some 480,000 tons; in 1888, about

750,000, while the million mark was passed two years later. The industry

suffered from uncertainties at the time of the Balmaceda revolution,

when the insurgent leaders held the north, obtaining revenues and

preparing armies upon this vantage ground; but after the collapse of the

Balmacedistas in 1891 foreign trade was revived, and at the end of the

century nitrate shipments had reached about 1,500,000 tons.

[Illustration: The Nitrate Pampa: Opening up Trench after Blasting.]

[Illustration: General View of Nitrate and Iodine Plant.]

In 1908 the export amounted to more than 2,000,000 tons, increasing

considerably after this time on account of the heavy buying of the

European Central Powers, Germany and Austria taking together an average

of 1,000,000 tons each year between 1909 and 1914. The position of

nitrate in Chile’s economic life is illustrated by export figures for

the last “normal” year, 1913. Total export values, 391,000,000 pesos: of

this nitrate and iodine represented 311,000,000 pesos. Nitrate responded

to war demands, after the first paralysis of shipping had passed, and in

1916 nearly 3,000,000 tons were exported for munitions manufacture to

the Allies and the United States. The greatest purchasers of Chilean

nitrate today are European and North American agricultural countries;

Australia also finds this chemical of great value and, before the war,

regularly exchanged it for coal cargoes.

South America herself probably presents the most extensive stretches of

agricultural territory which make practically no use of nitrate. In

Chile its use is almost non-existent, partly because the soil is too

newly opened and rich to need a stimulus as yet, and partly because the

moist southerly regions are considered unsuitable for the employment of

the easily soluble salitre. Guano is the most popular fertiliser in

Chile, especially in the north: its use follows old Inca custom, when

such valleys as that of Arica were irrigated and fertilised to produce

famous crops of maize, _aji_ and cotton.

_The Nitrate Pampas_

No stranger country than that of the wide, golden-pink pampas where

nitrate lies is to be found in the Americas. The circumstances that

created the deposits, the rainless climate that preserved them for

unknown centuries, are unparalleled; the belt upon the Chilean West

Coast between 19° and 26° of south latitude contains the world’s sole

source of naturally produced nitrate of soda. It is a unique region, and

although the science of production of atmospheric nitrate advanced

during the war, producers of the Chilean chemical do not view this

competitor with alarm. Artificial processes are expensive; Chile can, if

necessary, lower nitrate prices to meet any rival.

The coastal border of the great nitrate belt is about 450 miles in

extent, its tawny dunes displaying no tree nor smallest green thing

except in such rare spots as where a thread of water survives the

burning sun and sand, or where, at a port, an artificial garden has been

created with piped water. The generally waterless state of the region

has long reduced it to sterility. None of the nitrate deposits lie upon

the coast, or at a distance of less than fifteen miles inland. The

average distance of the westerly margin of the deposits from the sea is

about 45 miles, a few of the beds, however, lying as far as 100 miles

inland. Between the salitre fields and the Pacific Ocean runs the

diminished coastal range, dwindling here and there to nothing more than

a straggling series of broken, rounded hillocks; to the east the

deposits are guarded by the backbone of the Andes. The general altitude

of the beds above sea level is from 2000 to 5000 feet.

The whole extent of the treeless and practically waterless country of

North Chile, presenting a broad and tawny face to the unchanging blue

sky, is a vast series of mineral deposits, for not only nitrate of

sodium but also copper, borax, gypsum, cobalt, manganese, silver, and

gold are spread through the great areas comprising the present provinces

of Antofagasta, Tarapacá, Tacna and Atacama. Some of these minerals have

been worked for centuries, but whatever small and more or less isolated

deposits of nitrate exist in the two last-named regions remain

unexploited: commercial production of the mineral is confined to the two

great rich provinces of Tarapacá and Antofagasta.

The salitre beds vary in thickness and are of capricious distribution:

great areas within the rainless region show no trace of these deposits,

while in others the layers run twenty feet thick. The surveyed fields

cover at least 225,000 acres, contained chiefly in five major districts.

The most northerly, the Pampa of Tarapacá, ships its products from the

ports of Iquique, Caleta Buena, Patillos, Junin and Pisagua, and is

served by three railways—the Nitrate Railways Company, the Agua Santa

Nitrate and Railway Company, and the Junin Railway Company. Next comes

the Pampa of Toco, exporting through the coast town of Tocopilla, to

which it is joined by the Anglo-Chilean Nitrate and Railway Company.

