Antofagasta

“ Antofagasta is the seaport for a railway running to Oruro, Bolivia, and is the only available outlet for the trade of the south-western departments of that republic. The smelting works for the neighbouring silver mines are located here, and a thriving trade with the inland mining towns is carried on. ”

“ Tocopilla is the first port of importance, but Antofagasta, a little over two hundred miles from Iquique, is the principal city. This province is a desert in appearance similar to the other, and this city can boast no advantages over its more northerly rival. Antofagasta is almost on the Tropic of Capricorn, and is in about the same latitude as Rio de Janeiro, on the Atlantic coast. It lies almost at the foot of some hills that are quite high, and is a city of about twenty thousand. The dull-coloured houses can scarcely be distinguished from the sombre hills at a distance. ”

“ It was formerly capital of the Bolivian department of Atacama and the only port possessed by Bolivia, but the seizure of that department in 1879 by Chile and the construction of the Antofagasta and Oruro railway deprived it of all importance, and its population, estimated at 6000 in 1858, has fallen to less than 500. Its harbour is comparatively safe but lacks landing facilities. Smelting for neighbouring mines is still carried on, and some of its former trade remains, but the greater part of it has gone to Tocopilla and Antofagasta. ”

“ The dust is anything but pleasant. A great deal of nitrate and some copper are shipped from Antofagasta. There are several small wharves, but everything has [43] to be transferred to lighters. The harbour is a wretched roadstead and, to get ashore, one has to brave a lashing surf. The pride of the city is a little plaza, where considerable coaxing has caused a little evidence of green from the grass and a few trees. A narrow gauge railroad, two feet and six inches in width, runs from here to La Paz, and a great deal of freight is transshipped to Bolivian towns. ”

“ In some of the valleys, where water can be secured for irrigation, a little agriculture is attempted. There are also a number of minerals to be found, but not so much as in Tarapacá and Antofagasta. Caldera, the principal port, is two hundred and seven miles from Antofagasta, and has a well sheltered bay. The oldest railroad in South America connects this port with Copiapó, the capital of the province. This city is situated in a fertile valley on the banks of a river of the same name. It is an old and quite important town, and has a number of educational institutions. ”

“ The private lines represent an investment of 238,000,000 pesos of eighteen pence, or £16,800,000, as against the State’s capital expenditure of 394,000,000 pesos, or £29,550,000. The most important group of private lines are those serving the great nitrate pampas, and the largest operators are the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway Company. The lines of this English system date their inauguration from 1873, extend over 925 kilometres, of which 482 lie within Bolivian territory, and carry traffic from Antofagasta to La Paz at the same time serving a great nitrate area. ”

“ Antofagasta, where we landed on the southward voyage down the coast, is a much busier place than Megillones, but a less attractive one, for it has no such sweep of sand and space of level ground behind, being crushed in between the dreary, dusty hills and the rocky shore. Landing in the surf is often difficult and sometimes dangerous, but as the chief port of the southern nitrate country it receives a good deal of shipping, and has a pleasant little native society, besides an English and a German colony. ”

“ Antofagasta is a seaport of considerable importance, being the port of entry for a large part of Bolivia and northern Chile. Yet it shares with Mollendo the reputation of being the worst harbor on the west coast of South America. There is little protection against westerly and southerly winds. Even in calm weather there is a considerable swell at the boat-landing. ”

“ If, in making the grand tour of the continent one goes first to Bolivia and visits Chile by way of the railroad from La Paz instead of going directly from Argentina over the transandean road or by steamer through the Strait of Magellan, one comes to the end of the trip at this very port of Antofagasta, which lies basking in the tropical sun on a strip of coast at the foot of a low table-land, seven hundred miles north of Valparaiso, in the heart of the rainless desert. ”

“ North of Coquimbo are the desert provinces of Atacama, Antofagasta, Tarapacá, and Tacna, where the rain so seldom falls that no useful vegetation can thrive except in a few places where irrigation is possible, yet which are the chief source of Chile’s revenue and wealth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Antofagasta is proud of its cemetery. To me it is a nightmare. Most of the graves are marked with wooden crosses painted white, many of them being enclosed by picket fences. The bodies of the poor are thrown naked into a pit and covered with quicklime. The stench emanating from this spot is appalling and the litters for the transportation of the cadavers which are much in evidence in this neighborhood do not add any attraction to the scene.
Plaza Colon, Antofagasta
In 1910 a mania struck each resident foreign colony to donate to the city a reminder of themselves. ”

“ We found the Limarí well crowded with passengers, most of them Chileans bound for Coquimbo, Antofagasta, and Iquique. The absence of a railway makes the semi-weekly steamers the only means of communication on this desert coast. ”

“ From these fields is derived much of the wealth of the country. Many of the older nitrate fields have become exhausted, especially those farthest north on the Iquique Pampa, but new ones are constantly being opened up to the south of the old workings and from them is due the importance of Antofagasta. It was to acquire these nitrate deposits that Chile declared war upon Bolivia and Peru in 1879 which caused them to change hands. It is a blessing to that part of the country that it never rains, because if it did, the nitrate deposits would be washed away. ”

“ There does not seem to be much likelihood of any large amount of traffic being developed along this desolate plateau. The railroad must depend for its freight on foreign merchandise coming to La Paz via Oruro and the port of Antofagasta. ”

“ From Asunción one travels up the Paraguay River to Corumbá in Brazil, thence, by a small affluent to Puerto Suárez, eighty-one miles distant on the frontier, thence by a zigzag course of eight hundred miles up the rising elevation to Santa Cruz, a thriving city of 20,000 population, and thence to Cochabamba, still larger and 8000 feet in altitude. From here there is a stage line over one hundred and ten miles of mountainous country to Oruro, where connection is made with the Antofagasta-La Paz railway to the capital. ”

