/o 0 t the PRINCETON, N. J. Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. HO O n ry Division w Section * Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/continentofopporOOclar_O The Continent of Opportunity AN AVENUE OF IlOYAL PALMS IN RIO DE JANEIRO. The Continent of Opportunity The South American Republics—Their History, Their Resources, Their Out¬ look. Together with a Traveller’s Im¬ pressions of Present Day Conditions y By FRANCIS E. CLARK, D. D., LL. D. Author of “ A New Way Around an Old Worldf “Fellow Travellers,” “ Training the Church of the Future,” etc., etc., etc. New York YOUNG PEOPLE’S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA Copyright, 1907, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY Second Edition New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street To William Phillips Hall % well known alike in religious, in philanthropic and in business circles, whose generosity to the newly formed South American Christian En¬ deavour Union makes it possible to spread the tidings of the Society , by means of the printed page, throughout the “ Continent of Oppor¬ tunity f this volume is gratefully dedicated by His friend The Author ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To many kind friends in the South American Republics, who greeted us on our arrival, gave us Godspeed on our departure, and furnished me with first-hand information about the countries of their birth or their adoption, with¬ out which this volume could not have been written ; To the United States ministers to Panama, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina; to the Secretary of Legation at Lima, Peru; to our Ambassador to Brazil; and to the American Consuls in Valparaiso, Buenos Ayres and Rio de Janeiro, for generous official and social courtesies, and for much printed information concerning the countries to which they are accredited; To their Excellencies the Presidents of the Republics of Panama, Peru, Chile and Argentina, and to members of their cabinets and others in high official station, for kindly interviews, and for documents which helped me materially in obtaining a knowledge of their peoples and their countries; To President Theodore Roosevelt for a most generous letter of introduction to the diplomatic and consular representatives of the United States in South America ; To T. C. Dawson’s valuable volumes on the History of South American Republics, published in the “ Story of the Rations ” series ; To W. H. Prescott’s undying work on u The Conquest of Peru” ; 7 8 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To books of travel by Carpenter, Pepper, Tucker and others with whose stories of journeying by land and sea I compared and sometimes revised my own impressions ; To many volumes relating to the missionary operations of various societies, the reports of the American and the British and Foreign Bible Societies, the volume entitled, u Protestant Missions in South America,” Miss Guinness’s ‘ 1 Neglected Continent,” and many pamphlets and leaflets which have enabled me to supplement and correct with the wisdom and experience of others my own impressions of the past and present religious condition of South America ; To the publishers of The Independent , The Congrega¬ tionalism The Interior , The Advance , The Missionary Re¬ view of the World , The Journal of Education and The Chris¬ tian Endeavor World , for permission to republish some material which has appeared in their columns. CONTENTS I. By Way of Introduction . . . 13 II. South America—a Country in the Making 17 III. The Smallest Republic in the World . 26 IV. Contradictions and Contrasts in the Canal Zone.34 V. The Republic of Colombia ... 43 VI. Ecuador, the Republic of the Equator . 51 VII. Curiosities of Travel on the West Coast $9 VIII. The Empire of the Incas .... 66 IX. Peru, Yesterday and To-Day ... 76 X. Peru Redivivus.83 XI. Lima, the Paris of the South ... 94 XII. An Adventure in the High Andes . . 100 XIII. Where the Stars Sit for Their Portraits 107 XIV. Bolivia, the Country of the Great Pla¬ teau .114 XV. The Switzerland of South America . 121 XVI. The Hermit Republic of the Andes . .130 XVII. Our Window in La Paz .... 139 XVIII. Ancient and Modern Chile . . .147 XIX. The Wealth of Chile . . . .155 XX. Valparaiso—The Earthquake-Stricken . 165 XXI. The Jamestown of South America . 174 XXII. The Famous Journey Across the Andes . 181 9 10 CONTENTS XXIII. Argentina, the Land of the Limitless Pampas.190 XXIV. A Prosperous Republic . . . 200 XXV. Peculiarities of Buenos Ayres . . 208 XXVI. Uruguay and the Uruguayans . . 214 XXVII. Paraguay, the Isolated . . .221 XXVIII. Brazil, the Boundless . . . 229 XXIX. Rio de Janeiro, the City Beautiful . 240 XXX. The World’s Coffee Cup and How it is Filled .249 XXXI. A Thousand Miles in Brazil . .257 XXXII. Venezuela, the Turbulent Republic of the North.263 XXXIII. The Three Guianas . . . .271 XXXIV. With the Presidents of Four Repub¬ lics .278 XXXV. How We Journeyed .... 286 XXXVI. The Progress of Education . . 295 XXXVII. The Inscrutable Politics of South America .304 XXXVIII. South America as a Mission Field . 311 XXXIX. A Bird’s-eye View of Protestant Mis¬ sions .320 XL. Lights and Shadows on the Map . 330 Statistical Tables . . . -338 Index.343 ILLUSTRATIONS Facing Page An Avenue of Royal Palms in Rio de Janeiro - - Title The Cathedral of Panama ------ 26 A Steam Shovel at Work on the Canal 40 Culebra Cut, Part of the Old French Excavation - 40 Some Native Panamanians ------ 46 The Throne of the Ancient Incas 66 Modern Descendants of Incas ----- 66 An Indian of Chile - - - - - - -148 A Bolivian Indian - - - - - - -148 A Market Scene in Chile - - - - - 152 Along the Roadside in Chile.160 In the Straits of Magellan - - - - 160 The Entrance to “ Santa Lucia ” - - - - 178 The Universal Costume of the Women of Chile on Good Friday - - - - - - -178 The Christ of the Andes - - - - - - 186 An Argentine Farmhouse - - - - - - 190 Argentine Indians - - - - - - -190 Rio Harbour and City as Seen from Corcovado - - 240 The t( Finger of God” Near Rio de Janeiro - - 242 The Most Beautiful Street in the World - - - 246 Drying Coffee - - - - - - - - 252 An Indian Alcade Away in the Sierras - - - 314 The Altar at the Doorway of the Jesuit Church, Arequipa, Peru » -.314 Map of South America - - - - - ‘ 33 ^ 11 I BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION T HE material for this volume was gathered dur¬ ing a five months’ journey to South America in the interests of the Christian Endeavour move¬ ment which the author undertook early in 1907 at the invitation of Christian workers in different countries. He crossed the Isthmus of Panama and sailed down the west coast from Panama to Valparaiso, touching at many ports. From Valparaiso he crossed the continent by the famous trans- Andean route to Buenos Ayres. Thence he sailed to Montevideo and thence to Santos and Eio de Janeiro, and, after spending nearly a month in Brazil, sailed for Boston by the longest but most available route, via Portugal, Spain and England. In the course of this journey he visited eight of the eleven republics of South America, namely, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. During his long sea voyages of more than fifteen thou¬ sand miles, he had the opportunity of supplementing his own observations by reading many volumes on South American history and travel, and, while on shore, enjoyed unusual privileges in meeting people of all walks of life, from the presidents of several of the republics to the hum¬ blest citizens. He lived not only in hotels and on railway trains but in the homes of many of the people, and sought from all sources that which might be of interest and profit to his readers. During these months of travel and residence he learned that South America is peculiarly a country of lights and 13 14 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY shadows. It is possible for the traveller to bask in the sunlight, or dwell altogether in the shadow. A writer is tempted to make his picture too bright or too dark ac¬ cording to his own personal equation, or perhaps accord¬ ing to the section of the continent he visits. The writer who knows only the northern half of South America would be likely to declare the continent to be the most turbulent, unprogressive and benighted of any of the five. The traveller who visits only the southern half, especially if he confines himself largely to the great cities, will be likely to declare that South America stands near the head of the progressive continents. I have read some of the wildest claims for South America, and I have seen it, on the other hand, painted in colours so dark that a Bushman or a Hottentot would be ashamed to own it as his abode. For instance, a recent writer on Ecuador describes it as an earthly para¬ dise, a paradise before the fall, undisturbed by any de¬ ceitful serpent. The climate, the people, the productions, the means of communication, are all perfect, and even the hens are such prolific layers that “the owners have to give them medicine to prevent an over-production of eggs.” This statement gives the impression that the writer, all through his article, is making game of his readers, and is endeavouring to find out how gullible they are, for Ecuador is a land of pestilence and disease, of revolution and political graft, of ignorance and supersti¬ tion beyond almost any South American country. On the other hand I have read magazine articles on Argentina and Brazil, written in the most lurid style of our own professional “muck-rakers,” describing their weaknesses and mistakes, and making no mention of their wonderful progress, their present glories and the more glorious future that is opening before them. Such ar¬ ticles deceive only those who are utterly ignorant of BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 15 South American affairs, but naturally those who have not studied the situation on the ground, cannot refute these absurdities. The object of this volume is to give, so far as its brief compass and the author’s ability will allow, a compre¬ hensive view of the countries and peoples of South America, their history, their possibilities, their chief re¬ sources, their intellectual and religious life, together with a traveller’s impressions of present day conditions. South America is preeminently a country which one cannot treat as a whole. It would be no more mislead¬ ing to consider the United States and Mexico, or Spain and Great Britain, as one country, than to write of Ven¬ ezuela and Argentina as having a common history and destiny because they happen to occupy the territory of the same continent. Indeed, every one of the eleven re¬ publics, small and insignificant as some of them are, has its own individuality and its own interesting history and development. To the average foreigner all the republics, except Brazil, seem to have the same genesis:—a settlement of adventurers, long centuries of exploitation by Spanish extortioners, followed by liberation from the Spanish yoke and a turbulent emergence into a more or less stable national life. Though this outline is true of them all in a general way, it is too meagre and lacking in details to satisfy one who desires any real knowledge of South America and South Americans. He who sympathetically studies these countries will be surprised to find the many currents and cross-currents of history which give to each land its own individuality. This history throws light upon the present conditions and character of the peoples as nothing else can do. For the sake of bringing out the individual character¬ istics of these republics a chapter is devoted to the his- 16 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY tory and present condition of each. Other chapters give the writer’s view of the resources, recent development and future outlook of many of the republics, while still others describe the politics, educational features, modes of travel, and religion of the people. The writer in this volume, as in his journey, begins with the Republic of Panama, follows down the west coast, crosses the Andes, and then travels north describ¬ ing the Republics of the East Coast and their character¬ istics. While the book is written from a Christian standpoint, and some chapters are devoted to the religious and evangelistic features of the country, it does not profess to give an exhaustive review of the missionary situation in South America. It would take several volumes of this size to accomplish that task, but the author hopes that enough has been written to show the value of the Chris¬ tian work already accomplished, and to indicate that in respect to Protestant missionary effort, South America is no longer the u Neglected Continent,” but the Continent of Opportunity. I have chosen my title as containing the one word that describes most accurately the present and the future of South America. In all material matters, as well as in matters more spiritual, in her mines and manufactures, in her forests and fisheries, in her commerce and agricul¬ ture, in her schools and churches, in her politics and business, South America is to-day preeminently the Continent of Opportunity. II SOUTH AMERICA—A COUNTRY IN THE MAKING A. Continent with a Future—The Climate of South America—West America and East America—Physical Features on a Gigantic Scale- South America’s Greatest Handicap—Her Great Men—No Plymouth Rock—A Cruel Triumvirate—Simon Bolivar—A. Curiosity in Con¬ stitutions—A Bright Outlook. OUTH AMERICA is a country in the making. Some parts of it, politically, are yet without form and void. In some parts order has come out of chaos, while other sections are still in the birth throes of revolution and evolution. But South America is a continent with a future. It is a land of possibilities and opportunities. It is interesting to almost every class of men. To the student of history it presents a fascinating field which has allured some of our greatest historians. The story of the Incas and the Chibchas of Colombia, those wonder¬ ful nations that, without knowledge of each other or the rest of the civilized world, attained such a high and complicated civilization of their own, never loses its charm. To the archaeologist the ruins of Cuzco and Quito and a score of other places are of supreme interest. To the student of political science the history of the brutal Spanish invasion and the brutal Spanish rule, as well as the innumerable failures and more recent suc¬ cesses of the modern republics are constant warnings of 11 how not to do it.” The naturalist will find in South America birds and 17 18 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY beasts, fish and reptiles, shrubs and trees which grow in no other part of the world. The entomologist will not lack for bugs,—the most beautiful and the most noxious that crawl or fly. The geologist will find a country rich in minerals of every description. The devout man will find among the people professing the religion of the ancient as well as the modern South Americans, “a feeling after God, if haply they may find Him,” and, amid all the superstition and ignorance of ancient and modern faiths, he recognizes the fact that man is u incurably religious,” and rejoices in the clearer light of a rational Biblical faith that is beginning to shine at many points in the great South land. Before considering the individual republics into which South America is divided, it is interesting to call to mind some geographical and historical facts which account in large measure for the backward state of civilization which one finds in some parts of this continent, as com¬ pared with the more progressive twin continent of the north. Though almost as large in territory as North America, the greater part of South America lies in the tropics, while North America lies almost wholly within the temperate and Arctic zones. To speak roughly, North America is a cold country and South America a hot country, and, in recent centuries at least, however it was with earlier civilizations, extreme heat has been a handi¬ cap to progress. To be sure, the vast plains of Argentina, the long seacoast of Chile and the table-lands of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil have a comfortable and equable climate, but the approach to the plateaus of the north is through steaming, miasmatic lowlands which have proved a terrible barrier to civiliza¬ tion. SOUTH AMEEICA 19 It is interesting to notice in passing how much farther east the southern continent lies than the northern. The two might with almost as much propriety be named West America and East America as North and South America. Payta, the most western town in South America, is about the same longitude as Cleveland, while Valparaiso, and almost the whole of the Peruvian, Chilean and Patagonian coast, are nearly on the same longitudinal line as New York. Indeed, there is a difference of but three or four minutes in time between Valparaiso and New York City. On the other side, Brazil juts far out into the Atlantic Ocean towards Africa, and there the Atlantic is only about half as wide from shore to shore as in the north. The physical features of South America are on a more gigantic scale than in North America. Its mountains as a rule are higher, its rivers broader and deeper, its forests more impenetrable, and all these features have presented obstacles to man which have daunted and delayed, if they have not utterly discouraged him in the conquest of the country. It is as though this continent were waiting for a later race of giants who, with scientific and me¬ chanical skill superior to any yet achieved, shall be able to subdue this richest of continents, which yet guards her riches so securely. The greatest handicap of South America, however, in comparison with North America, has come from the character and actuating motives of her first European occupants, and it takes a continent many a century to overcome the wrong bias given by the original settlers. “Gold, gold, gold, gold, Hard and yellow, bright and cold,” brought the first settlers to the shores of South America. The religious motive, when present, was largely overlaid with the desire for conquest and riches, and was often 20 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY used as a cloak for the most horrible atrocities, as when the Friar Yalverde betrayed Atahuallpa, the great em¬ peror of the Incas who had received Pizarro and his cohorts so hospitably. With a cross in one hand and a Bible in the other, Yalverde demanded that Atahuallpa should declare himself a subject of the King of Spain and receive baptism. When the mighty emperor of Peru threw down the book with indignant scorn at this outrageous demand, the friar cried out: “Fall on, Castilians, I absolve you.” “Into the helpless crowd,” we are told, “burst a mur¬ derous fire from the doors of the houses all around, where the Spaniards had previously been stationed. Aghast and bewildered by this display of powers which to them seemed necromantic, the survivors nevertheless manfully stood to the attack of the mail-clad horsemen who rode into the huddled mass, ferociously slashing and slaugh¬ tering. The Indians strove desperately to drag the Spaniards from the horses with their naked hands, and interposed a living wall of human flesh between the murderers and their beloved sovereign. At length Pizarro’s own hands snatched Atahuallpa from the litter. The Indian soldiers outside, hearing the firearms and the noise of the struggle, tried to force their way through the square, but the Spanish musketry and cannon mowed them down by the hundreds, and they fled before the charges of the cavalry, dispersing in the twilight.” 