Farther south lies the enormous Pampa of Antofagasta, with outlets at

the fine port town of Antofagasta and its older rival, Mejillones; the

region is served by the main line and branches of the Antofagasta and

Bolivia Railway Company. The fourth field in order is the Aguas Blancas

Pampa, with a shipping point at Caleta Coloso, reached by an arm of the

Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway; and the most southerly deposit of

considerable size is the Pampa of Taltal, shipping its product by the

Taltal Railway to Taltal Port. A few isolated beds lie outside the areas

of these five great deposits, as the Providencia and Boquete beds of

Antofagasta, but so far as present surveys have proved their existence,

the great masses of nitrate are definitely localised.

Tarapacá, with 76 oficinas equipped, normally produces about 40 per cent

of the total nitrate exported from Chile; Antofagasta, with 30 oficinas,

chiefly of a more modern type, produces about 35 per cent; Taltal, with

9 oficinas, ships usually some 10 per cent of the total; Tocopilla, with

7 oficinas, about 9 per cent; and Aguas Blancas, with another 7

oficinas, is responsible for 6 per cent.

_Nitrate Companies_

The total capital invested in nitrate lands and plants is calculated at

400,000,000 Chilean gold pesos of eighteen pence, or about £38,000,000

sterling. It is not easy to state exactly what proportion of this total

should be assigned to each of the different groups of nationals owning

these properties, since many firms employing foreign capital are

registered as Chilean companies, and both during and since the war a

considerable number of oficinas have changed hands; but the official

statistics published by the Chilean Government give the percentage of

production ascribed to the various groups of owners, thus offering a

useful guide.

The figures ascribe to Chilean owners, out of a total 129 plants in

operation in 1918, 60 oficinas, producing 50 per cent of the nitrate

total; to English companies, 43 oficinas and 34 per cent of the

production; to the Jugo-Slavs, with 7 oficinas, about 6 per cent of the

production; Peruvians, 7 oficinas, 3 per cent of production; Spaniards,

with 3 oficinas, less than 2 per cent of the total output; Americans, 2

oficinas, nearly 3 per cent; Germans, with 2 oficinas, less than 1 per

cent of production—this reduction from a larger pre-war production being

due to closure of several properties from 1914 onwards.

The Chilean companies include the largest and most heavily capitalised

in the country, one of these, the Compañia de Salitres de Antofagasta,

producing 10 per cent of Chile’s total output. The firm owns seven

oficinas, employs 15,000 men, does a large general import and export

business, owns its own fleet of barges and tugs, and possesses a belt of

nitrate lands on the Antofagasta Pampa twenty miles long. In 1918 the

company, capitalised at 16,000,000 pesos (Chilean paper), earned profits

of over 22,000,000 pesos or over £1,000,000 sterling at the prevailing

exchange, and was thus able to set aside a substantial sum for rainy

days. It is on account of earnings such as these, supplemented by the

fantastically huge sums earned in the summer of 1920 when the price of

nitrate rose to seventeen shillings per quintal, that the nitrate

companies were able to observe with a semblance of equanimity the

subsequent and sustained fall in prices. The international merchants

were badly hit when the slump of 1921 came, but companies in Chile had

made so much money that it was preferable in many cases to shut down

operations rather than to continue the production of unwanted goods.

Other big Chilean firms are the Cia. Salitrera “El Loa,” operating seven

works, all in Antofagasta Province; the Cia. Salitrera Lastenia, with

three fine properties upon the same pampa; and the Cia. de Salitres y

Ferrocarril de Agua Santa, operating six oficinas on the Tarapacá Pampa.

Of the English companies, the largest was the Alianza, operating three

oficinas in Tarapacá, and exporting normally about 150,000 tons

annually, but this company has changed its domicile to Valparaiso and

now counts with the Chilean group. The Anglo-Chilean Company has three

oficinas in the Tocopilla district; the Lautaro, three, on the Taltal

Pampa; the Liverpool Nitrate Company, three, in Tarapacá; the Amelia,

three, in Tarapacá and Antofagasta; the Fortuna, three, in Antofagasta;

the Rosario, three in Tarapacá; the New Tamarugal, two, in Tarapacá,

where the two nitrate works of the London Nitrate Company and the

properties of the Lagunas companies are also situated.

