Chile

“ Below the fortieth degree of south latitude the ribbon is twisted and ragged, with the tilted edge half sunk in stormy waters. Thirty times as long as it is wide, Chilean territory runs from the seventeenth to the fifty-sixth degree of south latitude, for, with a Pacific coast measuring nearly three thousand miles the average breadth is no more than ninety. It is a land of extreme contrasts; of great violence, of great serenity: but whether harsh or smiling, Chile is a stimulating, a promising land holding the mind and the heart. It is a breeder of men and women of forcible character. ”

“ Nature has been prodigal in the bestowal of her varied gifts upon Chile. Its geographical formation represents a huge serpent with its sinewy form stretched along the west coast of the continent, its head resting in the arid desert of Atacama, and its tail coiled about the wood-crowned hills and ice-bound islands of Tierra del Fuego. Upon one side loom the Andes Mountains, their snow-capped heads in the clouds and their feet in the ocean; upon the other stretches the vast expanse of the Pacific. ”

“ In Chile one leaves triumphant modernism and now enters the realm of antiquity and romance, the home of Spanish tradition and old-world stateliness. Not even on the Peninsula have the Spanish tongue, the Spanish dignity and the old Castilian ideals been preserved in their pristine charm and perfection as they have in Lima, and the three ancient seats of colonial splendor hidden away in the fastnesses of the northern Andes—Quito, Bogotá and Caracas, the capitals of the countries next in order. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ At the opening of the 19th century Chile was a colony whose resources had hardly been touched, with a population of about 500,000 persons, of Spanish and mixed Spanish and Indian blood: a people endowed with the vigour of character bred by a mountainous country and a bracing climate and by a hard struggle for existence, but ignorant through lack of education, shut out by a narrow-minded commercial system from knowledge of the outside world, and destitute of the character-training that free institutions afford. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That in the face of all hardships and difficulties the colonisation of Central Chile steadily extended is a standing tribute to the courage of the settlers, as well as to the attractions of an exhilarating climate. ”

“ But with all its isolation, its long struggle to gain a place among civilized nations, its history of cruel and uncivilized warfare, Chile possesses natural resources and attractions which intervening years have made known, and which in the short period of her national life have won for this long neglected daughter of the Spanish colonial family, a reputation for wealth and beauty that has given to it a fame as wide as the world. ”

“ Chile has, in fact, enjoyed all the advantages of being known as a poor country for many generations; there have been no periods of delirious boom or extravagance, she has been comparatively little exploited, owes comparatively little to the outside world, and has developed her soul with a certain leisure. ”

“ Chile is nearly three thousand miles in length, nowhere more than one hundred and thirty miles wide and for most of her length much narrower. Even Norway, whose shape and sea-front best resemble those of Chile, has but fifteen hundred miles of coast and has, in her south part, two hundred and fifty miles of width. Much of the Chilean territory is a barren desert; much that is not desert is in fact uninhabited. Over large tracts the population is extremely thin. Yet Chile is the most united and the most ardently national in sentiment among all the Spanish-American countries. ”

“ For people who want to settle permanently, there is no better land in the world than Chile, he declares; there is good level land, very healthy and pleasing, and the winter lasts but four months. In summer the climate is delicious, and men are able to walk without danger in the sunshine. The fields give abundant returns, and cattle thrive.
Live stock, in fact, throve so well that within twenty-five years of the settlement the Indians of the south possessed flocks and herds, and, learning from the Europeans, went mounted on horseback into battle. ”

“ Between the forbidding lands of the extreme north and far south and the frontiers of mountain and sea, lies fertile Chile—fruitful, gentle, brisk, well-watered. Nitrate and copper have their great populated camps, but they are artificial towns; the Magellanic city of Punta Arenas has a firmer root, but both north and south are new, and have received rather than produced. The Central Valley of Chile is the great garden of South 3America, one of the most enchantingly lovely, the most frankly friendly, regions in all the world. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ All around loom giant peaks of the Andes, their white crests among the clouds. In the smiling valley, clothed in the green of perennial summer, is Santiago. Long, quiet streets, badly paved, are lined with handsome houses, French and Spanish in architectural design; many of them palatial in proportions. The lack of industrial life and commercial activity, and the peaceful repose of this daughter of Latin America, give to the capital of Chile more the appearance of [Pg 239] an indolent Oriental city than the metropolis of an ambitious young Republic. ”

