L. E. Elliott Joyce

“ Here are fine cattle, sheep and horses, pleasant orchards of pears and plums and apples; olive groves and grapevines; the long green lines of wheat fields, the spires of the poplars, the blackberry hedges edged with gorse and bracken and purple-headed thistles, are all familiar. The stock of the farms, every kind of crop—except those invaluable American contributions to the world’s list of foods, maize and potatoes—were introduced from overseas, but they have long been absorbed into the economic life of Chile. ”

“ But the dark rich earth, the lusty crops, the blossoming orchards and hedges, the green pastures with their sleek cattle, create a scene of genuine content. The holdings may be new, yet they are plainly homes. Chile possesses mines, but they drain rather than create populations; growing industries—weaving factories, 200grain mills, and a score of new employments which tend to concentrate wealth and culture; but it is in her farming lands that the truest cradle of the race, the frankest and strongest people, the most cheerful spirit, is found. ”

“ In the south are broken, rocky islands and inlets, matted forests of evergreen trees with their feet in eternal swamps, of furious gales and cruel seas, where turquoise glaciers creep into the dark fiords. Eastward stands the great barrier of the Andes, snow-covered for half the year, with proud peaks rising at least eight thousand feet higher than the head of Mont Blanc. To the west, Chile looks out upon a waste of waters, with New Zealand as the nearest great country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fine prosperous cities of Chile possess, of course, all the equipment, all the luxury and grace, of modern cities all over the world. If one were to shut out the background of snow-crowned mountains, and happened to be out of sight of such streets as retain Spanish balconies and tiled roofs, one might imagine many a district of Santiago to be a part of a first-class French or English city. ”

“ Like every other Latin-American country, Chile claims a large number of delightful versifiers. A sense of melody and love of sweet words is part of the Latin inheritance, and development of sentiment is encouraged by the fine climate, physical beauty and spring of life found in such happy regions as Chile. The musical quality of the Spanish tongue lends itself to the expression of emotion, and no shame is felt in fervid outbursts; environment and vehicle combine to encourage the poet of South America. ”

“ I think that no one who knows Chile today will dispute the suggestion that her fertile soil has chiefly contributed to her social well-being. It has brought white European settlers, able to rear families in a magnificent temperate climate; it has offered permanent homes and not a temporary field for the fortune-hunter. There is a spring of life about the farming region of Chile, a sense of energy, health and freshness that is extraordinarily exhilarating. ”

“ In other regions, burning ochre deserts stretch away in dazzling sunlight, and suddenly one comes upon the tender lime-green fields of the Copiapó River; the emerald maize and alfalfa of the Loa; the Pica Vale, a strip of deepest green studded with millions of the golden globes of ripe oranges; or the exquisite Elqui and Huasco in the month when loads upon loads of grapes, peaches and figs are ripe. In every dip of the land where a stream flows down from the Andes, gardens and orchards bloom ”

“ In the realm of fiction it cannot be said that Chile is rich. She has never yet produced a great novel. But there is consolation in the fact that neither have most of her sister states, the greatest wealth of literature, particularly of the genuinely national school, flowering in Portuguese and not Spanish America; the novels, belles lettres, historical studies and poetry of Brazil have been and are poured forth in quantities that are torrential compared with the thin streams from many other Latin-American countries. ”

“ Concepción was not only a Spanish stronghold, but a genuine agricultural colony, its splendid soil and enchanting climate, bright, balmy and temperate, bringing the settler who forms the backbone of Chilean society. Valparaiso was nothing but a shabby port, lacking a customhouse, all goods being shipped by mule-back to Santiago, ninety miles inland, or rather, 120 miles by the Zapata pass and Pudahuel, the only road then existing. It was fairly well defended by upper and lower forts overlooking the curve on the bay’s south where the houses of Valparaiso lay along a narrow strip of beach. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ It lies just off the road leading from La Serena (Coquimbo) to the iron mountain of El Tofo, upon a tiny thread of a stream trickling from the steep and tumbled mountains. The city lies in the shallow cup of an immense hillside, a patch upon the sandy and orange waste; numbers of black dumps mark the sites of old copper mines, a score of chimneys stand among the silent machinery of abandoned mines. At least a thousand houses make, from a distance, a brave showing. ”

“ The whole earth is parched and the roads are a foot deep in dust. But within a week of the first rain a shimmering veil of light green tinges the land; in ten days every knoll and hillside has its carpet of young grass, and in a month the whole face of the country is changed, awakened, brilliant, bursting out with sturdy fertility. Such rivers as the Aconcagua and the Mapocho, dwindled to rippling threads among the wide stone-strewn beds, are changed in a night to raging torrents, fed from the sides of the mountains. ”

“ Neither in her deep woodlands nor upon her open plains does Chile possess monuments of ancient civilisation. The foundations of her flourishing cities date back no farther than 400 years at the most; the arts and crafts of daily life are based upon imported concepts, owning no native origin. As a settled, built, cultivated country, Chile is for the main part genuinely new.
The old races of the south, whether nomad hunters of the interior or fisherfolk of the coast and Magellanic waterways, built no towns, constructed and carved nothing that serves today as a memorial ”