1 This quotation is only one of hundreds that might be made from the history of South America to show the perfidious and utterly inhuman way in which religion was made the handmaid of cruelty, treachery and avarice. South America had no Mayflower , she has no Plymouth Rock, and in these two facts can be summed up largely the difference between the two halves of America, re* Dawson’s “South American Republics.” SOUTH AMERICA 21 ligiously, educationally, industrially. There has been little of the Puritan and Pilgrim leaven at work in the meal of the southern continent, until a comparatively re¬ cent date. But the leaven has been introduced of late, and has already begun to bring about its blessed and inevitable results. The character of the great public men of the two con¬ tinents has been another determining factor in the civili¬ zation of North and South America. North America has had Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, and many smaller Franklins, Washingtons and Lincolns. South America has had Pizarro, Almagro, and Bolivar, and many smaller adventurers of the same type, whose selfish lust for gold and power has cursed the land in the early days of European occupation. If there is any worthy exception in this cruel triumvi¬ rate who showed a spark of unselfish patriotism, it is Simon Bolivar, sometimes called the Liberator. He cer¬ tainly aided his own country, Venezuela, and most of the other countries of South America to throw off the intoler¬ able Spanish yoke, but he imposed or tried to impose a yoke of his own, almost as galling, and his character seems to have lacked the high moral motives and the “saving common sense” which marked each one of the great North American triumvirate. His character has been thus described by Mr. Dawson in his careful history of the South American republics : “From his earliest childhood a little feudal lord, owing obedience to no par¬ ent (he was left an orphan at three years of age) with hundreds of slaves at his orders, his precocious intelli¬ gence the object of that ruinous admiration with which thoughtless strangers and servants spoil a rich and lonely child, his naturally strong will uncurbed by any discip¬ line, he grew into manhood—arrogant, uncompromising, solitary, a deep thinker, wildly ambitious, marvellously 22 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY brilliant, though lacking steady common sense, blindly confident in his own moral and intellectual infallibility, firmly convinced that he was destined for vague great things, inordinately fond of honours and praise, and ut¬ terly unable to distinguish his desires of gratifying selfish ambitions, and his yeasty notions of regenerating man¬ kind.” Such was doubtless the character, as the stories of his varied adventures prove, of the most widely heralded he¬ roic figure of modern South America. It is not a model on which the youth of a continent could safely shape their lives. Preeminently, too, the history of South America has been the history of carnage and bloodshed. There is not another continent among all the six, if we count Aus¬ tralia as one, which has been so drenched in blood as South America. Australia has had no war and no blood¬ shed. Large sections of Asia, within historic times, have been free from carnage on a great scale. Our own conti¬ nent, even remembering our two great wars, has suffered but little compared with South America. Even before the Spanish conquests, the Incas, though on the whole a peaceful race, imposed their rule at the point of the sword and spear, on surrounding tribes, while during and since the Spanish conquest blood has flowed like water from Darien to Cape Horn. Every revolution in the olden times, and revolutions have been numbered by hundreds, was a gory one, and in some the slaughter has been incredible, so that some sections of South America have fewer inhabitants than they had four centuries ago. The siege of Cartegena in Colombia, in 1815, by Mar¬ shall Morillo, one of Spain’s greatest generals, is thus de¬ scribed : “The besiegers suffered terribly in the pesti¬ lential swamps, but the defenders were reduced to the SOUTH AMERICA 23 most horrible extremities, during four months and a half. The provisions ran out; fevers decimated the people ; the starving garrison ate rats and hides ; sentinels fell dead at their posts ; the commander drove out of the city- two thousand old men, women and children, and of this procession of spectres only a few reached the Spanish line. Finally the surviving soldiers escaped by boats in the midst of a storm which dispersed the Spanish squad¬ ron, and Morillo entered a deserted city where the very air was poisoned by the rotting bodies of famished people. It is calculated that six thousand persons died of hunger and disease.” Yet this was only a minor engagement; thousands of similar tales might be told, each one vying with every other for gruesome slaughter. In one of the most recent civil wars in Colombia which took place between 1899 and 1902, largely on the Isthmus of Panama, it is esti¬ mated that 200 armed encounters took place, and 30,000 Colombians were slain,—a very considerable percentage of the whole population. So numerous have been these bloody revolutions that history will probably never re¬ cord half of them in detail. Another fact, if borne in mind, will help us to under¬ stand the history and present condition of South America, and this is that feudalism has always been contending with monarchy; extreme states’ rights ideas with auto¬ crats of personal force and power, who have constantly tried to play the absolute tyrant. When Spain conquered the Incas, and practically the whole of South America fell into her lap and that of her sister nation Portugal, the Iberian peninsula was just emerging from feudalism. Ferdinand and Isabella were practically the first successful exponents of a strong cen¬ tralized government. The Spanish generals and conquer¬ ors brought feudal ideas with them, and these ideas in 24 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY the course of the centuries developed into the extreme re¬ publicanism, tempered by assassination and revolution, which has characterized the South America of the last century. Bolivar dreamed of a United States of South America and worked for it. At one time his dream seemed about to be realized, but Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru fell apart, and even his genius and daring were not able to bring them together. The “ United States of South America ” seem as far from realization as in the days of Pizarro or Bolivar. States’ rights have sometimes been carried to an extreme and absurd length. Some fifty years ago Colombia, then called New Granada, adopted a new constitution, the sixth it had enjoyed in thirty years. The name was changed to “United States of Colombia*” and the nation was com¬ posed of nine independent states. One article of the con¬ stitution declared that “ when one sovereign state of the union shall be at war with another, or the citizens of any state shall be at war among themselves, the national gov¬ ernment is obligated to preserve the strictest neutrality.” The result of such a constitution among such a people could easily be foretold, and civil war succeeded civil war in quick succession for two and twenty years, until tired of extreme states’ rights, in 1885, under a strong president, Rafael Nunez, who was dictator in all but name, the “ United States of Colombia ” became the “ Republic of Colombia,” with a strong centralized government, and the sovereignty of the individual states was expressly de¬ nied in the new constitution. Another provision of the earlier constitution was that 11 in naming the eight generals spoken of by the consti¬ tution from whom must be chosen the commander-in-chief of the army, all Colombians over twenty-one shall be con¬ sidered generals of the republic.” This provision would SOUTH AMERICA 25 surely have more than satisfied the alleged ambitions of the Colonels of Kentucky. This early bias in favour of feudalism, and this constant conflict between individual and state rights and the ambi¬ tions of selfish dictators, accounts for the seesawing of many of the republics from one extreme to the other, and for the political turmoil and unrest which have been the bane of most of the South American countries. If this picture of greed, ambition and bloodshed, of unscrupulous and cruel leaders, seems hopeless and dark, let us remember that, nevertheless, South America is a land of vast resources, that she has given to the rest of the world some of our most valuable foods and drugs, like the potato, Indian corn, quinine and peruvian bark ; that her mines are unexhausted and her forests scarcely touched ; that moral and spiritual light has dawned upon many sections; that freedom of religious thought and worship has been secured in almost every republic; that education is being more and more prized and extended to the common people; that apparently stable govern¬ ments have been established in more than half the conti¬ nent,—in a word, that the light is breaking everywhere, and that South America is after all the great continent of Opportunity and Possibility. I m THE SMALLEST REPUBLIC IN THE WORLD 1 Something About Panama , Past, Present , and Future The Smallest Republic but not the Least—The Number of Panamanians —An Important Bit of Territory—Outside of the Canal Zone—Cu¬ rious Golden Treasures—The Children’s Place in Ancient Panama— Within the Canal Zone—The Rights of the United States—Colonel Gorgas, the Sanitary Saviour of Panama—A Mixed Population—The President of the Republic—Our American Minister. PROMINENT American official is reported to have brought greetings, when he came to JL J L Panama, from u the largest Republic in the world to the smallest Republic in the world. ” Then he smoothed over the wounded dignity of the Panamanians by explaining that, though small in population, Panama was great in possibilities, and great in strategic impor¬ tance, and thus saved and salved their sensitive feelings. Panama is certainly not large geographically, for it stretches only from Colombia on the one side to Costa Rica on the other, and is a narrow, contorted ribbon of land that seems to serve principally to connect North and South America, and to afford a tremendous barrier to the navies of the world, compelling them to sail 10,000 miles to get around to a spot less than fifty miles away as the 1 The four chapters on Panama and the Canal Zone were written on the spot in February and March, 1907. It is believed that they por¬ trayed accurately the condition of things as they existed then. Naturally, conditions rapidly change from year to year, and even from month to month, but a description of the Canal Zone as seen by a traveller near the beginning of the American occupation will always have an interest of its own. 26 THE CATHEDRAL OF PANAMA. THE SMALLEST REPUBLIC IN THE WORLD 27 crow flies. To travel 200 miles south and north to make less than one rod to the east has been the fate hitherto of travellers going around the Horn, for, strange to say, when they got to Panama, after sailing around South America from Colon, they found themselves east of the point from which they started, for it is an actual fact that Panama on the Pacific coast is east of Colon on the Atlantic, owing to the contortions of the coast. The population of Panama is far smaller than even its territory would indicate. Three hundred thousand is the liberal estimate made by the Panamanians, which, very likely, would have to be cut down if a careful census were made. Under 90,000 of these 300,000 are in the Canal Zone, and in the two cities of Panama and Colon which lie at either end of the Zone, though just outside of it. Indian half-breeds largely occupy the interior, which is in part an impenetrable jungle, with a few footpaths winding through it, and a few settlements of small im¬ portance. But, if Panama cannot boast very much in the way of territory or population, it has occupied no small place in the eye of the world for the last 400 years. Some one has well said that “ since the days of Greece’s glory no such small strip of soil as the Isthmus of Panama has gained equal distinction. It has been the scene of stirring ad¬ venture and the site of the wealthiest city in the world. It has been the subject of epoch-making diplomacy and a sphere of political disturbance. It is the seat of the greatest engineering enterprise in history ; an enterprise which is destined largely to revolutionize the commerce of the world and, more than any modern factor, to influ¬ ence the fortunes of the nations.” It is much to say all that truthfully of any country, big or little, but it can all be said of the Isthmus of Panama. Moreover, it is destined to be a better, busier, if not a 28 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY bigger, Isthmus in the future than ever it has been in the past. So exclusively has public attention been riveted upon that little strip of territory ten miles wide, called the Canal Zone, that the rest of Panama is as unknown as Patagonia, and yet it is by no means uninteresting. It is divided into the provinces of Colon, Panama, Darien, Chiriqui, and Yeragua, and it is said that the inhabitants of the two last named provinces are far better speci¬ mens of the native Panamanian than many of those one meets in the two large cities of the Canal provinces, Panama and Colon, into which the riffraff of the country largely drifts. Chiriqui is evidently the most interesting of these out¬ lying provinces, and the little capital, David (pronounced Dahveed), occupies a fine situation on the northwestern coast. Buried treasure always invests its burial-place with a romantic interest, and the province of Chiriqui has yielded up many wonderful curios which make the antiquarians’ eyes shine, and the adventurers’ mouths water, for many of these buried treasures were of pure gold. Some Indians, many years ago, were digging a drain (the first and last, it would seem, they ever troubled them¬ selves about) when, what was their amazement! to un¬ earth an image of solid gold. This whetted their appetite for treasure, if not their curiosity, and they speedily left off drain-digging for the far more exciting and profitable occupation of grave-digging, if we may call it so, for this image and other gold ornaments, which were speedily un¬ earthed, were found to be in the ancient graves of a for¬ gotten race that had left no other memorial. The graves in these ancient cemeteries were located by tapping on the earth as the native walked along. The welcome, hollow sound, which sometimes responded to THE SMALLEST REPUBLIC IN THE WORLD 29 the tap of his stick, told him that a grave was beneath his feet. Opening it, he would find that the grave had been lined with pieces of stone, and then cross pieces of stone laid on them. All sorts of things were found in these graves; stone and pottery implements, pieces of pure gold, copper and bone ornaments, and ornaments of gold gilt, “ a species of pinchbeck, which the natives call 1 tumbago.’ ” Small idols in stone were frequently found, but none more than eighteen inches high. The frog was a favourite orna¬ ment, often modelled in gold. u The largest frog of pure gold,” says Wolfred Nelson, the explorer, “ weighed eighteen ounces. . . . Another thing that seemed very strange to me was a kind of bell,” he continues. “It was of gold, and an exact counterpart of the old-time sleigh-bell. It had a handle, and within were little pieces of metal, and those little bells, when shaken, emitted quite a musical sound.” Perhaps these bells which Mr. Nelson found were meant for the ancient Panamanian baby, for the baby seems to have played as important a part in the domestic economy of that day as of this, since clay rattles, evidently meant for his use, were found in other little graves, as well as many whistles, which produced all sorts of notes. A pa¬ thetic interest to every father and mother attaches to these baby rattles from the prehistoric Panamanian graves. To-day, however, interest in the Isthmus does not centre in the wilderness of Chiriqui, with all its archeo¬ logical wealth, but in the two towns of Colon and Panama, which guard either end of the great Canal. They occupy a curious and anomalous position. They are the largest and most important cities of the Canal Zone, but they are not in the Canal Zone. They are un¬ der Panamanian law and guarded by Panamanian police, 30 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY while, across a line, no more visible but less imaginary than the equator, lie Cristobal at Colon, and Ancon at Panama, which are under United States law and guarded by United States police. People who send letters directed to “Panama, Canal Zone,” or “Colon, Canal Zone,” as many do, make a mistake scarcely different from one who might direct a letter to “Montreal, United States,” or “Boston, Canada.” The rights of the United States were defined by the treaty signed at Washington in 1903, as follows : “The Republic of Panama grants to the United States in per¬ petuity the use, occupation, and control of the land, and land under water, for the construction, maintenance, operation, sanitation and protection of said canal, of a width of ten miles, extending to the distance of five miles on each side of the centre line of the route of the canal to be constructed.” “The Republic of Panama grants to the United States all the rights, power, and authority, within the zone . . . which the United States would possess and exercise if it were the sovereign of the terri¬ tory ... to the entire exclusion of the exercise by the Republic of Panama of any such sovereign rights, power, and authority.” That is all definite and exact, and if it does not mean practical ownership of the zone, it is difficult to see what it does mean. Besides this, we have rights over any other land or water that may be “ necessary or convenient for the con¬ struction, maintenance, operation, sanitation and protec¬ tion, of said canal.” This gives us a right to quell in¬ surrections, to put down any serious disturbance, to enter every house in Colon or Panama, to inspect and reform its sanitary condition, and to do about anything that needs to be done. Because of this wholesome and necessary treaty, and THE SMALLEST REPUBLIC IN THE WORLD 31 by reason of this alone, it has been possible to make Panama and Colon as healthy as any tropical cities in the world. Col. W. C. Gorgas, the sanitary saviour of Cuba, has utterly banished yellow fever from the Isthmus also. He has sent his inspectors into every house. They have tipped over every old rainwater barrel, and filled up every old cistern. Colonel Gorgas has introduced good, wholesome aqueduct-water in the place of rainwater, has drained the city and provided it with sewers, has repaved most of the streets, and transformed Panama into as wholesome a city, from the sanitary point of view, as one would ask to live in. “How did the Panamanians stand this interference with their natural and vested rights in bad drainage, bad water, and mosquitoes?” I asked him. “ Oh ! they were just indifferent,” he replied. “ They didn’t care so long as we paid for the so-called improve¬ ments.” But very likely these Panamanians thought these Yankees were queer fellows to spend so much time and money in killing a few harmless mosquitoes. Doubtless Colouel Gorgas will go down to history as one of the great men of America. More than any other one man, he has made the canal possible, for, until he ban¬ ished the Stegomia mosquito from the Isthmus, even Uncle Sam’s treasury was scarcely deep enough or large enough to dig the Canal, to say nothing of the frightful loss of human life. The Stegomia would have defeated us, as it did the French. A most genial, kindly man is this chief sanitary officer of the Canal Zone, with a kindly twinkle in his eye and a generous word for every man. No one on the Isthmus is so honoured and beloved by all classes and conditions of men, for he cares for the moral and religious welfare of the people, as well as for their sanitary welfare. He 32 t THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY fights moral microbes as well as mosquitoes, malaria, and plague-carrying rats. All were delighted when Presi¬ dent Roosevelt, on his visit, hugged Colonel Gorgas openly on his arrival. It is no easy task to keep in order and keep at work the decidedly mixed crowd that flock to the Isthmus, many of whom are adventurers and soldiers of fortune. The police records for the month of January show the mixture of nationalities. In that month, 520 arrests were made by 168 police officers. Of this number, there were thirty-six Americans, three Antiguans, fourteen Bar¬ badians, one Belgian, eleven English, four Chileans, one Finlander, eight French, five Germans, three Irish, six¬ teen Italians, seventy-nine Jamaicans, forty Martinicans, three Mexicans, one Norwegian, thirty-eight Pana¬ manians, three Peruvians, one Scotsman, twenty-eight Spaniards, one Swede, seventeen St. Lucians, six Syrians, one Cuban, eleven Trinidadians, and eleven from other West India islands. While many of the Panamanians are shiftless and un¬ enterprising, these characteristics are not true of all. President Manuel Amador Guerrero is a man of educa¬ tion and refinement, with a piercing black eye and an eager, cordial way of grasping your hand, that makes you feel at home at once in his modest palace. He speaks English, as do other members of