The German oficinas are twelve in number, operated by four companies. Of

these the most important is the Cia. Salitrera de Tocopilla, formerly

the Compañia H. B. Sloman, with four properties on the Pampa of Toco.

The Cia. Salitrera Alemana owns five oficinas, all situated on the

Taltal Pampa; Salpeterwerke Gildemeister A. G., has three works in

Tarapacá, and the Salpeterwerke Augusta Victoria A. G., one oficina, in

Antofagasta. The well-known Italian firm of Pedro Perfetti owns five

oficinas in Taltal.

The nationals who most notably increased their interest in nitrate

properties during and immediately after the war were the enterprising

Jugo-Slavs who have of late years taken a considerable part in Chilean

development work. The largest of the Jugo-Slav firms is that of

Baburizza Lukinovic, with five well-equipped oficinas in the Antofagasta

district. Several other European-owned oficinas passed into Slavic hands

before the stagnation of the market set in.

Two North American firms own nitrate oficinas. The Dupont Nitrate

Company operates two properties in Taltal from which about 30,000 tons

are annually shipped, but since all this product goes directly to the

Dupont explosives works in the United States, the market is not

interested in the output. W. R. Grace and Company, doing a general

export and import trade and employing their own steamers, operate

nitrate works in Tarapacá, with a production of about 45,000 tons.

A few years ago pessimists prophesied that the Chilean nitrate fields

would be exhausted by the year 1923. Careful examinations carried out by

the national authorities as well as by individual companies have

definitely allayed any fear of this kind. Surveys made under the

auspices of the Chilean Government by the distinguished engineer

Francisco Castillo showed that nitrate fields properly tested, owned and

in operation, cover some 2244 square miles, while outside that area

there are at least 75,000 square miles of undeveloped nitrate-bearing

lands—chiefly in the hands of the Government of Chile. With, thus, over

95 per cent of the deposits untouched it is reasonable to expect a long

life for this industry.

From the fields of Tarapacá and Antofagasta 60,000,000 tons of the

chemical have been taken since the beginning of overseas exports, and it

is estimated that in the comparatively small surveyed and operating area

there are about 240,000,000 tons in sight, a quantity sufficient to fill

the world’s needs for at least another century at the present rate of

supply. This is without taking into consideration the huge body of less

readily accessible nitrate lands referred to in Dr. Castillo’s

conservative report, which included no deposits containing less than 17

per cent of nitrate, nor layers of less than twelve inches in thickness

unless exceptionally rich.

_The Caliche_

Into the highly controversial question of the origin of the

nitrate-bearing deposits it is unprofitable to go deeply, since, as in

the case of petroleum, scientists have not agreed upon a theory. Several

have been put forward, and a good deal of study and research has been

devoted to the problem, but with no final result, a definite objection

tripping up even the most likely suggestions. The most generally

supported theory is that which was expounded in its original form by

Darwin, postulating the long submergence of this part of the West Coast

under the sea, its gradual rise through volcanic action, and the slow

drainage and drying of masses upheaved from the Pacific floor. Remains

of shell-fish are occasionally found imbedded in the caliche, and the

presence of iodine is also adduced as contributory evidence; but bromine

is curiously absent, and the question is complicated by other geological

displays, some of which certainly seem to prove that before the

subsidence of this belt in the Pacific the land was high and dry,

clothed with thick forests.

I listened once upon a burning afternoon in the nitrate pampas to the

seriously held theory that the caliche drained down, under the soil,

from the mountains, and that the particular beds upon which my good

friend was operating owed their origin to Lake Poopó, a turquoise gem

near the railway line leading to Bolivia; the beds, it was insisted,

seeped slowly from the lake and were being pushed up from underneath by

subterranean pressure. Another theory credits the volcanos of the Andes

with the production of sufficient ammoniated steam to create chemical

changes upon the pampas; others suggest the union of oxygen and nitrogen

in the air during electric storms, forming nitric acid which, in contact

with lime, might produce nitrate of lime; this, if coming into touch

with sulphate of soda, might form nitrate of soda, releasing the

sulphate of lime.

He who prefers a less technical theory may agree that nitrogen deposits

are derived from the guano of sea-birds, found along the Pacific coast.

The terminology of the nitrate pampas is a proof of its old recognition.