“ The island lies in a lonely position, at the extreme west of the South Pacific series, and measures but thirteen miles in length and about seven in width. The hues of the land are sand and tawny; the sea is a faithful mirror of the turquoise sky; the dreamy heat of Polynesia endures throughout the year. Easter Island is lonely, lazy, unproductive, a little speck upon the broad breast of the Pacific. ”

“ But whenever it rains in the central Chilean valleys snow is falling upon the Andean heights, and presently the eyes that for months have glanced with the indifference of custom at the far-distant, blue-shrouded, tawny mountains are astonished with a vision of giant peaks and shoulders that seem to have made an immense stride forward to the edge of the next field, their serene magnificence covered with shining white.
The effect upon the foothills is no less striking. ”

“ Much of the spirit of the Chilean is due to the independent life of the mineral-hunter of the north, solitary, even-tempered, enduring, deeply attached to the soil. The day of this class of miner has departed almost as definitely as that of the cunning craftsmen who, in colonial days, fashioned in copper or silver all domestic utensils of Chilean homes: but his influence lives. Marked also is the influence of the skilled horseman, the woodsman, the man of the camp who knows how to kill and cook his food, how to cross mountain passes or trackless forest or unbridged stream ”

“ Quantities of beautiful flowers and plants, herbs and shrubs, are native to Chile and found wild only in this belt. Of them, none is more striking and lovely than the Copihue, the rosy bell of a slim vine clinging to trees in the southern woodland; the flaming Tropœolum speciosa is a bright mantle of the hedgerows, the brilliant blue crocus (Tecophilea) lies in sheets on Andean foothills, the turquoise and golden Puyas are striking features of many a Chilean landscape, and the lovely Eucryphias are shrubs as beautiful as the Fire Bush (Embothrium coccineum) . ”

“ Beyond these great twin centres of movement lies all the fast-developing agricultural and manufacturing south—Talca, a rapid and promising growth; dusty Rancagua, looking towards the big interior copper camp; Chillán, head of a great fruit region; Concepción, most agreeable of cities, nestled beside the bright Bio-Bio in a bower of woods, with its fine port, Talcahuano; the coal-mining sea-border towns, Coronel, Lota, Arauco, Lebu; Temuco, one of the most prosperous of all the vigorous young southern towns, placed in wonderfully productive country ”

“ Bright blue skies and unrelenting midday heat are almost unchanged; the watered country is a series of orchards, and the famous big black grapes, the peaches and plums and apples of Central Chile, succeed the strawberry crops. Chile in the early part of the dry season is a garden of flowers, and the fruitripening at the end of the year fills the valleys with busy scenes. There are thousands of workers in the orchards, grain fields and vineyards, and the heavywheeled ox-carts send up swirling masses of dust in every lane. ”

“ The tramways, the common use of motor cars and electricity, the good paving and good shops, the beauty and fashion of the Chilean women, the beautifully built and equipped houses, the good restaurants, the plentiful supply of newspapers, the appearance and avocations of the people, render Valparaiso and the Chilean capital among the front-rank cities of the world. ”

“ The great ore bodies of Chuquicamata lie in a range of low, pale-hued hills rising gently from the shelving, wind-swept, dust-strewn plain; the chief mass of ore is easily attacked by steam shovels placed upon four or five different levels cut along the face of the most accessible slope, a system of light railways carrying the blasted-out rock, often of the beautiful blue and green tints exhibited by copper sulphates, to the plant in a shallow saucer below. ”

“ Today the traveller traversing by local steamer the wonderful Smyth’s Channel and nearby inlets and fjords may see, as the earliest travellers saw, the open canoe of the “Indians” with a wood fire burning continually upon a tiny hearth of clay, paddled through the chilly waterways by folk whose dark skins are practically unprotected from the wind and rain. The Fuegians meet any passing vessel to beg for clothes and food as they begged from the Beagle, but contact with newcomers has taught them nothing but a new list of small demands. In the developing life of Chile they seem to have no place. ”

“ The day when Simón Bolívar saw the Corsican enter Paris at the head of magnificent conquering troops, greeted with all the hysteric adulation due to a second Alexander, the immediate fate of Spain’s South American colonies was sealed. It is easy to understand that such young men as San Martín and Bolívar, intelligent, trained to arms, well aware of the golden opportunity awaiting in their own countries overseas, and of the force behind the slogan of freedom, beheld themselves with rosy imagination in the same kingly rôle. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ It seems as though nature had deliberately tried to compensate here for the arid and the stormy end of the belt by showering beauty upon the intervening strip. There is none of that strange illusory quality, the sense of living in a mirage, that attends upon tropical regions. Central Chile is fresh, dewy-bright, with the familiar sweetness of the temperate zones of western Europe. ”

“ 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. ”