his cabinet. He is a doctor of medicine by profession, and though perhaps disappointed when he found out that I was nothing but a Doctor of Divinity, he did not show it, but gave me a most cordial reception. He is no longer young, but is still active and vigorous, and he belongs to an old and in¬ fluential family of Panama. Under his somewhat limited authority he is giving the country an excellent adminis¬ tration. Hon. H. C. Squires, the American minister to Panama, THE SMALLEST REPUBLIC IN THE WORLD 33 is naturally a man of large importance at this juncture, comprising, as he does, since Governor McGoon’s depar¬ ture for Cuba, some of the functions of Governor of the Canal Zone, as well as minister to Panama. His diplo¬ matic experience has well fitted him for this important post. In Cuba he occupied a similar position after the Spanish-American War, and in China, as Secretary of Legation before the Boxer troubles, and during the siege of Pekin, he won golden laurels, laurels which evidently fit his brow in this new situation. On the whole, Canal Zone matters seem to me to be in an exceedingly satisfactory condition. Of course, there are flaws and imperfections. In such a vast work it could hardly be otherwise. The state of morals is low in some sections of the Zone, doubtless, and many young men go to pieces, physically, mentally, and spiritually, through rum and loose living. The churches and other moral forces are not yet exerting the influence they should or will exert, but things are on the mend : the forces of law, order, and morality are growing stronger month by month, and the u smallest republic in the world” is by no means the least or worst. IV CONTRADICTIONS AND CONTRASTS IN THE CANAL ZONE The Point of View—Imagination Needed—Colon and Cristobal—The Pes¬ simist’s View—The Optimist’s Opinion—English-American Predic¬ tions—The Abolition of the Mosquito— Colon as a Health Resort— What the French Taught Us—De Lesseps’ Palaces- Lightning Transformation Scenes—How the Dirt Flies—Discarded French Ma¬ chinery—Lake-Making versus Ditch-Digging. O NE cannot be long in the Canal Zone without coming to the conclusion that it is a land of con¬ tradictions, and this characteristic accounts, doubtless, for the contradictory reports concerning the Isthmus that are current at Colon and Panama. One man can see nothing but misery, miasma, and mis¬ takes ; another nothing but health, happiness, and hope. It depends partly upon one’s point of view, but even more upon one’s habit of mind. One does not need to be much of a muck-raker to find plenty of muck (at least in the streets). On the other hand, if one lifts up his eyes, he sees that the stars are still shining over the Canal Zone, that the greatest canal in the world is becoming a tremendous fact, a fact that is growing more and more impressive day by day. If one has a moderate gift of imagination, and can pro¬ ject himself into the future a dozen years, or even less, the Isthmus becomes one of the most notable and interesting spots in all the world. If, on the other hand, he looks only at what he sees immediately around him, when he lands in Colon, he will declare it to be the most God-for¬ saken spot on the footstool of earth. These contradictions and contrasts greet one at every 34 CONTRASTS IN THE CANAL ZONE 35 turn, especially in Colon. De Lesseps’ palaces crown the wind-swept point of Cristobal, where balmy breezes sweep the shore fresh from the salt sea at all hours of the day and night, while, scarcely a stone’s throw away, over the line in Panamanian territory, are wretched huts in which no self-respecting American would shelter his swine. Two or three well-paved streets run the length of Colon, while a quarter of a block away the swamp, just being redeemed from the possession of the mosquito and the alligator, stops one’s progress. In fact, only a few days ago, as I write, a young saurian, six feet long, was caught in the very middle of the town, as he was seeking his ancestral swamp, which later on he found, though in the process of transformation. “ So much to do,” says the pessimist j “ so much al¬ ready done,” answers the optimist. “ A miserable, ma¬ larial ditch,” says the pessimist; u a magnificent canal in the making,” retorts-the optimist. I find that the views of residents and visitors are di¬ vided somewhat on national lines. The Britisher and the anglomaniac are still quite sure that the canal will come to no good end, or, to speak more exactly, though it may have two good ends, these ends will never be con¬ nected by a good middle channel. The English captain of the steamer that took us from New York, gravely in¬ formed me that “the canal would never be built.” In¬ deed, he was cocksure of his position, and was willing to defend it in a lengthy argument. Other Englishmen shake their heads gravely, and talk about “ colossal mis¬ take,” “ enormous graft,” “ the danger of the dam giving way and flooding Colon,” etc. The American, on the other hand, and many optimistic Britons whom I met, scout all this, and inform us cheerily that failure is im¬ possible, that enough has been done already to demon¬ strate the wisdom of the plans adopted, and that, in ten 36 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY years, or at the most twelve, the largest ships in the world will be steaming through the widest, deepest, and most important ditch ever dug by man. I cannot claim to be unprejudiced ; but if I could take the position of an impartial observer from another planet, from Mars, for instance, where they know so much about canals, I am confident that even then I should lean strongly towards the optimistic side. If one looks at the vastness of the undertaking, only yet in its infancy, he may get discouraged. If he con¬ siders what has already been accomplished, under adverse circumstances of climate and Congress, he is willing to believe that nothing is impossible. At any rate, “the pestilence that walketh in dark¬ ness ” and the fever that wasteth at noonday have been largely overcome, and that means that the battle is more than half-won. Two years ago, Colon was one of the worst death-holes in the world. Yellow fever, malaria, and often smallpox, stalked across the Isthmus. The undrained swamps which hemmed in Colon on all sides, and through which some of the streets ran, bred the pestilent mosquito by the billion, and any one who un¬ dertook to live there took his life in his hand. Now, by comparison, Colon might be called a health- resort. There has not been a well-defined case of 11 yellow Jack ” for nearly eighteen months, and not even a “ sus¬ pect ” for nine months. Malaria is steadily decreasing and becoming less virulent. The mosquito is foiled by the wire screens that meet him everywhere, even as he attempts to enter some of the humbler houses, while the ditches and drain-tiles are completing his discomfiture, and the one and only winged spirit of evil that carries these dread diseases is retiring farther and farther into his native swamps. Colon has by no means a bad climate. Every traveller CONTRASTS IN THE CANAL ZONE 37 is surprised at the coolness and freshness of the air in the dry season. The sea breeze blows all day long, and every day. Of course, it is hot in the sun and out of the breeze, as always in the tropics, but turn a corner, where the wind can strike you, stand under the shade of a towering cocoanut, and you are soon almost too cool, and you begin to say that the climate of the Isthmus has been outrageously maligned. To be sure, I am writing about the Isthmus as it is in the month of February, but several Americans who have lived here the year round have told me that they have suffered more from the heat in New York and Philadelphia than they ever did in Colon. So the problem in the Isthmus is not how to change the climate, which might prove a large contract even for Americans, but how to drain the swamps and outwit the mosquitoes, and this, as I have said, has already been largely accomplished. It was the pestiferous and elusive mosquito that defeated the French in their attempts to dig the canal, and even Napoleon’s armies could not have stood against them. There were corruption and graft and extravagance, almost beyond belief, during the French occupation ; but in spite of these adverse forces the canal would probably have been built before this if the mosquito had not been present. But the French did not know how to contend with him, and he slaughtered their forces of diggers by the ten thousand. Now that the health of the zone has been established and demonstrated, only colossal corruption and mismanagement can prevent the completion of the canal. In still other ways have we profited by the mistakes of the French. For instance, they built their great wooden palaces, administration buildings, and workmen’s houses on the ground, and these erections the ants attacked and soon demolished, or greatly weakened their foundations. The Americans have raised the old buildings, and built 38 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY the new ones, on brick or cement piles, which the ants cannot consume. The extravagance, too, of “the De Lesseps gang” is constantly before the eyes of every one in Colon, in the shape of the huge wooden palaces built for the elder De Lesseps and his son on their brief visits to the canal, as well as in the mountains of useless and absolutely unused machinery which were accumulated in Colon, and at which the teeth of time and rust have been gnawing for years, until now they are almost utterly destroyed. The palaces have been converted into offices for the Isthmian Canal Commission, and the monuments of useless ma¬ chinery and worthless stores ought to warn our officials how not to do it. After all, if we have received no material consideration for the forty millions of dollars we paid to the French company, the experience, and the warnings they left us of how not to do it, should be worth the money. The contrast of Colon and Panama of to-day and the Colon and Panama of even a year ago also gives rise to many of the contradictions which appear in the public press, and to the confusion of American ideas. We re¬ member the man who could not lie about Chicago, be¬ cause it grew so fast that it kept ahead of his prevarica¬ tions, do the best he could. So it is difficult to keep up with the changes in these Panamanian cities since Uncle Sam began to dig the canal in good earnest. “ Old residents,” who took up their abode in these cities a year ago, tell me that they hardly know the towns to-day as the same ones they remember twelve months ago. Then, the streets of Colon were a mass of reeking mud. Now, several are very respectably paved or macadamized, and on a dozen others workmen are engaged, so that every passing week makes a very decided difference in the highways of the city. The same is true of the build- CONTRASTS IN THE CANAL ZONE 39 ings which are going up in many sections of the native city of Colon. To-day a swamp, the next day a paved street, the day after a four story wooden building, is only a little exaggeration of the facts. Of course, many of these buildings are the flimsiest of jerry-built houses ; but they afford shelter, at an enormously high rent, until something better and more substantial can be provided, for a population in Colon that is growing by leaps and bounds. In Panama, the same improvements are being made, though Panama, being an older and more substantial city, does not show the same lightning transformation scenes. Yet here, scarcely eighteen months ago, there was not a paved street in all the city. The roads were full of pitfalls and stumbling-blocks, and whether a man was dead or alive, whether a mendicant or a millionaire, the cab driver “ rattled his bones over the stones,” like Hood’s pauper “whom nobody owns.” Now all the principal streets are paved with brick, and well-paved, too, and are far more comfortable for the foot or carriage passenger than are many of the streets of New York or Boston. All along the line of the railway from Colon to Pan¬ ama, neat villages have sprung up almost in a night. There are more boom towns in the forty-eight miles of that short railway than anywhere else in the world in the same distance. And these boom towns will continue to boom, for they have come to stay, at least until the canal is finished, since each one was planted to meet a distinct need by experienced and far-sighted officials. These sudden transformations account, as I have said, for many conflicting reports. Month before last, some visitor to the Canal Zone might have written with truth of a dismal, malaria-breeding swamp, fit only for the residence of mosquitoes and alligators. Month after next, 40 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY another visitor, writing of the same place, might tell of a thriving colony, of happy homes, of a free public school attended by diligent children, and of the local habitation of all kinds of progressive American ideas. And both writers would be telling the truth. Another thing that impresses the visitor to the Isthmus is the enormous scale on which everything is undertaken. It is one of the world’s biggest undertakings, and it is provided for on the largest scale. There is a steamer direct from New York, unloading great flat freight cars for carrying dirt from the cuts. A foreman is checking them off when they are swung up by the huge derrick, as he might check so many bunches of bananas. He tells us that they are a part of a consignment of a thousand flat cars which they cannot get fast enough from the States, though there were thousands of such cars on the Isthmus before. Portable houses, or material for houses are ordered by the hundred, stores of all kinds by the million dollars’ worth ; cranes, derricks, dredging machines, steam shovels that can dig away a small moun¬ tain in a month, are some of the equipment which one sees on every side. Everything is on the biggest and most powerful scale. The puny little French engines that one sees, some of them in use and some of them cast aside, look like children’s toys compared with the great moguls that are hauling the dirt away from places where it is not wanted and dumping it where it is wanted. On our journey from Colon to Panama, I passed gravel train after gravel train carrying the dirt to the dump. A friend told me that he stood at one station for three hours and, during that time, a long, loaded gravel train passed every ten minutes—all of which proves that canal dirt is flying, and flying at a tremendous rate already. Mr. Stevens, the exceedingly efficient and able engineer who then controlled the destiny of the canal, told me that A STEAM SHOVEL AT WORK ON THE CANAL. CULEBRA CUT. PART OF THE OLD FRENCH EXCAVATION. CONTRASTS IN THE CANAL ZONE 41 in February, 1907, the soil was being excavated at a rate twice as great as on the very busiest month of the French occupation. Their record month was 340,000 cubic yards of excavation. The month of February saw 700,000 cubic yards taken out, and in March 800,000 yards would be excavated, and even then the expected limit had not been reached by any means. Thirty thousand men are now employed in different capacities; 4,000 carpenters and builders ; 3,000 digging drains and laying pipes for sanitary purposes, etc., etc. These figures are difficult to comprehend, but when one goes up and down the line as I have done more than once, he sees that this enormous army of knights of the spade and hammer are actually at work and bringing things to pass. I have spoken of the worthless French machinery, dis¬ carded engines, boilers, derricks, etc., but the officials have been at pains to explain to me that this machinery was the best that could be obtained at the time. It has been superseded and rendered worthless, simply by the great advances in mechanical engineering and labour-sav¬ ing machinery within the last twenty years. Impossibil¬ ities have become possible within that period. The difficulty now is not to dig out the soil and rock, but to dispose of it afterwards ; this is, however, being overcome, though it means the laying of miles and miles of new track, and the vast enlargement of all the railway rolling stock. All these preparations and accomplishments impress the beholder with the tremendous energy and determina¬ tion with which the big job has been undertaken, and give him confidence that it will be successfully com¬ pleted. It seems as if the energy of our strenuous Presi¬ dent, to whom the canal project is so dear, had been in¬ fused into the managers and heads of departments all along the line. 42 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY As most of my readers know, the problem now is not to dig a wide, deep ditch, bnt to form two great lakes more than thirty miles long and eighty feet deep in the deepest part, and to build dams strong enough to retain this enormous body of water ; so that we must adjust our¬ selves to another contradiction of old-time ideas, and try to imagine that canal-making in the Zone is not so much ditch-digging as lake-making, with two comparatively short canals at either end. There is no more interesting place in the world to-day than the Canal Zone, there are few healthier places, there are good steamers to bring visitors here, and one good hotel at least at the Panama end where they may stay, and there is no reason why thousands of Americans should not come and see for themselves how Uncle Sam spends their money in making the canal, to which every man, woman and child in the Union will have to con¬ tribute at least three dollars before the first steamer goes through, and before the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are forever wedded. V THE REPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA The Two Front Doors of Colombia—A Remote Capital—"Why Colombia Interests North Americans—An Empire in Resources—How the Pope Divided Up South America—Nunez de Balboa and His Great Journey—The Chibchas and Their Civilization—A History of Revo¬ lutions—Bogota’s Civilization—The Separation of Panama. T HE Republic of Colombia is scarcely 11 the gem of the ocean/ 9 but she has interesting peculiar¬ ities that belong to none of the other South American states. She is the only republic of the ten that lies on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. She has two front doors, so to speak, one facing the north and the other the west, while the Isthmus of Panama, which used to be hers, divides her Atlantic and Pacific possessions. But, though Colombia has two ample front doors, the entry ways which lead from them to the chiefly inhabited portion of her house, to carry out the figure, are narrow and tortuous and almost impassable. For the coasts are often swampy and malarial, or else covered with such dense, matted and rain-soaked vegetation that it is diffi¬ cult to force a road through it to the high table-lands where lie Colombia’s fertile and thickly populated plains, and where her capital, Bogotfi, is situated. It is the only country in the world whose capital is so isolated that it can exert but slight political influence upon the outlying provinces, which, for much of her in¬ dependent history, have been in more or less open revolt. When, recently, Panama desired to separate from the mother country, and set up her own lares and penates, it was easier for the United States, England, or France to land marines to preserve order in the Canal Zone than 43 44 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOBTUNIT Y for Colombia to get the handful of troops at her disposal into the rebellious territory, though she had to send only from Cartagena, while if she had dispatched regiments overland from Bogotd, as was insanely proposed, it would have meant weeks of hopeless scrambling through an al¬ most impenetrable jungle. No wonder that she made a virtue of necessity, and let Panama u gang her ain gait.” Chiefly Colombia has been of interest to us in North America, not because of her vast extent, her undeveloped resources, her mines of gold, and her wealth of forests, but because in the division of the nations that little nar¬ row, but vastly important strip of territory called the Isthmus of Panama was included within her bounds. That coveted zone, ten miles wide, which will soon afford a waterway between the oceans, is really worth to the civilized world all the rest of Colombia, and indeed a dozen similar republics rolled in one. Colombia has stood in the way of progress and modern civilization. The canal will promote them, as no similar waterway in the world has ever done. Colombia has the superstition, the ignorance, and the priestcraft, of the middle ages. The canal will bring the latest ideas and inventions of the progressive west to the darkest and most backward sections of the east. And, doubtless, in these blessings Colombia will herself share, and will perhaps come to count that her best day when Panama slipped off her yoke, and made it possible for the United States to inaugurate the greatest piece of modern engineering which the world has yet seen. After all, Colombia is an empire in herself, if an unde¬ veloped empire,—she too is a part of the great continent of possibilities, even since stripped of Panama, she con¬ tains nearly 500,000 square miles and is one-sixth of the size of the United States outside of Alaska. A country as big as ten Pennsylvanias, full of undeveloped gold THE REPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA 45 mines, even though hundreds of millions of the precious metal have already been won within her borders ; a coun¬ try abounding in precious woods and tropical fruits; a country of fine river courses and lofty mountains and noble plateaux ; a country which possesses every variety of climate, from the intensely tropical to the mildly temper¬ ate, where white men can live as happily as in any portion of the world, cannot be without a future, however checkered her past has been. Colombia, like most South American countries, has been cursed by her religion and her politics. When the Pope divided all South America between Spain and Portugal, he gave what was not his to give ; but his edict made it possible for these powers to fasten upon one-sev¬ enth of the earth’s surface all that was reactionary and mediaeval in church and state, to keep these countries in bondage for three hundred years. The writhings and spasms of the last hundred years have broken the polit¬ ical yoke, and in some measure the religious yoke, but there have been as yet in Colombia no years of well- ordered freedom which could bring peace and plenty to this distracted country. The early history of Colombia is one of the most inter¬ esting of all the South American republics. The great Columbus landed on her shores on his third voyage. Cartagena, on the Atlantic coast, is the oldest fortress in all America. The illustrious Balboa started from one of her ports on his famous expedition which nearly multi¬ plied by two the world’s knowledge of geography. It was an epoch-making journey,—that which Nunez de Balboa made into the interior from the Atlantic coast in 1511,—a very short journey, to be sure, and without any immediate results, but there he learned from an Indian chief that only twoscore miles farther south was a great sea on whose coast dwelt great and rich nations. 