The _chuca_ is the loose, often friable, decomposed top layer, from two

to twelve inches thick. Below it comes the _costra_, a hard, rocky

agglomeration of cemented clay, porphyry and feldspar amalgamated with

sulphates of calcium, potash and soda, often also containing traces of

nitrate of soda and common salt. Third comes the _tapa_, the immediate

shield of the nitrate of soda beds, composed of fragments of nitrate, of

salt, sand and clay. These three layers form mattresses from a few

inches to three or even six feet in depth, and owing to the hardness of

the costra must be blasted away from the precious fourth layer, the

_caliche_ proper.

The caliche bed varies remarkably in thickness and in position,

sometimes offering a thin, sand-mixed, layer of little value, and at

other times revealing itself as a beautiful shining snow-white bed

several feet in thickness; its hue varies from pure white to grey,

sandy, and even violet, and its consistency may be sometimes loose and

porous, while in other regions it is as hard as marble. The best caliche

contains as much as 70 per cent of nitrate, and by the present methods

of extraction it is not considered worth while to operate deposits

containing less than 14 to 15 per cent. The average in Tarapacá and

Antofagasta runs to about 20 per cent. Below the caliche is the

_conjelo_, another fairly loose layer of sand and clay, salts, selenite

crystals and traces of nitrate; still farther down is another plainly

differentiated stratum, called the _coba_, with a comparatively high

percentage of water, a heavy proportion of clay, calcium sulphate, and

other minor components. The nitrate is often carried through several of

the protecting layers, and foreign matter is frequently found mixed with

the caliche, yet the different strata almost invariably exist in readily

distinguishable and undisturbed beds.

The process of preparation for the market is simple. The caliche,

thoroughly crushed by heavy machinery, is tipped into immense tanks and

covered with water: coils of pipes fixed in these vats heat the mass to

a high temperature and the nitrate of sodium, readily soluble in boiling

water, dissolves. The other ingredients of the caliche fortunately are

not so easily dissolved, and settle to the bottom of the tanks, so that

when the water is drawn off and cooled the nitrate crystallises in a

high grade of purity. There is a moment to be watched for in drawing off

the liquor, however; common salt (sodium chloride) is frequently present

in the caliche in unwanted quantities, dissolving with the same

readiness as the nitrate. But it begins to precipitate before the

nitrate, and the right time for withdrawing the liquor is when the salt

has settled and the nitrate is immediately following it. The

nitrate-charged water crystallises on the floor and sides of the shallow

_bateas_ (vats, generally of wood) into which it is passed, the process

of cooling and crystallisation taking from 20 to 40 hours. The liquor is

then pumped away, part being used for the manufacture of iodine

according to the amount permitted to the oficina by the central

Association, while the nitrate crystals are gathered in large pans for a

few days for draining, and afterwards spread upon the cemented open

planes, the _canchas_, for two weeks until thoroughly dry; it is then

ready for bagging. It is during the drying stage on the cancha that

nitrate in large quantities, all over the pampas, would be spoiled by

dissolution if heavy rain should fall—a phenomenon of such rare and

unlikely occurrence that it is not taken into consideration. The belt is

not absolutely rainless, Iquique claiming a rainfall of half an inch per

annum, while the Antofagasta Pampa has received showers four times in

the last fifteen years; heavy fogs, too, not infrequently invade the

pampas. But it would take a series of terrific deluges for moisture to

filter through the protecting crusts above the caliche, and this

sometimes suggested danger is not in sight.

The “commercial standard” of purity which exported nitrate must attain

for sales to agricultural regions is 95 per cent, but 96 per cent and

over is reached in shipments destined to explosives factories. The cost

of production of necessity fluctuates with the prices paid for wages,

fuel and equipment, but was reckoned by Dr. Enrique Cuevas, in 1916, to

work out at a minimum of two shillings, or fifty American cents, for

each Spanish quintal of 101 pounds weight. During 1921 the cost was

reckoned at double this amount. Expenses tend to increase year by year,

with higher wages and costs of food and fuel, as well as new charges

such as that recently added by the Employers’ Liability Laws of Chile.

Antofagasta reckons that the cost of living increased 300 per cent

between the middle of 1914 and the middle of 1921: it is certainly no

less upon the inland nitrate fields, where all merchandise has an extra

rail journey, every gallon of water is piped long distances from the

mountains, and it is common to bring cattle for slaughter overland from

northwest Argentina, the animals being shod for the three or four weeks’

march over rough trails. The only method of reducing costs is by

improved scientific production, and to this aim the work of the best

companies is constantly and successfully directed.