“ In Chile as in the United States the breweries buy saloon licenses to put into business men who handle only their goods, but unlike in the United States, saloons play no part in politics, and with the [517] exception of the sailors' dives in the seaports they are run in strict accordance with the law. The violations that I have mentioned in this book occurred in Antofagasta which has the reputation of being a notoriously tough town.
A business with a future and which could be made profitable is an enamel works and tin-ware factory. ”

“ It seldom rains even in the interior. The small rivers formed by the melting of the snow on high mountain peaks lose themselves in the sands and seldom reach the ocean. Near their upper reaches water is piped from them to the coast towns, which are at a great distance. It is thus that Iquique, Tocopilla, and the thriving port of Antofagasta get their water supply. ”

“ Puerto Montt, like Valdivia, drew a strong part of its population from Germany and has today 8000 people; Punta Arenas, with less than two 335hundred inhabitants in 1865, has 25,000 people. Forty per cent of these are calculated to be foreigners, chiefly Scots, or Falkland Islanders of Scots blood, and Yugo-Slavs; the only other city showing so large a proportion of foreign-born residents is Tarapacá, while Antofagasta has 16 per cent of non-Chileans.
Vital statistics in Chile are carefully kept and promptly published; they do not always give satisfaction. ”

“ There is a great variation of soil and climate ranging from barrenness and frigidity in the high Andes to exuberant vegetation and torrid heats in the department of Oran. The principal industry is the exportation of stock into Chile. A railroad to Chile seems to be the want of the inhabitants. They say that if one were built to Antofagasta, they would need no trade with the rest of Argentina for then all their exports would be sent north by the Pacific boats, and their imports from the United States would be brought in that way, saving a great expense in freight. ”

“ Much of the population is a rough one and hard to govern, but the authorities have done well. The battles that have been fought with fortune [42] in Iquique and on this coast have cost many lives and much privation. A few have acquired fortune, but more have not even obtained a modest competence in return for the deprivation and sacrifice endured. Whatever has been gained at the cost of much labour and privation has been fully earned by some one—and perhaps by one who did not reap the reward.
A STREET SCENE, ANTOFAGASTA.
The province of Antofagasta joins that of Tarapacá on the south. ”

“ From north to south these are Tacna, Tarapacá, Antofagasta, Atacama, Coquimbo, Choapa, Aconcagua, Santiago, Colchagua, Curico, Talca, Concepcion, Cautin, Valdivia, and Llanquihue. Four provinces are maritime, Valparaiso, Maule, Arauco, and Chiloé; their eastern limits are defined by the summits of the Coast Range and do not extend to the central valley. Chiloé is an archipelago. In the littoral provinces the [227] climate is cooler than in others whose latitude is farther south owing to the breezes that blow from the Pacific. ”

“ Once possessing a small coast line which included the port of Antofagasta, Bolivia was deprived of this in 1883 at the close of the war with Chile.
Population. The number of inhabitants, mainly an estimate, has been recently given as nearly 3,000,000. With [Pg 206] about four persons to a square mile, it is the most sparsely peopled of American Republics.
Boundary. At the north and east the country borders on Brazil. Paraguay is at the southeast, Argentina directly south, and Chile and Peru west. ”

“ As one pursues the journey farther south, the country becomes always more arid, and at Uyuni, the next town of consequence, it is a veritable desert where only the smallest stunted shrubs are seen among the sand and stones. This uninhabited region will soon be a converging point of railroads, for it is here that the existing line from La Paz to the Pacific coast at Antofagasta is to be joined by the new railway which is to be constructed to provide a quick through route from central Bolivia to the Atlantic coast at Buenos Aires. ”

“ A deputy-governor or corregidor sent directly from Spain resides here, who has the command of the civil and military officers of the city, and is only amenable to the president of Chili.
4. Aconcagua, is inclosed between the provinces of Coquimbo, Quillota, Santiago, and the Andes, being entirely inland and communicating with the sea through the former province, the same rivers belonging to both. The celebrated silver mines of Uspalata are in the Andes belonging to this province, which likewise are productive of excellent copper, and its lower grounds are fertile in grain and fruit. ”

“ One league beyond the Cauca lies the town of Antioquia. If Sopetran is the last word in attractiveness, Antioquia must be placed at the extreme other end of the scale. The wide, arid valley supports no vegetation except occasional clumps of cacti and dwarfed mimosas, which rather add to its desert-like appearance. The heat is almost unbearable, as the Western and Central Andes, hemming in the valley between huge walls of pink clay and sandstone, shut off all ventilating winds. ”

“ Of northern Chile, nothing much needs to be said. From La Serena northward it is one large sterile tract of land, with the exception of a few river valleys where there is verdure and vegetation, such as at Tacna, Copiapó, and Vallenar. It is one large desert and ranges of barren mountains rising to a great height, and on whose lower slopes on plateaus is found most of the world's nitrate of sodium supply. In the higher altitudes are borax fields and great mineral deposits of copper, silver, and gold. The coast is absolutely rainless and water is unobtainable by wells. ”

“ At all events, they are in a hurry to reach the humid zone at the foot of the Andes, which could maintain a busier traffic than the desolate tableland.
The railway from San Antonio, and the road which is a continuation of it west of Maquinchao, cover a distance of 320 miles from the Atlantic to the Andes, and cross five distinct regions. The first is the coastal plain, composed of horizontal marine Tertiary sedimentary rocks, both of sand and clay. The plain rises slowly toward the west, and it attains a height of 650 feet at a distance of seventy miles from the coast. ”