46 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Two years later, starting from Antigua, he headed an expedition to see whether or not the Indian chief was telling the truth. Engaged in that expedition was the wonderful general, administrator, hero and scoundrel, Francisco Pizarro. The Spaniards pushed their way through the malarial swamps and the almost impenetrable jungles, until, at last, they approached a line of hills from which the Indians told them they could see the un¬ discovered ocean. Balboa hurried on and outstripped his men, and was the first to feast his eyes upon the great and wide ocean, the Pacific j but Pizarro and Alonzo Martin rushed for the water, and were the first to allow the cool waves to lave their tired feet. What a moment that was in the history of the world ! The discovery meant Peru and the whole west South American coast; it meant California and the northwest, and eventually China and Japan, added to our geograph¬ ical knowledge. It meant immense additions to the do¬ main and wealth of Spain. It meant cruelties intoler¬ able and bloodshed inconceivable. It meant revolution and counter-revolution, and political blasting and mil¬ dew. All this in four hundred years. What it may mean of regeneration and reconstruction and upbuilding and civilization, the next four hundred years will tell; but I have the largest hopes, for South America has turned the lowest corner of her downward road some dec¬ ades ago, and is on the up grade. On this road may her progress never be stayed ! Colombia, however, has shared but little as yet in this upward progress, by reason in part of her difficult geo¬ graphical position, which has placed her temperate and most largely peopled section so far in the interior and made it so inaccessible to the coast. l ' Weeks of the most difficult journeying are required to get to the sea- coast from Bogota, or to any of the other states of SOME NATIVE PANAMANIANS. THE REPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA 47 Colombia, and Panama might as well be on the other side of the globe, so far as practical communication goes,” says Mr. Dawson. Very early in her history, the Spaniards, lured on by gold, made their way to the healthful table-lands in the interior, and there Quesada, their leader, established his capital on the site of the ancient Chibcha city. The Chibchas were a large nation of a very considerable de¬ gree of civilization. They made cotton cloth, mined the precious metals and emeralds, used money as a circulat¬ ing medium ; lived in houses ; built splendid temples ; es¬ tablished a very effective form of government,—in fact, in many lines of civilization, were scarcely inferior to the Incas or Aztecs. But they had no military organization or genius, and 200 Spaniards soon conquered them and reduced them to vassalage. The next three centuries were centuries of rapacity and oppression, of bloodshed and revolt and stern reprisals. We cannot follow their wearisome years in detail. At last, the people awoke to a sense of their rights and their wrongs. The ferment of the French Revolution began to work in far-off and backward Colombia. The troubles of Spain in the Napoleonic wars gave the people their opportunity, and in 1808 the series of revolts began which, at last, under Bolivar, gave Colombia and the other republics their so-called freedom, or, at least, transferred the location of their tyrants from Spain to their own shores, and gave them “grafters” of their own nation, instead of foreign oppressors, to batten on the national necessities. The history of the last hundred years has been a his¬ tory of revolutions, new constitutions, and the constant swinging of the pendulum from extreme republicanism to dictatorship, and back again, but often, at both ex¬ tremes, with a set of rapacious and corrupt rulers in 48 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY power. Presidents and cabinet officers, who have been personally honest and who have desired better things for Colombia, have been handicapped by lack of power to inaugurate reforms, by the inertness of the people, and by the desperate condition of the finances of the country. Bolivar plunged the country hopelessly in debt at the very beginning of her independent national life, by reck¬ lessly borrowing money for his mercenary troops and for his navy. Dishonesty and continued reckless borrowing increased this debt, until it amounted to thirty-five mil¬ lions of dollars. After the separation of Venezuela and Ecuador from Colombia, each country nominally assumed its proportionate part of the debt, which, in Colombia’s case, has been repeatedly scaled down, and even the in¬ terest has scarcely been paid. Yet, in spite of debts, bad government, and revolutions, Colombia remains a state great in territory and enor¬ mously rich in natural products. The gold it contains alone would make it rich, if intelligently mined and con¬ served. Along the river banks it is said you find u pay dirt” everywhere, and cannot wash the soil of these banks at any point without finding u colour.” Since the Spanish conquest, more than three-quarters of a billion dollars’ worth of the yellow metal have been taken out of Colombia, and the mines are still far from being ex¬ hausted. Bogotd, the capital, is a city of 120,000 inhabitants, and is the literary and intellectual, as well as the polit¬ ical centre of the country. It has an American-installed street railway and system of electric lights, and a library of 50,000 volumes. The Spanish spoken in Bogotd is said to be particularly pure, and she has contributed more perhaps to the literature of South America than any other one centre. The event in Colombian history of most interest to Amer- THE EEPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA 49 ican readers was the last revolt of Panama, already al¬ luded to, which separated that province from the rest of Colombia, and made it possible for the United States to dig the great canal. I have called it “ the last revolt,” for Panama has been in a chronic state of secession for hundreds of years. At times her connection with far-off and inaccessible Bogota was merely nominal; at other times she was held in absolute and rasping vassalage, which galled her spirits and tempted her to constant ef¬ forts to break away from Colombia. In 1885 u the very delegates who nominally represented her in the constitutional convention were residents of Bogota, appointed by President Nunez j military rule be¬ came a permanent thing on the Isthmus; all officials were strangers sent from the Andean plateau; and the million dollars of taxes wrung each year from the people of Panama were spent on maintaining the soldiers who kept them in subjection.” One of the periodical revolts of Panama occurred in 1895, but it was premature and ill-managed, and was speedily put down by the Colombian troops. A much more formidable rebellion broke out in 1899 and resulted in a three years’ civil war, in which 30,000 men were slain. No wonder then that the Panamanians were all ready to take advantage of the hitch in negotiations be¬ tween the United States and the Colombian governments, when the corrupt officials at Bogota held out for more than the ten million dollars offered for the canal rights, and threatened to hinder, if not prevent, the eventual building of the canal through Panama. Then came Panama’s golden opportunity, and she seized it by declaring her independence. The new re¬ public of Panama was proclaimed November 3, 1903. All the resident inhabitants were practically in favour of the new republic, whose interests were entirely bound up 50 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY with the canal. The prompt recognition of Panama by the United States, ten days later, and by France fifteen days later, prevented Colombia from repeating the bloody scenes of 1899-1902, and made it possible to build the canal, which will vastly promote the progress, unifica¬ tion and civilization of the world. Colombia lost her opportunity and deserved to do so. The United States never acted more justly or righteously, in view of the rights of Panama or her own rights, or of the larger needs of mankind, than in recognizing the new republic and foiling the designs of a selfish oligarchy in Bogota. VI ECUADOR, THE REPUBLIC OF THE EQUATOR A Country Named for a Parallel of Latitude—Interesting Features of Ecuador—The Guayas River—Guayaquil, Ecuador’s Capital—Its Great Trade—Ecuador’s Table-Land—Her Ancient Kings—The Com¬ ing of Pizarro—The Spanish Rule—Ecuador’s Later Career—Some of Her Presidents—Her Many Revolutions—An American Railway to Quito—The Dawning of a Better Day. E CUADOR is the only country in the world named for an imaginary line, a parallel of latitude. But it is an appropriate name, for the equator bisects it, and it lies on both sides of the zero line of lati¬ tude, though largely to the south, with its capital, Quito, nearly on the line itself. If it is named for an imaginary line, it is by no means an imaginary country, but a very substantial and a very rich land, which might develop enormously if only the curse of priestcraft and the twin curse of petty politics were removed. Many interesting features distinguish Ecuador from her sister and neighbouring republics. On the way south it is the last of the well-watered countries on the west coast. The line between Ecuador and Peru is prac¬ tically the line between the rain belt and the arid region which is so characteristic of most of the Pacific coast of South America, where the cold Antarctic current on its way north prevents the precipitation of moisture in the form of rain. On the coast of Ecuador, on the contrary, the people enjoy too much, rather than too little rain, and Guayaquil, the chief port, is one of the wettest cities in the world, while the country immediately behind it is often under water during the rainy season. 51 52 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY The high table-lands of the interior are, on the whole, the best parts of Ecuador, enjoying a temperate and springlike climate, where people can live in comfort even on the equator, the year around. The sail up the Guayas, Ecuador’s great river, is most enjoyable. At its mouth it widens out into a vast bay sixty miles across, at the entrance to which is the island of Puno, where Pizarro landed to fit out his expedition for the conquest of Peru. For forty miles up this great river, the largest on the western coast of South America, we steam, before we reach Guayaquil. The heavily- wooded shores on either side always are kept green by the over-abundant rains. Here and there the forests give place to verdant meadows that pasture hundreds of cattle, and that look from the distance like the polders of Holland. As I write these words I am sitting on a steamer’s deck detained for days by quarantine regulations three miles below the city of Guayaquil which looks imposing and picturesque in the distance, with the twin white turrets of its churches and its red-tiled houses climbing two com¬ manding green hills which are surmounted by forts. Be¬ tween these hills nestles a great hospital, the most neces¬ sary building in all the city, for Guayaquil is a notoriously unhealthy place. Yellow fever is almost always epidemic, and no wonder. “I have visited many of the death- holes of the world,” says a globe traveller, “but I have yet to find one whose unsanitary condition equals that of Guayaquil.” My own experience in many lands justifies this sweep¬ ing condemnation, and yet Guayaquil might easily be made as healthy as Havana or Panama, if only a Colonel Waring or a Colonel Gorgas could take hold of it. It could readily be drained, and, even without sewerage, the yellow fever could be stamped out, as ECUADOR 53 Colonel Gorgas, who has saved Cuba and the Isthmus from the pest, told me, if only the people would cover their rain-water barrels with mosquito-proof cloth, and see that no holes got in the cloth,—an almost impossible condition to enforce upon 20,000 rain-water barrels where mosquitoes find congenial breeding-places. If Guayaquil looks picturesque from a distance, it must be confessed that it is largely distance that lends enchant¬ ment to the view, and a near approach is most disillusion¬ ing. Its streets are slimy and dirty, its houses unsub¬ stantial in appearance but suitable to the earthquake belt, for they are built of timbers and bamboo laths so joined together, that, even in a severe quake they sway and creak but do not tumble down. Nevertheless this unsubstantial and unsanitary city has a large and growing trade. More than ten millions of dollars’ worth of imports yearly enter Guayaquil from Europe and the United States, and there is an almost equally large export trade in coffee, hides, cocoa and rubber, for there are few richer coasts in all North and South America than the back country of Guayaquil. As I write, vast quantities of water weeds, sensitive plants, orchids and grasses, and now and then a big log go floating by our steamer, borne on the swift current to the sea. When the tide turns some of these floating islands will drift back again, emblematic of the trade that floats back and forth from all the world through the great Guayas estuary. But Guayaquil, though the chief port of the country, is by no means Ecuador, or the most interesting part of Ecuador, for that lies back on the table-lands, a hundred miles from the coast. This has always been the chief centre of population and has always contained the po¬ litical capital of the country. Quito is half as high again as Denver, and, from its eyrie, a mile and a-half in the 54 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY air, looks down on the capital of every other country in the world except that of the sister republic of Bolivia. Two lines of high mountains stretch through the table¬ lands of Ecuador from north to south, and between these lies a comparatively level plateau some forty miles in width, and from six thousand to ten thousand feet or more above the sea. This table-land is subdivided by other ranges of hills running east and west, called rendos or knots, that cut the plateau into eight great sections, so that the table-lands of Ecuador have been compared to a huge ladder, of which the rendos are the rungs and the two ranges of Andes the side pieces. Quito lies in the second of the eight sub-plateaux, counting from the north, and is thus much nearer to Bogota, the capital of Co¬ lombia, than to Lima, the capital of the sister republic on the south. All this vast and temperate plateau, where Indian corn and the potato were indigenous, and where wheat and barley, introduced from Europe, flourish, was occupied in the days before the Spanish conquest by the Caras, a nation much like the Incas, but less warlike and less well disciplined. Their civilization, however, was of a similar character. They possessed large cities, carried agri¬ culture to a high degree of perfection, and for 400 years had been governed by a line of kings, called Shiris. The fourteenth Shiri, Hualcopo, became king in 1430, and was the last but one of the native Caras who ruled this interesting race, for during his reign the Incas from the south made war upon them, and in the reign of his son Cacha, the fifteenth and last Shiri, the conquest of the Incas was completed and the Shiri was slain. History now moves rapidly in the Quito empire. Huaina Capac, the Great, the Inca general who finally conquered the Caras, settled down in his conquered prov¬ inces, married the daughter of the last Shiri, and ruled ECUADOR 55 as his legitimate successor. But the rule of the Incas in Ecuador was not to be a long one, for the second Inca emperor, Atahuallpa, began to reign in 1525, a fateful period for Ecuador and Peru, for Caras and Incas alike, since, even then, the Spaniards were beginning to make their cruel and bloodthirsty way down the west coast of South America. In 1524 the notorious Pizarro made his first unsuccess¬ ful trip from Panama in a small vessel which had been built by Balboa. But his resources were inadequate, and he soon put back to Panama. The next year, in 1525, the very year that Atahuallpa began to reign in Ecuador, Pizarro headed a larger expedition and sailed down the coast of Colombia, almost reaching the northern border of Ecuador. Here he found some natives coming north on a great seagoing raft laden with cloth, silver work, metal mirrors and other goods. All these things whetted the avaricious appetite of Pizarro, but he was not yet strong enough to undertake the conquest of these highly civilized races of which the raftsmen told him, and again he paused, sending his lieutenant, Almagro, back for a larger force. There is a rare plot for an old Greek tragedy in the fateful way in which Inca and Spaniard, unknown to each other, were coming each to meet the other, to settle very soon in bloody conflict the destiny of a continent. The Inca from the south had overwhelmed the Caras, the Spaniard from the north was coming down to overwhelm the Inca and wrest from him his hard-won victory. While Pizarro was waiting for reinforcements and making his first ineffectual voyages, Atahuallpa, the Inca conqueror of Ecuador, and his brother Huascar, who had been given the southern kingdom of Peru, were wag¬ ing a sanguine, fratricidal war, weakening their own forces, and, unconsciously preparing the way for the 56 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY easier conquest of the Spaniard. In this seven years’ war Atahuallpa, his troops under the command of the famous general Quizquiz, was completely successful, his brother Huascar was captured, and the emperor started south for Cajamarca, just beyond the Ecuadorian border, to assume rule over the whole Inca empire, when he heard a startling piece of news. If he could have understood its full significance it would have seemed still more startling. It was no other than that 