Iodine is extracted from the “mother liquor” that has already deposited

its burden of nitrate of soda and of common salt, and which is, after

the extraction of iodine, returned to the first lixiviation tanks to

serve again in dissolution of new loads of the raw caliche. The

purple-black iodine crystals, of so pungent a quality that a whiff from

the store-room is almost blinding, are packed into strong little wooden

casks for export. A couple of big oficinas could, between them,

manufacture enough iodine in a year to supply the world’s needs, but to

prevent glutting of the market there is an agreement with the Producers’

Association by which the amount of this chemical made by each nitrate

plant is strictly regulated.

_A Desert Industry_

Before the realization of the properties of nitrate and its commercial

exploitation upon a great scale, the burning pampas of Tarapacá and

Antofagasta were solitudes, shunned by all animal life. This region,

whose products were destined to give new life to a million cultivated

fields, to bring orchards and groves all over the world into magnificent

flower and fruit, lacked the ability to produce so much as a blade of

grass. Forming a continuous stretch of arid country with the long

deserts north of Copiapó, the major part of this strip shelters no life

that has not been artificially introduced.

Yet today this region presents the liveliest scenes of the West Coast.

Where a solitary waste lay under the sun, railways cross the desert with

loads of heavy bags of chemicals; tall chimneys rise into the quivering

air, the grey tin roofs of the nitrate works dot the pampas thickly.

Each nitrate plant is the centre of an artificial town, to which every

drop of water must be piped, every article of clothing, food, every

scrap of wood and metal needed for dwellings and oficina must be

carried. The ground is pitted with the marks of the _tiros_, the test

blastings made in all directions to discover the quality and position of

the nitrate stratum; and one may stand upon any small rise in the

richest nitrate pampas and count a dozen or more of the long flat

“dumps” of waste material that denote the active working of an oficina.

The scene appears to have no elements of beauty, for there is no hue but

that of the sandy desert, the grey and black of the oficinas and the

gleam of railway tracks; the outlines of the scored and pitted ground,

the railway cars, the smoking chimneys, are harsh. Yet there is a sense

of energy and prosperity, of intelligent activity, and in the pure dry

air of the pampa almost everyone experiences a feeling of splendid

health and well-being.

Above the flat desert is an enormous bowl of clear, transparent sky and

one looks far away to distances that seem endless. At sunrise and sunset

the effects of light upon the sky and pampa are of a beauty never seen

but in expanses such as these. I have watched the sky in an Antofagasta

nitrate pampa when, as the sun fell swiftly, all the arch flushed with

rose, and quickly flooded with sheets of purest violet while the orange

and umber pampa took on deep amethyst shadows; before pastel or paint

could record the sight, all the sky was transformed in a clear luminous

lemon-yellow, upon whose bright surface streams of translucent green

presently ran. The high peaks of far-distant Andes appeared as if

floating, the snow-crowned heads of San Pedro and San Pablo alone

visible against the changing sky, fading at last into the mantle of

sapphire that gradually shrouded pampa and heights, with nothing moving

but a host of brilliant stars, sparkling like diamonds on a live hand.

In a few moments after sundown the scorching heat has given place to

sharp cold, and he who rides by night across these deserts must carry a

heavy woollen poncho; one sleeps indoors under blankets. Dawn is a

miracle of pink and pearl, and in at the window comes the scent of the

cherished flowers in the little garden, glistening with dew. The new day

is of an indescribable freshness and serenity. Long before noon the sun

is pouring vertical floods of sunshine upon the desert, the very sand

seems to quiver with heat, and a relentless scorching breath seems to

fill the world. But to this all-the-year-round heat the foreigner soon

becomes accustomed—everyone, as a matter of fact, workers and officials

alike, is a “foreigner” to this pampa; human life is imported like every

other commodity here. But the children born of white parents in the

nitrate fields are strong and sturdy, and it is not surprising that they

who have lived for a year or two on the pampas find themselves restless

in other places, suffer a feeling of constraint, a longing for these

wide skies and far horizons.

The great development of the nitrate industry has created during the

last forty years a series of ports along the Pacific, and brought to

this once desolate coast, where there existed only a few fishing

villages or outlets for desultorily-worked mines, a population which

today exceeds 350,000. The workers directly engaged in the extraction,

preparation and shipment of nitrate number about 70,000, about 50,000 of

these being employed upon 173 oficinas, when all are in operation.