“ The English in Chile commonly remain like a bed of cabbages in a Chilean flower-garden—self-satisfied and self-aggrandizing, usurping all the nourishment they can obtain, and neither specially ornamental nor specially interesting.” Chile has provided homes and, in many instances, fortunes for the English, and they should return more to such a hospitable mother than has been done heretofore. ”

“ The early history of Chile, if less picturesque than that of Peru, is full of incident—often dreadful—and doughty deeds. Bluff old Almagro it was who set his eyes upon Chile—Almagro, the partner of Francisco Pizarro, partners whose quarrels finally resulted in the death of both.
The Indians of Cuzco had told their conquerors of a land that lay beyond the desert and the mountains to the south, reaching no man knew whither; a land not a great empire, but one of many tribes, and so easily to be subdued, and, moreover, overflowing with gold and silver. ”

“ One sees in Chile a mirror of what is happening or has already happened in the major part of the Americas—the 321gradual extinction of an embryo civilization. Whatever beginnings the Chilean race had made towards the development of a social system, the evolution of a tongue and a cult, have been fruitless. ”

“ The free State of Chile enjoys a higher degree of tranquillity than any of the former Spanish dependencies of South America, 281and in climate, in fertility, and in liberal institutions, transcends all others in affording the European emigrant the best prospects of a prosperous future. ”

“ Chile possesses a constitution which many a European state might envy, the civil freedom, which forms the basis of all laws, and just now is so eagerly debated and investigated in some parts of Europe, having been in practical operation here for upwards of a quarter of a century, during which it has materially contributed to develope the resources of the country and the prosperity of its inhabitants. ”

“ Chile’s heavily wooded country lies in the rainy south, and stretches from the stormy islands about Cape Horn through the long archipelagos and the provinces of Llanquihue and Valdivia, the forests gradually thinning out as they run northward through the old Araucanian country. The province of Cautín is the last stronghold of deep forest. ”

“ The preponderating white element in the population, their greater intelligence, energy, and perseverance, form the principal source of that intellectual and political activity which has placed Chile far in advance of the other Southern and Central-American Republics, and is opening a brilliant future to that State, far surpassing that of any of the neighbouring republics. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Formal colonisation in Chile is today little needed, but there is a constant informal inflow of white foreigners of good standing who in a considerable proportion marry the charming Chilean women and are added to the permanent population. No great wide spaces are undeveloped, and the natural increase of a healthy land will suffice for industrial needs. ”

“ The children of an enterprising foreigner who marries, as so many 242foreigners have done, a Chilean wife, are generally Chilean-born and educated, and cling in later life to the pleasant land of their birth; a rapid naturalization of blood and of capital is one of the outstanding features of Chile’s economic history. ”

“ If, however, the Chilean Cordillera does not offer an abiding place for man, it nevertheless is the source of his comfort and wealth, for the streams which flow from its summits irrigate the fields and vineyards of Chile's fruitful vales and Argentina's productive plains, bringing to being corn, wine and oil, and other things which make glad the heart of man.
The Andes form the dividing-line between Chile and Argentina. The water-parting was adopted as the boundary under the arbitration of King Edward of Britain. ”

“ I would suggest the propriety of seeking out a well qualified person to go to Chile, and if the one selected is well fitted for conducting education, I have no doubt of his obtaining a favourable reception, and of his being the means of greatly benefiting that country. For the encouragement of such a one, I would say, that Chile enjoys a delightful climate, and its inhabitants are, I think, more moral in general than in any other part of South America where I have been. ”