200 men with pale faces and huge animals of which they sometimes seemed to form a part, and with tubes in their hands that belched out fire and death, had landed on his shores, and were making their way inland. The treacherous capture and dastardly murder of Atahuallpa belong to the history of Peru rather than that of Ecuador, and we need not linger over the story here longer than to say that the strategy and magnificent generalship of the perfidious Pizarro were entirely suc¬ cessful, and the Spanish yoke was firmly fastened on the necks of the Ecuadorians for nearly 300 years. The Spanish rule is a monotonous tale of oppression, intrigue and petty disputes among the conquerors them¬ selves. The people of Ecuador were practically en¬ slaved, though as this is largely an agricultural country, the common people suffered less from their conquerors than the poor natives of Peru, who were forced to make the daily tale of bricks without straw, and to furnish gold and silver to satisfy the rapacious cupidity of their conquerors. The troubles of Spain in the early part of the nine¬ teenth century, and the rise of Bolivar of Venezuela as a commanding figure, gave the people of Ecuador their opportunity for independence, which they were not slow to embrace, and after many defeats and set-backs they finally achieved it under General Sucr6, the great patriot ECUADOR 57 general, in a decisive battle fought on the 24th of May, 1822. At first, and for a few years, Ecuador was incorporated into the Republic of Colombia, but the union was a forced and distasteful one, and in 1835 under her able President Rocafuerte, she achieved a separate national existence, which in spite of many revolutions and counter revolu¬ tions, she has maintained ever since. There have been few outstanding names in Ecuador’s modern history that the world cares to preserve. Besides President Rocafuerte, Flores, a capable but unscrupulous general who made himself president and plunged the country into unnecessary war, may be mentioned, and President Moreno who strove hard and with partial suc¬ cess to bring order out of chaos in the decade and a half between 1860 and 1875. In the latter year, Moreno, who was still in power, was deliberately assassinated in the public square of Quito. Since then it has been the old monotonous story of civil war and usurpation and dictatorship and plots and counter plots. The last ten years seem to give promise of better things, and to show that Ecuador like her sister republics, to the south, is getting tired of revolutions which result in no beneficent evolution. She is still, however, one of the most backward of the South Ameri¬ can states, in spite of her magnificent resources and splendid situation in the rain belt of the continent, and with her unequalled harbour of Guayaquil from which to ship her products to all the world. Because the Ecuadorians have given more attention to politics than to commerce, to revolutionary cabals than to steady industry, this country, as large as half a dozen New Englands, does not produce as much wealth as a single second class New England city. In its cocoa alone it has a source of inexhaustible riches. Of this staple, 58 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY Ecuador produces more than any other country, while rubber, sugar cane, tropical fruits of all kinds and beautiful woods of every sort, add to her exportable wealth. But the better day is dawning. American enterprise is building a railway from Guayaquil to Quito, which will soon be completed, and will connect this ancient and historic city of the Incas and the Caras with the outside world upon which in her sleepy isolation and from her lofty height she has so long looked down. Then Quito will no longer be u a hundred years behind the moon,” as the people of Guayaquil say. The fresh breezes of modern civilization, too, will doubtless blow away some of the cobwebs of priestcraft and superstition which must be dissipated before Ecuador can take her rightful place among the advanced nations of the world. Now Quito is sometimes called “the little mother of the Pope” and every fourth person you meet, it is said, is a priest or a nun or an ecclesiastic of some sort. The railroad is a great civilizer. The Bible is making its way through the persistent efforts of the colporteurs of the British and Foreign Bible Society into the moun¬ tain fastnesses. The Protestant missionary will go with the Protestant Bible, and Ecuador will yet be redeemed from its four centuries of oppression, revolution and un¬ rest. VII CURIOSITIES OF TRAVEL ON THE WEST COAST The Steamers, the Cargoes, the People—Distances and Fares—Comfort¬ able Cabins—A Floating Market—Cows, Pigs and Fowls—From Hot to Cold—From Wet to Dry—What the Natives Have to Sell—Panama Hats—Birds Above and Fish Below—An Entertaining Journey for a Naturalist. T RAVELLING on the west coast of South America is different in many respects from travelling in any other part of the world. The steamers are different; the cargo is different j the people are different; the food is ^different—but that is another story. The two principal lines, the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, a British concern, and a line belonging to the Chileans, have pooled their issues, and eliminated com¬ petition, so that the usual results have followed—high fares, poor fare, and slow transit. The distance between Panama and Valparaiso is con¬ siderably less than that between New York and Liver¬ pool ; but the time consumed in making the journey is four times as great, and the ticket costs nearly four times as much. The fare from Panama to Guayaquil is $99, for a dis¬ tance less than eight hundred miles, or more than twelve cents a mile. To Valparaiso the fare is $220, or eight cents a mile, while the average rate for steamer travel is not more than two or three cents a mile. To be sure, by buying a round-trip ticket from New York back to New York the fares can be averaged up so as 59 60 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUmTY to make the cost tolerably reasonable; but before any con¬ siderable passenger traffic can be expected on the west coast of South America the local fares must be reduced to much lower figures. When one considers what he gets for his money, the disproportion in price seems still more unreasonable, for food which would hardly be served to third-class pas¬ sengers on Atlantic steamers, is the best that the first- class passengers on the west coast can expect. Stale bread ; stale butter that runs like salve and is strong enough, according to the ancient witticism, to “go alone and speak for itself” ; a condensed abomina¬ tion instead of milk fresh from the cow ; a limited supply of ice, which lasts only half way down the coast; a family ice-chest for a large steamer, instead of a cold- storage room; leathery meat and antiquated, skinny chickens, these are some of the things that people who pay twelve cents a mile for their passage money must ex¬ pect to get for it on the west coast. But this is the disagreeable side, which we will dispose of first, and then turn to the silver side of the cloud, for travelling certainly has such a side, even on the west coast of South America. The boats are built for hot weather, and the staterooms are large and airy, and usually not too full, until one nears Valparaiso when they are often scandalously over¬ crowded. To be sure, they often have occupants that are not put down on the passenger list, occupants that would put an American housewife to shame ; and it is also true that in some ports, especially Guayaquil, the mosquitoes are almost unbearable, and no screens are furnished for window or bed. But travellers must expect to be troubled with “such small deer” in tropical countries. On the whole, the cabins are comfortable and clean, the officers friendly and obliging, and the decks roomy, TRAVELS ON THE WEST COAST 61 and if the passenger makes up his mind to the heat and the inevitable discomforts of the tropics, he can pass a fairly cheerful four weeks on the voyage from Panama to Valparaiso. Our steamer itself is a constant source of interest that never palls. Most steamers are built to carry freight and passengers only; the Guatemala , like the other west- coast craft, besides being a common carrier of freight and passengers, is a floating market, a floating hennery, a floating stockyard, and slaughter-house, and a floating aviary as well. Go to the upper deck, and you will hear the crowing of cocks, the cackling of hens, and the quacking of ducks, while the occasional gobble of a turkey will lend variety to the chorus. Go below, and you will hear the lowing of cows and the grunting of pigs; and on certain days the butcher will take the lives of some of these innocents, and will truss them up on the deck below, just under your state¬ room, and leave them hanging there to cool for hours, in plain sight of all the passengers. The aviary department of our ship is always an inter¬ esting one, for the feathered tribe is represented in great variety. Parrots and paroquets are in the majority, for they are found everywhere along these shores, and are brought for sale on board in large numbers by the natives. Many passengers yield to their blandishments, and carry home a parrot or two. Besides, we carry other birds in large numbers ; canaries from Chile, redbirds from Peru, and an occasional long-legged bird something like a crane that hops solemnly along the deck, inviting the passengers to scratch the back of its neck, for which attention it seems genuinely grateful. The most interesting feature of our steamer is the travelling market, which I venture to think, on the 62 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY scale on which it is here developed, is peculiar to the west coast of South America. The after part of our ship has large deck space running from rail to rail, clear across the ship on two decks, which at first seemed to me an admirable place for the passengers to enjoy a prom¬ enade. I soon found, however, that it was not for us, but for the traders to whom the space had been sold at a high price. Soon after leaving Panama these traders began to divide it up into sections, with rough boards, and at Guayaquil they took on board thousands of bunches of bananas, and hundreds of thousands of oranges, and tons of mangoes, limes and green vegetables, which they ex¬ pected to sell to the inhabitants of the twenty or more towns at which the steamer will stop on its way to Valparaiso. Soon after leaving Guayaquil, where rain falls in tor¬ rents, where everything is green and all tropical plants grow in lush luxuriance, we come to the dry belt of South America, where practically it never rains. At noon of one day the ship will steam out of the bay of Guayaquil in a pouring tropical shower, during which, perhaps, an inch of rain will fall in an hour. At mid¬ night of the same day it will pass a point on the Peruvian shore close to the Ecuadorian border where it has not rained for sixteen years and may not rain for sixteen years to come. This sudden transition is explained by some as due to the cold Antarctic current, which here and for hundreds of miles south strikes the coast of South America, pre¬ venting the formation of moisture by congealing the air. The result, which naturally comes with the absence of rain and the impossibility of irrigation, is the complete lack of vegetation ; and every orange and banana, every potato and plantain and cabbage, must be brought from TRAVELS ON THE WEST COAST 63 the interior, or else down the coast in these trading- steamers. This accounts for the large market on our ship and for the thriving business in fruit and vegetables which our floating traders carry on. But the trading is not altogether a one-sided affair. The people from the shore have something to sell, though it must be confessed it is often a rather pitiable little assortment of goods. There is a woman with a mangy parrot tied to her by a string about the parrot’s neck, which every now and then brings the poor bird up with a sudden jerk when he wanders a little too far. There is another with a small collection of mother-of- pearl shells, which she offers to us for ten times their real value. A man with a monkey near by is showing off his tricks, while another one offers us an ant-eater, a gentle little creature with appealing eyes, an extraordinarily long nose, and a large bump of curiosity. He wanders about, poking his nose into unexplored corners so far as his tether will allow him to go. This ant-eater is about the size of a small cat, and has a long ringed tail, some¬ thing like an opossum’s. But the chief articles of sale which merchants from the shore have to offer in Ecuador and northern Peru are Panama hats, which, by the way, are not made in Panama, and cannot be bought in Panama except at ex¬ travagant prices. But in Guayaquil, and Payta, the first large town in Peru on the north, are the native homes of the Panama hats, and here the hatters swarm on board with hats of all sizes and prices. But do not think you can pick up a bargain for a few dimes. “Genuine Panamas” may be sold in the New York or Chicago stores for two dollars apiece ; but, when you get to Guayaquil, where they are made, you will find that hats of any quality will cost from ten dollars to two 64 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY hundred dollars in silver, or half as much in gold, ac¬ cording to the fineness of the material and the quality of the u weave. ” The average price for a fine hat is perhaps thirty dol¬ lars in silver, but three times that sum is asked for hats of extraordinary texture. We are told that they are woven by hand under water, and that some of the finest kinds represent a year’s labour. For weary days and nights after leaving the shores of Ecuador we steam by unbroken deserts, the white waves breaking on whitish-gray rocks, while gaunt, dry, tree¬ less hills rise behind the cliffs. Gulls and graceful alba¬ trosses follow our ship, and occasional porpoises come lunging at us from the sea, or lead our course, by rang¬ ing themselves like so many horses at our prow, and swimming without any apparent effort, for miles, within a few feet of our iron keel, always keeping at the same distance. As we approach the Guano islands animal life of all kinds increases at a wonderful rate. The sea swarms with fish, porpoises, seals and sea lions. Clouds of birds, ducks, divers, gulls, loons, fill the air, occasionally dark¬ ening the sun, and extending in unbroken columns through the air for miles. Sometimes they go fishing with one accord, and millions of them swoop down upon their unsuspecting finny prey, which are breaking the water in every direction, while the islands near by are black with the birds that have gorged themselves until they can eat no more. It is a most entrancing journey for a student of natural history. At the various stopping-places on this harbourless coast swarthy Spanish-speaking passengers in gay attire, the men affecting particularly gaudy neckties and waist¬ coats, join our ship; and thus, with the traders in the TEAVELS ON THE WEST COAST 65 rear, our fellow passengers on the forward deck, the gulls and albatrosses in the air, and the porpoises in the sea, the tedium of the long voyage is mitigated, as we slowly make our way towards the tropic of Capricorn. VIII THE EMPIRE OF THE INCAS k Fascinating History—The Vast Territory of the Incas—Their Origin— Humboldt’s Impression of the Andes—Nature in Her Sterner As¬ pects—The Irrigation Works of the Incas—Their Beautiful Fabrics— Their Wonderful Buildings—The Magnificent Ruins of Cuzco—The Luxurious Gardens of the Emperors—The Common People—Social¬ ism Tempered with Despotism—The Incas and the Japanese—The Great Temple at Cuzco—Contrasts and Contradictions. T HE ancient history of Peru is so unique and fas¬ cinating that in any book dealing with South America it deserves a chapter to itself. Indeed, modern South America can scarcely be understood with¬ out reference to the great race which so long dominated its western coast, and whose descendants to-day far out¬ number all the other races put together. The empire of the Incas stretched along the Pacific coast for nearly 3,000 miles, embracing the territory to¬ day claimed by Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and a part of the Argentine republic. Its breadth was more inde¬ terminate, for its eastern border straggled off into the un¬ explored Amazonian regions, occupied by savage races, which were never thoroughly subdued by the Incas. 1 The origin of the Incas, like that of most great conquer¬ ing races, is lost in the shadows of antiquity, and in order to make their origin and ancestors more impressive, they themselves ascribed the beginnings of their nation to the gods from whom their rulers had descended in unbroken succession. Without going into their fantastic my- 1 The word Inca is here employed, according to the common usage, as referring to the Peruvian people, through strictly speaking it applies only to their rulers. 66 THE THRONE OF THE ANCIENT INCAS. MODERN DESCENDANTS OF INCAS. THE EMPIEE OF THE INCAS 67 thology it is sufficient for us to know that at the time of the Spanish conquest they had defeated the almost equally civilized nations of the north, the Caras, who lived on the table-lands of Ecuador, and were monarchs of all they surveyed, from the second degree north of the equator to the thirty-seventh degree south. They were the Eoman conquerors of the new world. Their world was a limited one, like that of the Eomans, but all that they knew was theirs, and it was no mean empire. “So immense is the scale on which nature works in these regions,” says Humboldt, “that it is only when viewed from a great distance that the spectator can in any degree comprehend the relation of the several parts to the stupendous whole. Few of the works of Nature indeed are calculated to produce impressions of higher sublimity than the aspect of this coast, as it is gradually unfolded to the eye of the mariner sailing on the distant waters of the Pacific ; where mountain is seen to rise above mountain, and Chimborazo, with its glorious canopy of snow, glittering far above the cloud crowns the whole as with a celestial diadem.’’ Yet, as the modern traveller views the coast of the Incas, while Humboldt’s glowing words are all true of the magnificent scenery, no country could seem to be less fitted for the development of a great agricultural nation, such as the Peruvians preeminently were. Barren league succeeds barren league, from a point just south of the equator for thousands of miles farther south. Dreary, brown, sunburned shores, where it practically never rains, rise gradually to bare, forbidding, inaccessible peaks a few miles from the shore. Travelling hills of sand sweep over the plains of the interior swallowing up highways and cultivated fields alike, and it would seem that a more inhospitable coast was never picked out for the abode of man. 68 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Nevertheless, as the hardiest races have always flour¬ ished where nature presents the unkindest obstacles, as old England and New England and Holland and Scan¬ dinavia prove, so ancient Peru was no exception to the rule, and here, on her plateaux, was developed a race, the most wonderful of modern times, which had never come in contact with European civilization. Their irri¬ gated gardens, their terraced rice-fields, their vast aque¬ ducts, their splendid roads, their great cities and magnif¬ icent temples, seem all the more wonderful when we con¬ sider the obstacles they had to overcome in developing their empire. Long before any modern government thought of insti¬ tuting a department of agriculture, the Incas had theirs organized. Five hundred years before our government turned its attention seriously to irrigating our desert land, the Incas had built great sluices, and aqueducts of stone slabs neatly fitted together, one of which was nearly five hundred miles in length, and conveyed water for millions of acres of thirsty ground along all its course. In another case a solid mountain was tunnelled through to provide for the overflow of a lake that sometimes inun¬ dated its shores, thus using the dangerous surplus water for desert land that needed it. The honour put upon agricultural pursuits was most extraordinary, for they were recognized, as they truly are, as at the basis of all national prosperity. At one of the great annual festivals the Inca himself, the mighty potentate of this vast empire, the descendant of the gods, attended by his court in royal state, and in the presence of a vast concourse of people, turned up the earth with a golden plow, “thus consecrating the occupation of the husbandman, as one worthy to be followed by the Chil¬ dren of the Sun.” If agriculture was the basis of their civilization, the THE EMPIEE OF THE INCAS 69 Peruvians did not despise manufactures, in which they were almost equally proficient, though their wants were simple and the variety of their manufactures few, as com¬ pared with those of our own more complicated modern life. But what they did manufacture was often made with an exquisite fineness which would put to shame our machine-made shoddy. Their vicufias, or long-wooled sheep, afforded a splen¬ did staple for the finest cloth, which often had almost the fineness and lustre of silk, while the colours with which they dyed their cloth were the despair of European fac¬ tories. In the molding of clay into beautiful and fan¬ tastic pottery, in the polishing of metal and stone mir¬ rors, the fashioning of copper utensils and tools, and the making of gold and silver ornaments, the ancient Peru¬ vians were most expert. Their weapons were bows and arrows, spears and swords, and so perfect were they in tempering copper, mixed with a small amount of tin (a lost art, and one never rediscovered by Europeans) that their tools had a razor edge scarcely surpassed by the finest modern steel, though they knew nothing of iron or its products. But it is when we come to their vast and substantial buildings that we are most amazed. How a primitive race without iron tools, without modern quarrying and hoisting machinery, could have constructed such cities, such palaces and such temples, is almost beyond explana¬ tion. Their ruins rank with the pyramids and the ruins of Karnac for grandeur and extent. The city of Cuzco, the capital of the empire, occupied a commanding situa¬ tion on the high plateau where all their larger cities were built. It was defended by a great fortress on a rugged eminence to the north of the city, as well situated and as strongly defended, apparently, as the castle of Edinburgh. This fortress was connected by underground passages 70 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY with the city and the palaces of the Incas, whither the rulers and the people could escape in time of siege. The fortress and galleries were built of solid blocks of stone, so nicely adjusted that though no cement was used it was “impossible to introduce even the blade of a knife between them.” These stones were measured by an ancient Spanish writer, who declares that some of them were fully thirty-eight feet long, by eighteen broad, and six feet thick. “We are filled with astonishment,” says Prescott, “ when we consider that these enormous masses were hewn from their native bed, and fashioned into shape by a people ignorant of the use of iron ; that they were brought from quarries from four to fifteen leagues distant, without the aid of beasts of burden j were transported across rivers and ravines, were raised to their elevated position on the sierra, and finally adjusted there with the nicest accuracy, without the knowledge of tools and machinery familiar to Europeans.” If the Incas of high degree built magnificent fortresses, aqueducts and roads, they also indulged in gardens and summer palaces that were as exquisite as the former were grand in their proportions. Yucay, the favourite resi¬ dence of the ruling Incas, about twenty miles from the capital, was an illustration of a luxurious palace and play¬ ground which the Caesars themselves could hardly have surpassed. To quote again from Prescott, to whose magnum opus all subsequent writers on Peru are indebted : “ Here (to Yucay) when wearied with the toil and dust of the city, they (the emperors) loved to retreat and solace them¬ selves with the society of their favourite concubines, wan¬ dering amidst groves and airy gardens that shed around their soft intoxicating odours and lulled the senses to voluptuous repose. Here, too, they loved to indulge in the luxury of their baths, replenished by streams of THE EMPIEE OF THE IHCAS 71 crystal water which were conducted through subterrane¬ ous silver channels into basins of gold. The spacious gar¬ dens were stocked with numerous varieties of plants and flowers that grew without effort in this temperate region of the tropics while parterres of a more extraordinary kind were planted by their side, glowing with the various forms of vegetable life skillfully imitated in gold and sil¬ ver. ... If this dazzling picture staggers the faith of the reader, he may reflect that the Peruvian moun¬ tains teemed with gold ; that the natives understood the art of working the mines to a considerable extent; that none of the ore was converted into coin, and that the whole of it passed into the hands of the sovereign for his own exclusive benefit whether for purposes of utility or ornament.’’ But what about the common people in this vast empire of luxury and wealth 1 Alas ! they shared but little in the comforts and none at all in the luxury of their rulers. Most interesting in view of modern socialistic ideas is the story of the Inca state from the standpoint of the common people. From many points of view they exemplified the tenets of the extreme socialist. Among them there was no wealth and no poverty, at least no suffering. There was no private ownership and no corporate greed, if we except the greed of the Incas and their families. All the people possessed all things in common and there was “ no private ownership of public utilities” or of any other kind of utilities. The state looked after the people with a jealous eye, from the day they were born to the day they died. The state prescribed where they should live, what they should wear, what they should eat, whom they should marry. The state owned all their time, and as they had no cur¬ rency and few exchangeable commodities, the people paid for everything with their time. 72 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY It was socialism tempered with despotism, or des¬ potism tempered with socialism, but withal a most benev¬ olent despotism, which looked after every man, woman and child in all Incadom, as a kind farmer would look after his fat cattle and hogs and choice poultry, and, it must be confessed, from much the same motive. For at least four hundred years the empire thus built up existed, and waxed stronger and stronger, and had it not been for the advent of the Spaniards, no one can tell that it might not have embraced the whole of South Amer¬ ica within its domains, and advanced northward, until it came in contact with the equally marvellous civilization of the Aztecs of Mexico. It cannot truly be said that the common people were rebellious or even restive under this rule. In fact, so far as history records their views, they were among the most contented of peoples; hardworking, industrious, un¬ imaginative, fully believing that their Inca was a descend¬ ant of the sun, that he had a right to command their time and demand their service. All products of farm or loom were divided into three classes, one third of which belonged to the Inca, another third to the Sun (i. e., to the elaborate ceremonial worship of which the Sun was the centre,—in other words, to their religion) while the remainder, which was often the small¬ est third, was for the sustenance of the common people, though, in times of famine, and distress, part of the por¬ tion of grain that went to the Inca came back to the common people from his benevolent (?) hand. Religion was doubtless used by the emperor of Peru as the chief factor to keep their subjects in a proper and submissive frame of mind. Since the emperor was a direct descendant of the gods and shared the godlike nature, nothing that he could ask of his people was too great and nothing could be unreasonable. Among the THE EMPIRE OF THE INCAS 73 Japanese of to-day we find the only modern prototype of the Incas, and there we find but a feeble reflection, for though their emperor is all but divine, and their religion is patriotism, the modern spirit has so permeated the Japanese people and emperor alike, that he would be very unlikely to make unreasonable demands of his loyal subjects. Since their religion was the state, and the state was their religion, we are not surprised to read of temples of unparallelled magnificence among the ancient Incas. To the one supreme ruler of the universe, the invisible God, of whom they seemed to have some just but vague ideas, the Peruvians never erected any temple. He could not be worshipped in a temple made with hands, but to the sun, whose worship was especially dear to them, they erected innumerable temples, and also to the moon, “his sister wife,” and to the stars, especially to Venus known to them by the name of Chasca, or the “youth with the long and curling locks.” They also consecrated temples to the Thunder and Lightning and to the Rainbow, but the Sun received their chief homage, and to him were dedicated their most gorgeous temples. The most magnificent of these was built at Cuzco. The exterior was massive and substantial in the extreme, and a Spaniard who saw it in its best estate declared that “ only two edifices in all Spain could be compared with it.” But the interior of the temple, we are told, was the most worthy of admiration. “ It was literally a mine of gold. On the western wall was emblazoned a representa¬ tion of the deity, consisting of a human countenance look¬ ing forth from amidst innumerable rays of light which emanated from it in every direction, in the same manner as the sun is often personified by us. The figure was engraved on a massive plate of gold of enormous dimen¬ sions, thickly powdered with emeralds and precious 74 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY stones. . . . Gold, in the figurative language of the people, was 1 the tears wept by the sun, ’ and every part of the interior glowed with burnished plates and studs of the precious metal. The cornices which surrounded the walls of the sanctuary were of the same costly material, and a broad belt or frieze of gold let into the stone work, encompassed the whole exterior of the edifice. ” 1 A strange, contradictory people indeed were these ancient Peruvians ; a people of a high and yet a low civili¬ zation ; a nation of socialists ruled by a despot; a nation with palaces and temples but without a literature; a nation of skillful agriculturists and artificers who yet were willing to pay two-thirds of their earnings into the coffers of the state and church; a nation without an alphabet and who preserved their records and their accurate census returns on knotted cords, and yet who had made discoveries in metallurgy and mechanics whose lost secret no one can discover to-day ; a people contented with poverty in the sight of luxury; who were willing to drudge for their Inca and defend him with their lives, in return for a poor pittance which insured them against starvation and nakedness; a people always willing to work, who yet asked little personal return for their labours ; a people willing to be lost in the state and to be effaced individually for the good of the nation, and at the will of the emperor. How different is the dominant nation of the western hemisphere to-day ! There individualism prevails and the nation is the slave of the people. There the people rule, nominally at least, and the rulers are their servants. There in religion, art, business, politics, the individual carves out his own destiny, and his father’s traditions or his ruler’s wishes have very little to do with the matter. The contrast is interesting and instructive, and the 1 Prescott’s “ Conquest of Peru.” THE EMPIRE OF THE INCAS 75 future historian may teach many a lesson, and draw many a moral from the United States of North America, as we can to-day from the states of South America when they were united under the rule of the Incas. IX PERU, YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY The Bloody History of Peru—The Spanish Conquest—The Buie of the Inca Emperors—Pizarro’s Conquest—A Room Full of Gold—Pizar¬ ro’s Perfidy—He Quarrels with Almagro—The Hard Lot of the Peruvians—The Benefits of the Spanish Occupation—Modern Peru —Peru’s Heroic Figures—President Castilla’s Administration—The War with Chile—Heroic Admiral Grau—The Provinces Captured— Peru’s Later Prosperity. S the history of Pern under her ancient rulers, the Incas, is the most interesting of any South American country, so modern Peru, since the advent of the Spaniards, is checkered with more of the lights and shadows which make history fascinating, than any of the other modern republics. If it is true that “happy is that country that makes no history,” Peru is indeed a most unhappy country, for almost every decade for the last four hundred years has been reddened with bloody history, racked by revolutions, made detestable by outrageous oppression, or stained by almost unbe¬ lievable carnage. In each of these centuries some heroic figures have emerged from the general welter and chaos. At last the country, having learned in the hard school of experience the pathway to true national prosperity, seems to be pur¬ suing it with even tread. The story of the conquest by the Spaniards, though ab¬ sorbing in its interest, has been told too often to be dwelt upon at length in these narrow limits. Everything, at first, seemed to conspire to make it possible and com¬ paratively easy for the Spaniards to conquer and overrun Peru and to overthrow the ancient dynasty of the Incas. 76 PERU, YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 77 The clock of the Incas’ doom had struck. Perhaps the cup of their iniquities was full, and Providence requited them for their cruelties and centuries of injustice, by sending upon them a foe more cruel and unjust than they. Authorities differ, to be sure, as to the character of the Inca emperors, but we have reason to believe that they were not the mild and benevolent despots they are some times represented. At any rate, Atahuallpa, the Inca who ruled at the advent of Pizarro into New World poli¬ tics, had treated his brother shamefully, had slain tens of thousands of his enemies in his lust for power, and, for years, like his ancestors before him, had forced enor¬ mous tribute from the common people who were prac¬ tically all his slaves. So our sympathy for the last of the Incas is less than it otherwise would be, when we read how Pizarro trapped him in one of his own cities, took advantage of his hospitality to capture him while he was offering the Spaniard the freedom of his country and the food and succour they needed. That was a decisive moment in the history of the world. It practically gave Spain a new continent, placed in her hands the balance of power, and altered the age-long civilization of South America. Pizarro always knew how to follow up his victories. When once he had captured the emperor, he never al¬ lowed him to get out of his hands, and by that bold stroke the little handful of Spaniards, armed with the terrible might of gunpowder, had conquered a nation in spite of its armies and its wealth. Their great chief, the son of the sun-god captured, the spirit seemed to go out of the poor Peruvians, and in the scripture phrase, 11 they became as dead men.” Not that there were not battles and skirmishes and bloodshed in¬ credible, before the conquest was complete, but Pizarro’s 78 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY success after that first bold stroke of capturing the person of the Inca, never seemed to be in doubt. Another most dramatic incident, and one that showed the dominant motive of the conquerors in a lurid light, was the offer of Atahuallpa, who evidently knew his man, of a room full of gold for his release. “I will fill this room with gold as high as I can reach, if only you will liberate me,” was his piteous plea. Few rulers have ever lived who could fulfill such a promise or furnish such a ransom, but Atahuallpa was one of the few. The room was seventeen feet long by twenty wide, and the point to which Pizarro reached, for he was a tall man, was nine feet from the floor. Here he made a red line on the wall, and held his captive to the contract. The country was ransacked for gold in every direction. The golden plates were torn from the beautiful temple of Cuzco, of which I have already told; golden cups and vases and shields were brought in from every quarter, until at last the great room was filled, and treasure, to the value of $22,000,000 in gold, an enormous sum to-day, but representing five times the value in those days of cheap products, was given over to the rapacious Span¬ iards. One-fifth of it was sent to the royal treasury, the rest was divided among the victors, making even every common soldier rich. Then came one of the crowning acts of perfidy in the world’s history. Even then, when Atahuallpa had lived up religiously to his part of the bargain, he was not re¬ leased. He had stripped his temples and palaces in vain, and his subjects had impoverished themselves for naught, for, after a mock trial on a trumped-up charge of treason to Spain, the great Inca was slain, and the dynasty of the Incas was at an end. But they who take the sword shall perish by the sword. This proverb was never more fearfully illustrated than 79 PERU, YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY by the story of Pizarro and his comrades in arms, few of whom died natural deaths. Their great leader himself, years afterwards, was entrapped very much as he had en¬ trapped the Inca, and was treacherously slain by those to whom he had been doing a kindness. He died stabbed to the heart, while he made the sign of the cross upon the floor which he kissed, murmuring with his dying breath the name of “ Jesus.’’ A vein of superstitious religion ran through this dominating character, aud with all his vices he was courageous, resourceful, not unkindly in his natural disposition, and as true to his friends as he was savage, treacherous and fierce towards his enemies. For nearly three hundred years after the death of Atahuallpa, the story of Peru is the story of quarrels among the Spanish conquerors, of civil strife, of battle and bloodshed, and also of consistent and unremitting oppression of the natives. First, Pizarro and his great lieutenant, Almagro, fell out and fought for the su¬ premacy. Pizarro won, as usual, and Almagro was exe¬ cuted. After Pizarro’s death his brothers, who were scarcely less able, and no less brave than he, took up his quarrels and continued his carnage. During all these years the poor Peruvians were ground between the upper and the nether millstones. When the Spaniards came, they are supposed to have numbered some forty millions, though other careful authorities re duce that estimate one-half. In 1575, fifty years after Pizarro’s coming, but 8,000,000 could be found in the land, and after two centuries of Spanish rule the popula¬ tion of Peru proper had fallen to 1,500,000. Such a wholesale decimation of a people, all because of the cursed greed for gold, can hardly be matched in modern or ancient times. The country was impoverished as well as depopulated. “ As time went on,” says Daw¬ son, “new taxes were devised, until it seemed the de- 80 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY liberate purpose of the Spanish government to transfer all the gold and silver in Peru’s mountains to the royal treasury. Not only were both imports and exports taxed, but also every pound of provisions sold in the markets and shops. One-fifth of the products of the mines and one-tenth of the crops went directly to the Crown. All kinds of business had to pay licenses; quicksilver and tobacco were monopolies; and offices were regularly sold to the highest bidder.” A pathetic saying is recorded of one of the Inca chiefs who had maintained a precarious independence in the wilderness, when he was called upon at last, after a fruit¬ less resistance, to swear allegiance to the Spanish crown. Lifting the gilded fringe of the table-cloth on which he had signed the document renouncing his rights, he said : “ All this cloth and its fringe were mine, and now they give me a thread of it for my sustenance and that of all my house.” That there were some compensations for this wholesale ravishment of life and liberty cannot be denied when we consider the future of the continent as a whole. It has been well said: “The Spanish occupation brought many incontestible benefits to South America. To say nothing of the civilized system of jurisprudence, the let¬ ters and the religion which have made the peoples of the continent members of the great western European family, the introduction of new and valuable animals, grains and fruits, raised the average of well-being among the re¬ maining inhabitants. Horses, asses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, pigeons, wheat, barley, oats, rice, olives, grapes, oranges, sugar-cane, apples, peaches, and even the banana and cocoa-palm were introduced by the Spaniards. In return, Europe owes to Peru maize, potatoes, choco¬ late, tobacco, cassava, ipecacuanha and quinine.” The introduction of the last named drug is of interest 81 PERU, YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY to every man, woman and child who has had to taste its bitter virtues. The Countess of Chinchon, the wife of the viceroy was, like Peter’s wife’s mother, “sick of a fever.” But she had no believing apostle to take her by the hand and raise her up. Instead, a Jesuit missionary from the mountain wilds of southern Ecuador sent her a strange kind of bark, which, when administered, quickly cured the viceroy’s wife of her fever, and when Linneseus came to name the tree which produced this wonderful bark, he called it “chinchona,” in honour of the viceroy whose wife it had cured. The history of modern Peru begins as does that of all the other South American republics, except Brazil, with the brief overthrow of the Spanish dynasty by Napoleon in the early part of the last century. To be sure, Peru being the principal seat of Spanish government and Spanish officials in the new world, maintained her al¬ legiance to the mother country longer than the countries to the north, but the same ferment was working all over the continent, and in 1824, after many reverses and partial victories, the Spanish power was finally broken by the patriots and Peru started on her independent career. In the years since, some heroic figures stand out in Peru’s history worthy of a place in the roll-call of the heroes of any land. San Martin, one of the earliest and ablest generals of the revolution, seems to have been a true man and a genuine patriot, more solicitous for his country’s welfare than for his own. He was an Argen¬ tine who fought the battles of Peru, but when Bolivar joined him with his victorious forces he found that the “Liberator” was bound not so much to free Peru, as to become himself the dictator of all South America. Desiring no part or lot in such a scheme of self-aggran¬ dizement, San Martin returned to his own country, leav- 82 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY ing Bolivar and General Sucre, another exceedingly able general, to finish the war for freedom. On the 9th of September, 1824, was fought the battle of Ayacucho, the decisive struggle which gave Peru her liberty. ‘ ‘ Soldiers, on your deeds this day depends the fate of South America,” cried Sucr6 on that eventful morning, and the exclamation was no empty rhetoric, declaimed to put heart into his men. Inspired by the thought, the patriots fought desperately, the Spaniards were utterly defeated, the viceroy himself was wounded and made a prisoner, and Spanish power was forever broken. Callao castle held out for thirteen months longer, and “with its sur¬ render was hauled down the last Spanish ensign which floated on the South American mainland.” In the later history of Peru, President Castilla’s admin¬ istration was one of the most brilliant and successful. Castilla rose to power by his own virtues and strength of character from the ranks of the soldiery, and for more than twenty years, from 1844 to 1866, was a power in the land. He has been called the Porfirio Diaz of Peru, and he seems to have dealt justly and loved mercy, and, as we may hope, walked humbly before his God. At any rate, Providence, in his day, threw untold riches in the lap of Peru, for the guano and nitrate beds were discov¬ ered, or at least became important faetors in the world’s commerce. Castilla used the vast wealth which flowed from these deposits wisely in paying the interest on the national debt, and increasing the credit of his country, instead of squandering it on a swarm of useless office holders, and it looked as though Peru had started on a career of unbroken prosperity. But alas ! the same causes which brought her prosperity well nigh compassed her ruin. Prosperity gave rise to speculation, and reckless expenditure, as it too often has done in our own country, and when the firm, wise hand PEEU, YESTEEDAY AND TO-DAY 83 of Castilla was removed, no one else was found who could guide the ship of state with equal skill. The foreign debt was increased most recklessly, from $25,000,000 to $250,000,000, until two-thirds of the gross revenues of the country could hardly pay the interest on it. The struggle with bankruptcy continued for years, and to add to the woes of Peru, Chile cast a covetous eye upon the nitrate beds and guano islands, which had become the chief source of Peru 7 s wealth, and resolved to have them or at least some of them, for her own. She set up a claim to the southern portion of the nitrate beds which had always been claimed by Bolivia. The Bolivians were unable to resist the encroachments of the vigorous and aggressive Chileans, and, in trying to defend her rights, drew Peru into the conflict, which she was the more willing to enter, as her own vast nitrate deposits were in danger of falling into the hands of Chile. The war proved disastrous to both the allies, for Bolivia lost all her coast line, and Peru was humiliated and im¬ poverished, and victorious Chile dictated her hard terms of peace in Lima itself. The command of the sea gave the conquering nation the key to the situation. It could hardly be otherwise on such a barren and inaccessible coast as that of Peru, where garrisons and cities could easily be cut off from the source of supplies. Peru’s re¬ sources had been exhausted in her mad speculations, and she could not buy the necessary ironclads to meet Chile’s small but formidable navy. At first the fortunes of war were not so uneven. Peru’s sailors and soldiers were equally brave as those of her enemy, and in Admiral Grau she had the greatest naval commander whom the war developed. Like two op¬ ponents at checkers, each of the contending nations had two good ironclads j—two men in the king row. One of Peru’s u kings,” the In&eyendencia , ran upon a rock and 84 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY was lost early in the war. This was the beginning of Peru’s final defeat. But Admiral Grau, with his re¬ maining ironclad, the famous Huascar , performed prod¬ igies of valour, inflicted great losses upon the enemy, un¬ til, at last, his gallant ship was caught between two of the Chilean squadrons, and cut to pieces, while the admiral himself was blown into fragments by a shell while bravely directing the fight in the conning tower. This practically decided the war, though Peru kept up the hopeless struggle for many months. At last the Chileans entered Lima with their victorious army, com¬ pelled the Peruvians to pay a large indemnity, to give up half their guano islands and a large section of their nitrate provinces, with the provision that the provinces of Tacna and Arica were to be held by Chile for ten years, and at the end of that time a popular vote would decide who should retain them, the losing country to receive $10,000,000 from the other. The ten years’ lease ex¬ pired long ago, but the question is still in dispute, and likely to be for years to come, until settled perhaps by another war. Since the war with Chile, Peru has passed through one frightful civil war in 1895, but for ten years now she has been at peace, and has been regathering and husbanding her dissipated resources. Though her debts have been largely repudiated or scaled down, her finances have been put on a sound footing, her currency placed on a gold basis, her vast resources which can never be wholly alienated while her ancient territory remains, are being developed and her railroads pushed farther and farther into the rich interior. Take it all in all, the sun of prosperity is shining upon the ancient land of the Incas as it has not for many a year, and we may hope that the twentieth century, begun so auspiciously, will be the best that Peru in all her varied history, has ever known. X PERU REDIVIVUS The Marvellous Recovery of the Great Inca State k Nation that is Hard to Kill—The Secret of Peru’s Recovery—Her Great Resources—Her Delightful Climate—The Antarctic Current and its Benefits—What Lies Behind the Coast Desert—Secretary Root’s Yisit—A Peruvian Statesman’s Speech—The Friendship of the United States and Peru—The Incident of the Lobos Islands—Lima, the Beautiful Capital of Peru—The Bones of Pizarro. OME men do not know when they are beaten, and this is the secret of their ultimate success. Some nations are equally hard to kill, whatever their reverses and vicissitudes. Peru is one of these nations. She has had enough tribulation during the last four hun¬ dred years to blot out half a dozen ordinary nations, but she maintains her independence, and largely her ter¬ ritorial integrity, and is to-day entering upon a period of stable prosperity, unsurpassed in her history. Her Inca emperors were captured and treacherously killed by the Spaniards and her old civilization blotted out. Her temples were desecrated, her palaces despoiled, her public buildings were stripped of their gold and silver and jewels by the rapacious conquerors, her splen¬ did roads were allowed to fall into disrepair and become impassable. Then the Spaniards, in their turn, were dispossessed, eighty years ago, the country was again deluged in blood, business came to a standstill, and the struggle for liberty was long and exhausting. Eevolution succeeded revolu¬ tion, each time seemingly almost destroying the country when on the eve of a national revival. 85 86 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Then the Chileans sunk the Peruvian navy, as we have said, sacked and burned her cities, wrenched from her two of her valuable states, Arica and Tacna, and robbed her of her nitrate beds and Guano Islands, her chief sources of wealth. From this great blow of the 70’s she was recovering, when the bloody revolution of 1895 broke out, and once more plunged the country in civil wars. But again she is on the high road to recovery and national vigour and health. Her credit is restored, her currency is on a substantial gold basis, gold and silver and copper coins are the only circulating mediums ; rail¬ roads are being pushed from the seacoast up into the rich interior at half a dozen different ports, Payta, Eten, Pacasmayo, Mollendo, and other places, as well as from Lima, American capital is pouring in, together with American engineers and American machinery; Peru’s inexhaustible copper and silver mines are being de¬ veloped ; her rubber forests are being explored; her cotton, sugar and coffee are furnishing new revenues; her capital, Lima, is being repaired, repaved and beautified, and, all things considered, there is not a more prosperous country in South America than this ancient empire of the Incas. The secret of Peru redivivus is a country of vast natural resources, an admirably healthy climate, an industrious and patriotic people, who never admit final defeat or are disheartened by any temporary trouble. The climate of Peru is a great surprise to many travel¬ lers, and most stay-at-homers, who are inclined to think of it as a hot, steamy country lying just under the Equator. Just under the Equator Peru does lie, but it is neither steamy nor unbearably hot, even in mid¬ summer. February found us in Peru, and February is considered the hottest summer month in this country, PERU REDIYIYUS 87 but I have suffered far more in New York or Boston in August than in the corresponding month in Lima. The middle of the day is hot, but not unbearable; the nights, the evenings and mornings are delightful, a good breeze blowing most of the time, day and night. Sunstrokes are unknown in Peru, and the dog has no day he calls his own in this land. While this is true on the coast, it is doubly true on the high table-lands which constitute a large portion of Peru, where heavy wraps and warm rugs and blankets are wanted even in midsummer. The reason for this excellent climate lies not only in the high altitude of the plateaux, but equally in the cold, antarctic current, a great ocean river, which flows up the whole length of Peruvian coast from the antarctic seas. This ocean current does exactly the reverse for the shores of South America of what the Gulf Stream does for Great Britain and Scandinavia. That stream warms the cold countries, this stream cools the hot countries. One has a tangible evidence of this when he jumps into his bath on the first morning after leaving the coast of Ecuador. If he is not prepared for the change, he is likely to jump out again with a shiver, for the water is at least twenty degrees colder than the day before. He is only five degrees south of the Equator, but the water in the bath-tub makes him think he is off the coast of Maine or at least on the north side of Cape Cod. The boon which this antarctic stream is to the dwellers on the Peruvian or Chilean coast of South America, it is hard to realize and impossible to exaggerate. The nights are cool, the days are comfortable, sleep is refreshing, the appetite revives, yellow fever is unknown of late years, and the general health of the people is excellent. Doubt¬ less much of the vigour, energy and irrepressible spirit of these people under difficulties is due to this beneficent river of the ocean. 88 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY But a climate, however good, and people however energetic, cannot make a nation great, that has not the natural resources out of which prosperity grows. But Peru has this third element of national prosperity abun¬ dantly. As one sails along the barren shores, from the edge of Ecuador to the northern boundary of Chile, one asks himself if even a condor can live on these bare moun¬ tains, and on this inhospitable, sand-swept coast 1 For a thousand miles the coast of Peru presents this bold, grand, but unspeakably barren appearance. Magnificent mountains tower up towards the cloudless skies day after day as one pursues his slow way down the coast. Not a tree or a green bush can be descried ; but an oasis appar¬ ently in the interminable desert. What must Pizarro and Almagro and the early explorers have thought as they sought for a foothold in this new Eldorado ? Noth¬ ing more utterly discouraging can well be imagined than these desert mountains. But just behind them lay the wealth of the Incas, gold and silver incalculable, coffee and cotton and spices and fruits and precious woods. So to-day the coast line pre¬ sents the same forbidding aspect, but this is only the desert fringe on the rich coverlet which overspreads Peru. Nowhere does the desert run back for more than eighty miles from the coast, and usually not so far. Even near the shore are river valleys which are wonder¬ fully fertile, and, wherever water touches the soil in this rainless region, vegetation springs up with amazing rapidity, and the desert is transformed into the garden of the gods. Then there is that long stretch of gradually rising plains, the foot-hills and then the great interior table¬ lands with their incalculable riches. When we see in our mind’s eye the real Peru and forget the dry and barren edge, we do not wonder at its recovery from the depths PERU REDIYIYUS 89 of the political and financial pit into which it has so often fallen. On the occasion of Secretary Root’s recent visit to Peru, the national assembly of commerce made the dis¬ tinguished visitor an honorary member of their body, and, in the course of the ceremony, Rev. Mr. Watson, a Scotch missionary in Lima, who was one of the speak¬ ers, well summarized the recent progress of Peru in the following words: “The present government of Peru is characterized by its eagerness to know the resources of its territory, so as to utilize them to the greatest advantage. This tendency is evident in the sending forth of technical commissions which are constantly employed. Now it is manifested in exploring the important mining centres, such as Cerro- de-Pasco, Huallanca and lea; the petroleum fields of Tumbez, Payta and Piura; the magnetic iron districts of Aija; the gold fields of Sandia and Carabaya, the borax fields of Azangaro, etc. . . . Studies have been made in the vineyard districts of Chincha and Mo- quegua, the sugar-cane regions of Chicama, the agricul¬ ture of Piura. . . . Irrigation works have been ini¬ tiated in almost all parts of the Republic. . . . Schools of agriculture and schools of arts and trades have been subsidized in various capitals of departments, and Peruvian professional men have been sent abroad at the expense of the state to complete their education.” These sentences on this important occasion, from an educated and unprejudiced foreigner, put in succinct form the wonderful advance made by Peru during the last decade, and the further progress for which she is so evidently planning. No event in the recent history of Peru has made such a deep impression or been attended with such happy results as this visit of Mr. Root. He was received with a 90 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY generous and spontaneous cordiality which perhaps has never been accorded to any other foreigner. From his first minute on Peruvian soil, to his last, his stay was one continuous ovation. The officials and the people vied with each other to do him honour. A hundred thousand dollars, it is said, were spent in Callao and Lima in dec¬ orations and banquets in his honour, and the people did not begrudge the outlay. Through it all, Mr. Root bore himself with admirable modesty, tact and geniality, and endeared himself and the American nation to this as well as the other republics which he visited. In every one of his numerous speeches which have been published in a volume, together with the addresses of the Peruvians, he spoke with freshness and vigour, and, while always cordial, never “slopped over.” The same cannot be said perhaps for all the addresses which Mr. Root received from enthusiastic Peruvians. Said one distinguished statesman, whose address is pub¬ lished in this volume: “I consider your visit to those youthful republics, as one of the acts of most transcendency and of most histor¬ ical resonance that have been realized on this continent. When nations have attained to the power and develop¬ ment which to-day the United States exhibits ; when the citizens and the public power keep within that impassa¬ ble limit laid down by the legitimate desire of Liberty and Justice and by the imprescriptible (?) necessities of Order and Progress ; when all this is obtained in the midst of social well-being, of the commercial strength and of political predominance which overpasses the limits of the national soil ; then the legitimate and noble influence which is exercised in the life of other nations is founded not upon the narrow combinations of national egotism, but on the expansion and humane virtue of civ- PERU REDIVIVUS 91 ilization. And your government has comprehended this, on giving you ample representation to these republics in harmony with the American ideal of union and progress, which the illustrious statesman, who, to the admiration and respect of all, presides to-day over the glorious destiny of the American nation, propagates and carries out in his words as a thinker and in his acts as a man¬ datory ! ” Let us hope that the words of this statesman suffered in their translation from Spanish to English, where they evidently gained in hifalutin spreadeagleism what they lost in sense. Most of the Peruvian addresses, however, were models of good sense as well as of brotherly cor¬ diality. The United States is evidently in high favour in Peru, for American capital and American men are helping to make the newer and better Peru in no small meas¬ ure. But the United States and Peru are old friends and allies. Peru has never forgotten how, in 1852, when some Americans claimed the Lobos guano islands off her coasts, and the United States was about to enforce these claims with her gunboats, she paused long enough to look into the matter. This convinced our country that Peru was in the right, and our countrymen in the wrong; whereupon she recognized the absolute sovereignty of Peru over these islands. This act of justice was referred to more than once during the Root meetings, and in his reply to one minister of state Mr. Root said : “You