_Nitrate During and After the War_

When the writer last visited the Antofagasta Pampas, the nitrate

business was just recovering after a period of post-war depression and

the series of big works were getting back into the full swing of

activity. The industry had been enormously prosperous just before the

outbreak of war in 1914, but experienced very sudden reverses when the

dislocation of shipping checked shipments. At the beginning of 1915 only

35 oficinas were in operation. A certain confusion was also occasioned

by the fact that several big producers were German, but the accumulated

stocks of these firms were eventually taken over and sold by the Chilean

Government. At the time when the future looked gloomy, with oficinas

idle and large stocks piled up in the warehouses of the nitrate ports,

the great war call for nitrate in the manufacture of high explosives

began, resulting in a new wave of prosperity. Shipping had to be found

by the Allies for the transport of the chemical, and the ports of the

pampa regions showed tremendous activity. But with the cessation of

hostilities the urgent demands of manufacturers of explosives in the

United States and Europe came to an end and the pre-war market offered

by farmers did not immediately resume its calls. Shipping gradually

returned to ordinary commercial channels, the scarcity of freight for

normal commerce was at once apparent, and the rates that consequently

prevailed were too high for profitable shipment of nitrate at the prices

to which it fell. Many oficinas closed down. But in early 1920 a healthy

reaction set in. Agriculturists began buying again, and added to this

cheerful effect the industry was reassured by the non-materialisation of

many threatening prophesies of the serious nature of the competition to

be offered by artificially-produced nitrate.

The work of the active Asociación de Productores de Salitre de Chile

first made itself felt in 1920. As its name implies, the group comprises

firms engaged in Chilean nitrate production, practically every company

subscribing with the exception of the two North American operators and a

few small oficinas. Formed by the same energetic firms who previously

organised, in 1889, the widely-spread Committee of Nitrate propaganda,

the Asociación goes farther in that it controls the output of nitrate of

soda and of iodine, agrees upon a price, f.o.b. in Chile, for these

products, and deals with international distribution. Maintaining

committees in London and Berlin, the Association has also opened

branches in France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Egypt,

Yugo-Slavia, India, South Africa, Japan, China, and all over North and

South America, these delegations being added to wherever prospects for

the consumption of nitrate are presented. The Association’s main object

is to obviate the violent fluctuations of price that have threatened the

industry from time to time; to watch markets closely and to avoid

overloading them by retaining a check upon output. The Association’s

headquarters are in Valparaiso, in constant cable communication with

international centres. The effect of the work of this voluntary combine,

upon which such other powerful groups as the Eastern rubber planters

look with something like envy, has been undeniably beneficial although

no efforts can counteract the adverse results of slackened demand.

In 1913 the price per Spanish quintal was eight shillings f.o.b. in

Chile, or about $2 United States currency, while freight to British

ports cost twenty-three shillings per ton, New York charges running

about $6. Nitrate is packed into bags of two quintals each, ten bags

thus weighing a little more than an English ton. During the war the

price rose to thirteen shillings per quintal, but fell to between nine

and ten shillings in 1919. Owing to a strong reawakened demand, plus the

work of the Association, the price rose in 1920 until about the middle

of the year it stood at seventeen shillings per quintal for deliveries

in the spring of 1921, and even with freights ranging from £5 to £12 a

ton to London, and $30 to $50 to New York, a handsome profit remained to

producer and distributor. This prosperous period lasted until the

general world paralyzation of markets was felt, and the big Government

nitrate stocks of the United States and Europe were released. In 1921

the international dealers, with stocks of high-priced nitrate on their

hands, faced the delayed post-war slump, and formed a pool to maintain

prices at fourteen shillings per quintal. Sales were reduced to

vanishing point, and the way was opened for more extensive rivalry from

the sulphate of ammonia trade; eventually the pool agreed to lower

prices upon an arrangement with the Nitrate Producers’ Association, by

which £1,500,000 was accepted as part compensation. This sum is

collected by a small levy upon all nitrate exported. Prices were then

reduced to eleven shillings per quintal up to December, 1921, and to

10s. 3d. for deliveries in the spring of 1922. At these prices trade

revived appreciably, and the world’s need for nitrogenous fertilisers

set freights moving again.

Continuing for more than a year, the nitrate crisis affected no one more

acutely than the Government of Chile, for in addition to finding

themselves suddenly deprived of the most substantial part of their

national revenues, they were faced with a staggering amount of

unemployment. The oficinas, of which all but 45 were forced to close as

a result of the moribund market, discharged some 40,000 men. There is no

work in the Desert of Atacama apart from nitrate and copper industries;

the land produces no food and there is nowhere to live. A stream of

unemployed workers was almost immediately directed southwards, and while

a proportion was absorbed by the farming and milling industries of the

agricultural zones, numbers remained in the vicinity of the capital, a

source of considerable anxiety. At one time it was reported that 10,000

men were camped out near Santiago, a charge upon the Government, and

although the authorities were active in seeking to find employment on a

series of public works, these plans were rendered difficult by the

financial straits of the nation. The administration of Sr. Arturo

Alessandri went into office with many schemes for the betterment of

living conditions in the working classes, but has been seriously

hampered by the economic trials that beset Chile within a few months of

the change of government.

It is scarcely to be expected that the Government should see eye to eye

with the nitrate producers in the question of sustained export at a time

of market depression. The nitrate companies argue that it is useless to

produce and attempt to export a commodity for which there is no demand,

with immense stocks already choking international warehouses: that any

such action would lower the price of nitrate to a level ruinous to the

holders of the existing stocks and be bound to react disastrously upon

nitrate producers. The Government rejoins that they desire a general

lowering of nitrate prices, so that the fertiliser should be bought in

larger quantities; they want to see a continuation of large quantities

produced and exported, in order that workmen should not be, as during

the 1921 crisis, thrown upon the country’s hands, and also in order that

export dues should continue to fill national coffers. To this the

producers reply that there is one ready means of lowering nitrate

prices, and that is to take off or to substantially reduce the

Government export taxes, amounting to £2.11. 4. per ton. As a matter of

fact, there has been serious consideration of a governmental project to

purchase the nitrate output direct from producers, reselling it to world

markets free of tax, or with a very light duty. Here again plans are

stultified first by lack of funds and secondly by lack of public

enthusiasm for nationalisation of industries in the face of the world’s

experience during the last ten years. There is a wide recognition of the

fact that the nitrate industry has been built up by private enterprise

of a kind invaluable to young countries.

He who tries to understand the nitrate situation is much hampered by

different calculations of weights and costs, and will sympathise with

the complaint of Don Alejandro Bertrand, who remarks that in statistics

of the industry one finds “production and export of nitrate expressed in

Spanish quintals of forty-six kilograms; prices quoted in pounds

sterling per English ton of 1015 kilograms; while the British financial

reviews vary, some giving the prices in shillings and pence per English

hundredweight, while others quote pounds, shillings and pence per

English ton. The Latin countries quote in francs, liras or pesetas,

whose sterling exchange value varies, while Hamburg quotes in marks per

zentner of 50 kilos.” Quotations also vary, continues the Inspector for

the Chilean Government of Nitrate Propaganda services, according to

whether the chemical is sold in Chile, where prices are always “free on

board,” or free alongside vessel, or whether they are sold including

ship freight to Europe or when placed in wagons at the port.

There are today 173 oficinas upon the _pampas salitreras_ of Chile. At

the commencement of the commercial development of the fields, British

capital and technique was foremost in the work, the efforts of the

well-known Colonel North contributing largely towards the active

interest of British investors. Chileans themselves have long been keen

developers of nitrate properties and considerable investors; today their

share is higher than that of any other nationality—a situation unusual

in Spanish American countries, where industries are frequently left to

foreign companies to a degree unhealthy for everyone concerned. The

Chilean’s enterprise and business sense have indeed carried him far

afield, his interests in Bolivia covering 60 per cent of the silver and

tin mines.

The social system upon all oficinas is necessarily the same: dwellings

and food supplies for the workers must be the consideration of the

company, and in consequence large camp stores (_despachos_) are always

maintained in which goods are sold to employés. Certain objections to

this system are always heard, but it is here unavoidable; in all good

and well-managed oficinas these stores are stocked amply, prices being

kept down to a limit at or just above cost price. There is always a keen

demand for workers, and no nitrate camp would retain its employés if

conditions were not those uniformly regarded as just. The chief social

difficulty of the oficinas is in keeping off company lands the

enterprising piratical provision and liquor sellers who are likely to

demoralise and rob. The only remedy is enclosure of the properties and

fencing is becoming more usual. At one time the boundary of a nitrate

grant was fixed by a string and a heap of stones, but since the Chilean

Government has taken steps to regularise estates there has been less of

the happy-go-lucky system of limits.

The acute interest of the authorities of Chile in the nitrate industry

is due to the fact that it constitutes the chief source of national

income. Over 60 per cent of Chilean revenues are derived from the export

tax of two shillings and four pence per quintal, paid partly in paper

and partly in gold, the total sum amounting in prosperous years to

£7,000,000 or £8,000,000 sterling, or between $35,000,000 and

$40,000,000 United States currency.

The tax is a heavy one, and equally weighty imposts are placed upon

iodine, also a product of the nitrate oficinas. The product of the

wonderful borax lake, in upper Antofagasta, on the edge of the Bolivian

boundary, pays a similar tax, yet the considerable export of copper from

Chile goes free. This unequal treatment of the different natural riches

of the soil is frequently explained by the fact that copper is mined in

many parts of the world and therefore the Chilean product must meet

competition, an impossible feat if its cost were raised by the

imposition of export dues. If, however, the cost of production of

Chilean bar copper by the Guggenheim group is correctly estimated at

eleven cents per pound, it is fairly plain that at the time during the

war when Europe was paying twenty-six or twenty-seven cents per pound

for this commodity it might have yielded a return to the country of

origin.

Of the nitrate ports, Antofagasta is today the most lively and

agreeable, although Iquique is still a rival in quantities of the

chemical exported. Just north of Antofagasta lies Mejillones, the old

port established in colonial days, but its equipment was found to be

inadequate after the acquisition of this territory by Chile, and the

creation of modern facilities and a modern city was decided upon. People

who live in Antofagasta are proud of the place with excellent reason.

The approach by train from the south is through ramshackle,

happy-go-lucky fringes that have tacked themselves on, but the city

itself is well equipped. Streets are wide, clean and well paved; shops

are filled with merchandise from London, Paris and New York, and are not

extravagant in price. Office buildings, many of which house the

representatives of nitrate railways, nitrate and iodine companies,

agencies of copper and borax companies, of shipping lines, brokers and

several foreign and native banks, are spacious and well equipped; the

telephone service compares well with that of many cities of ten times

the size of Antofagasta, with its 70,000 inhabitants. Hotels are

comfortable, service courteous, and tariffs less than one might expect

in a city with not a single meadow or orchard within hundreds of miles,

deriving all that it consumes from the Chilean farming lands farther

south, from the packing-houses of Magellanes territory and wheat fields

of the centre and south, or from the sugar and fruit regions of Peru or

markets overseas.

The public park is an object of admiration of every visitor coming from

the barren coast farther north or from the Atacama copper country to the

south; it has been sedulously nursed into greenness that is the more

remarkable since Antofagasta’s water supply is piped from the foothills

200 miles away—through lands so arid that more than once a fox of the

deserts, driven with thirst, has followed the pipe-line across the

pampas right into the city. The great pride of hospitable and cheery

Antofagasta is in the country club to which the visitor is always

motored along the sweep of the bay; here is a cool building with a fine

dancing floor and a good cook. But its chief claim to admiration is the

little garden, no more than a few feet square, tended so devotedly that

all the year round it glows with gay flowers.

All the chief towns of the nitrate pampas, besides possessing rail

transport to the Pacific, are connected by the main line of the “Red

Central Norte” to Santiago, and thence to the farming regions of the

Chilean south; there is through railway connection, thus, between such

towns as Iquique and Antofagasta and the newly-operating packing-house

of Puerto Montt. Agricultural Chile has no better markets than those

offered by the thronged and busy nitrate pampas and ports of her own

north, and from Llanquihue to Coquimbo, the last outpost of farming

country in northern Chile, foodstuffs are sent by rail or sea to supply

the great region of desert camps.

[Illustration: Antofagasta. The Nitrate Wharves.]

_Copper_

The future of copper mining in Chile is wrapped in uncertainty. The

industry has already undergone a not unfamiliar transformation, with a

deeply marked effect upon the Chilean population engaged in this work,

for, commencing as a series of individual enterprises on the part of the

native-born, it has become a large scientifically organised business

operated chiefly by foreigners,[5] with the Chileans reduced to the

position of wage-earners.

Footnote 5:

The most recent foreign entry into the Chilean copper field is that of

the Japanese, with interests in three large deposits in Bio-Bio

Province.