were kind enough to refer to an incident in the diplomatic history of the United States and Peru, when my own country recognized its error in regard to the Lobos Islands and returned them freely and cheerfully to their rightful owner. I would rather have the record of that act of justice for my country’s fair name than the 92 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY story of any battle fought and won by her military horoes.” Surely it is worth while for a nation as for an indi¬ vidual to deal justly and to love mercy. After more than fifty years, the bread that we cast upon the diplo¬ matic waters in the Lobos incident, has returned to us, and has cemented the friendship of one of the finest and most progressive republics of South America. Our “ Mandatory,” President Roosevelt, like his coun¬ try, is immensely popular in Peru. When I mentioned his name to one of the high officials, he threw out his chest, and drew in his breath, and exclaimed, “ He is the greatest man in all the Americas. One of the greatest America ever produced.” Over and over again such sentiments as the following, by a distinguished Peruvian, have been reechoed of late : “The purpose of our powerful Sister of the North is a noble one, that of a persevering and ever steadfast en¬ deavour to combine continental interests lacking a suffi¬ cient cohesion, and promote their common development, thus managing to completely replace the dictates of force and war among nations, by those of peace and justice.” Lima, all things considered, is a beautiful city. Built largely of adobe bricks and bamboo laths covered with mud, that a long, drenching rain (which fortunately never comes) would dissolve in a week, it yet presents the appearance of a substantial, permanent metropolis, as indeed it is. A good American tramway system sup¬ plies Lima’s needs, and connects her with her port, Callao, in twenty minutes. Good water, good light and good sewerage make a safe and healthy city, while her beautiful plazas, fine public buildings, and streets which are beginning to be well-paved, make the capital of Peru one of the most attractive cities that lie beneath the Southern Cross. PERU REDIYIYUS 93 In the great and beautiful cathedral of Lima lie the bones of that brilliant but dastardly adventurer and con¬ queror, Francisco Pizarro. As I looked at his shrunken limbs and his grinning skull, I could almost forgive his cruelty and his treachery, for his part in discovering to the old world this magnificent country of the new world, and for rescuing from Inca tyranny and absolu¬ tism this fair republic of Peru, which has had such a checkered past, but will have, I believe, such a glorious future. XI LIMA, THE PARIS OF THE SOUTH The City on the Rimac and the City on the Seine—History, Climate, Scenery—Lottery Tickets on the Tram Cars—Butter Making on Horseback—Ice Cream Venders—The Delicious Fruits of Peru—The Great Cathedral—The National Library—Relics of the Inca Regime —From the Library to the Prison—Lima’s Place Among the World’s Capitals. N OT without reason has Lima, the capital of Peru, been called the Paris of South America. Brightness, gayety, fine costumes, stylish women and gallant men, extensive shops displaying rich goods from all parts of the world, popular caf6s, historic churches,—all these characteristics of Paris the Great you find on a smaller scale in this Paris of the Andes. The Paris on the Rimac, too, is a historic city as well as the Paris on the Seine. It has been besieged and sacked. It has seen revolution and counter-revolution; it has conquered and been conquered ; and it has come out of every tribulation still vigorous and often stronger, richer, and more prosperous than ever. Of course the comparison must not be pushed too far, for there are plenty of contrasts, if we look for them, as well as resemblances between the Paris that lies north of the equator and the smaller edition that lies south. In the matter of climate I should prefer the Peruvian Paris. It is never very hot and never cold. The Hum¬ boldt current in the Pacific tempers and cools the air, and even in midsummer (January and February in Peru) the weather is not oppressive, while sunstrokes are unknown. In grandeur of scenery and natural surroundings the South American capital is incomparably superior. The 94 LIMA, THE PAEIS OF THE SOUTH 95 rushing Bimac, though smaller, is a far more beautiful river than the Seine; and the majestic Andes stand guard round about Lima as few cities in the world are sentinelled. But enough of comparisons. There are plenty of matters of present interest to fascinate us. Callao (pronounced Calyao), the port of Lima, is seven miles distant, and is connected with the capital by one of the best electric roads in the world. This road is of Ameri¬ can (United States) construction throughout, the equip¬ ment coming from Philadelphia ; and the express-cars go whizzing along past the Inca ruins five centuries old, and past modern gardens and villas, at the rate of thirty miles an hour. On reaching Lima one is apt to think that buying and selling lottery-tickets is the chief business of the in¬ habitants. At every street-corner these tickets are thrust into your face. Old men and women, boys and girls, cripples, blind men, and waifs and strays of all sorts, importune you to buy their yellow slips, with the fas¬ cinating numbers that may yield a fortune, but in all probability (a thousand chances to one, at least) will yield only experience and no cash. The state authorizes the lottery; the Catholic Church even sanctions it and profits by it; and the grand draw¬ ings are great and, it would seem to the northerner, demoralizing events in Lima. Even some of the electric- car companies issue lottery-tickets instead of checks as a prevention of fraud on the part of the conductors. The people will demand these tickets on the chance of draw¬ ing a prize in the tramway company’s lottery, and so these will serve as a check on the number of fares re¬ ceived. My friends accused me, jocosely, of buying a lottery- ticket during my very first hour in Lima; and, sure 96 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY enough, I did ; for on paying a car-fare of two and a half cents I was presented with a slip of paper that informed me in Spanish that it was a lottery-ticket, and must be preserved entire. A thousand things odd and interesting to unaccustomed eyes greet one at every turn in Lima—the milk-women sitting astride their horses, with big cans on either side, from which they deal out the lacteal fluid. One would think, as they go jogging along over the rough pavements, that their cream would soon become butter, and that there would be no need of a churn. Indeed, I have heard it said that, when a customer demands butter instead of milk, if it has not quite “come,” the milk-woman will reply, “I will take another turn around the square, and then the butter will be ready.” However, I will not vouch for this alleged Peruvian method of butter¬ making. The bakers mounted on their steeds with great panniers of bread on either side are equally picturesque, and so are the ice cream men carrying a freezer with its cooling contents on their heads. Ice is a prime luxury anywhere within twenty degrees of the equator, and one often sees ice-dealers at the street stalls shaving a block of ice with an instrument that looks like a carpenter’s plane. When shaved, this snowlike product is packed into a glass, and then drenched with syrup to the taste of the customer, usually a small boy or girl, to whom this cooling confec¬ tion is a great delicacy. The fruit-stands of Lima in February are tempting in the extreme. Delicious grapes of every colour, ripe figs, oranges and bananas of course, peaches with their rosy cheeks, pomegranates cracked open so as to show their ruby seeds, and many varieties of fruit one never sees in a northern market. The pawpaws are excellent and wholesome j the custard-apples, in spite of their rough LIMA, THE PARIS OF THE SOUTH 97 and spiny exterior, are sweet and delicious ; the grena- dilla, or passion-flower fruit, has a delicate flavour of its own, while perhaps the most delicious fruit of all is the avocado pear, which is not a pear at all, but more like a melon with a hard, round seed at the core. It is eaten with vinegar, salt, and pepper, and for a breakfast fruit is not easily surpassed. But we must not linger at every strange and interesting spot, or we shall not get far into this Paris of the New World. As we approach the central plaza, we find stores that would do credit to New York or London, large dry goods establishments, extensive jewelry stores, book and music and photograph shops of no small pretensions. The Cathedral plaza is really the centre of Lima, more than any other one spot. On one side is the truly im¬ posing Cathedral with its twin towers and its vast fa§ade; at the right is the enormous palace, occupying a whole square, and containing not only the President’s apart¬ ments, but the offices of other government departments as well. Fine stores, fronted by arcades, like the rue de Rivoli in Paris, or the shops of Berne and Bologna, occupy the other two sides of the plaza, which is full of gay flowers, palms, and tropical trees, and is brightly lighted with strings of electric lamps at night. Altogether it is a most attractive centre, and from it radiate busy streets in every direction. The Cathedral is well worth a visit. It is imposing from its size and from the great height and width of its central aisle and naves. The recent decorations are in good taste and not over-gaudy, and a Protestant finds less in the nature of image-worship and Mariolatry to offend him here than in most Catholic churches. The national library is another interesting spot to visit. It contains about fifty thousand volumes, many of them 98 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY most valuable storehouses of South American lore. In the Chilean war of 1879 the library lost many of its most valuable treasures, the Chileans looting it in a shameless fashion, and even tearing up and throwing out of the windows precious manuscripts whose priceless value they could not appreciate. The chief librarian, the learned Dr. Richard Palma, whose works are known far beyond Peru, kindly showed us over the library. A long row of books in uni¬ form bindings, comprising several hundred volumes, he pointed out with especial interest as a gift from the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, “The most valu¬ able gift the library has ever had,” he assured us. The Peruvian Geographical Society has rooms in the same building, one of which is devoted to rare pottery and relics of Inca and pre-Inca times. Three or four civilizations undoubtedly antedated the Inca regime , and I was especially interested in one beauti¬ ful bowl, which was probably five hundred years older than Atahuallpa, the Inca emperor whom Pizarro found upon the throne and whom he so treacherously killed. The most curious thing about this bowl is that it has as its chief ornamental design the Chinese character for “heaven,” showing conclusively, together with other proofs, so the archaeologists think, that Peru in prehis¬ toric times had communications with the Celestial Empire, and derived therefrom, in part at least, its earliest civilization. A curious clay musical instrument in this museum is supposed to be at least a thousand years old. It has eleven notes, but on a scale different from any known in modem music. From the still cloister of a library to the dark cells of a prison is a sharp transition, but alas ! in our modern civilization the latter is as necessary as the former. The LIMA, THE PARIS OF THE SOUTH 99 courteous governor of the prison showed us every part of his sorrowful domain, and I must say I have never seen a cleaner or better-ordered penitentiary. Over every door were the words, “ Sieexcia, Obediencia, Tbabajo (work) ” and the prisoners, most of whom were Indians or half-breeds, seemed to exemplify the mottoes in their workshops and at the breakfast table, when we saw them at their morning meal. All in all, Lima deserves its place among the world’s capitals. It has had a great and stirring history. It is inhabited by a progressive, energetic, patriotic people. It has an almost unrivalled situation as the central metrop¬ olis of the Andes. Its future I believe will be greater and better than its past. XII AN ADVENTURE IN THE HIGH ANDES The Start from Lima—The Chalaca—The Highest Railway Pass in the World—A Modern Wonder—The Road Through the Desert—Deli¬ cious Fruit—Switch Backs—The Bridge of the Little Hell—The Ter¬ races of the Ancient Incas—The Llamas and Their Load—A Land¬ slide and Its Consequences. W E were in the vicinity of Lima long enough to take the most wonderful railway journey in the world, on the Peruvian Central Railway ; a journey which included an adventure that came near preventing me from writing this or any later chapter of “The Continent of Opportunity.” But, to begin at the beginning and “not to antici¬ pate,” as the story-writers say, we started from Lima one bright February morning (every February morning and every other morning in Lima is “brite and fare,” for the city sees no rain from one year’s end to the other) in a special excursion train chartered by our fellow pas¬ sengers on the steamer, as there was no regular train that would get back in time for the sailing of our boat. This excursion-car, which is kept for just such pur¬ poses, is a curious bob-tailed affair, called the Chalaca (or Callao). It looks as if about one-third of an ordinary passenger-car had been sliced off and closed up at the sliced end. It would comfortably hold perhaps fifteen people. The engine was equally diminutive, and was meant only to pull this little car; but it was a sturdy little loco¬ motive built in Wilmington, Del., and went puffing up 100 AN ADVENTURE IN THE HIGH ANDES 101 the steep grades of the Andes at a great rate, as if it meant to reach the summit or perish in the attempt. At once after leaving the station at Lima the road be¬ gins to climb and never stops climbing until it reaches a point on Mt. Meiggs, the Galera tunnel, 15,500 feet above the sea. This enormous height, overtopping Mt. Blanc, is the highest railway pass in the world. The whole railway is a wonderful monument to Amer¬ ican pluck and engineering skill, for it was built by Mr. Meiggs, the eminent financier and promoter who came to grief in California and largely reinstated himself in public opinion before his death in South America. When we remember that it was constructed thirty years ago, before the building of mountain railways was under¬ stood as it is to-day, the wonder of this stupendous rail¬ way grows upon us. Says Mr. Newhouse, a well-known English writer : “This admirable work puts Peru in the first place among all the countries of Latin America, as no other can pride itself on possessing such a colossal work as the Oroya Railroad, which, together with the Suez Canal, the Thames, Mersey, and St. Gothard tunnels, and the Brooklyn Bridge, hold the supremacy of the wonderful civil constructions of our times. It is simply astounding that a South American republic just emerging into life, exposed to all the ups and downs of its political destiny, should have undertaken and carried out this gigantic work which might rouse the envy of many nations of the Old and New World.’’ Such encomiums do not seem exaggerated as one mounts the heights of the Andes on the wings of this wonderful railway. In fact, the dictionary does not con¬ tain adjectives enough to over-express the sublimity and grandeur of this journey. For the first forty miles out of Lima the country, ex- 102 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY cept where irrigated, is an absolute desert. No rain has fallen here to any appreciable extent within the memory of man. Gaunt, forbidding, verdureless mountains stretch up to heaven. To the right, to the left, be¬ fore, behind, everywhere, these awful, frowning moun¬ tains ! To be sure, the road follows the bed of the rushing Rimac River, which supplies Lima with electric power and with delicious water ; but the stream, beautiful as it is in its foaming, white, billowy course, seems to make but little impression upon the soil along its banks ; and the desert, except for a few bushes or a thin strip of green, seems to come down to the water’s edge, as much as to say, u This is my domain ; I am supreme here.” In some few places the water has been drawn off from the river to irrigate the surrounding fields ; and, where this has been done, everything smiles as if it were the garden of the Lord, for the soil is wonderfully productive wherever water can reach it. Great fields of Indian corn and sugar-cane wave in the breeze at such places; tall palms and banana trees spring up as if by magic by every irrigating canal; and all plant life flourishes. Peaches, pears, and apples, delicious avocado pears, watermelons, strawberries, custard apples, oranges, and half a dozen other varieties of fruit one never sees out of the tropics grow in these sheltered, irrigated fields on the foot-hills of the Andes. Picturesque Indians offer the fruit for sale at the railway stations. Some of them are Peruvian Indians, degenerate sons of noble Inca sires; others are from the Bolivian plateau, and are known by their peculiar ponchos, which in reality are nothing but bright-coloured blankets with a hole cut through the middle, through which the Indian thrusts his head. Up, up, up, up, the wonderful railway rises, one thou¬ sand, two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen AN ADYENTUEE IN THE HIGH ANDES 103 thousand feet above the sea ; and with every turn and zigzag the scenery becomes more awfully grand. There is no rack-and-pinion system on this road, as in Switzerland, where the mountain railways could almost climb straight up the side of a church ; but the ascent in the Andes is made by switch-backs, the road running as far as it can in one direction, and then turning and run¬ ning in the opposite direction to compass another eleva¬ tion. There are many tunnels and bridges over frightful chasms. One of these, the Yerrugas bridge, is the highest in the world ; and it seems, on looking down from the parapet, as if you were gazing into the very bowels of the earth. Another is called the u Puente del Infernillo,” or the u Bridge of the Little Hell.” So dreadful were the surroundings, and so dizzy the depth, that one might be excused for leaving off the qualifying adjective in naming it. However high we reached, we did not get out of the region of Alpine flowers. Great bushes of heliotrope lined the banks wherever there was any moisture, until we had reached a height of ten thousand feet at least, but they were a scentless heliotrope, like most other Andean flowers. Nor did we lose sight of the Inca civilization in all this journey. The remains of the splendid roads they cut out of the mountainside, are still there. The terraces on the side of the steepest hills, sometimes forty or fifty of them one above another, were simply stupendous monuments of their patience and skill, and are still plainly visible. Think of starting with bare, wind-swept, sun-baked rocks thousands of feet high, as the Andes are in this part of the chain, and making a garden of them for more than a thousand feet up their precipitous sides! That is what the Incas did on the sides of these tremendous precipices. 104 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Of course all the soil had to be hoisted up to these eyries on the backs of men, for there is no natural soil there. But there they had their gardens, and raised their maize and their fruits and their flowers. Nothing has given me a more vivid sense of the power and advanced civ¬ ilization of this wonderful race than these mountain terraces. The animals of the Andes are also most interesting. Way up on a mountainside two thousand feet above us we could often descry a flock of goats or some white mov¬ ing patches about as big as flies, which afterwards re¬ solved themselves into sheep. Hardy little donkeys would trudge along nonchalantly, but really with the utmost care, on the edge of an awful precipice, where a misstep would mean instant death two thousand feet below. But the most interesting and characteristic animals are the llamas. These hardy little beasts are daintily built and intelligent, and are largely used as burden-bearers in the high Andes. They have long, graceful necks, liquid brown eyes, and shaggy wool on their backs, which, how¬ ever, is too coarse to be of much value commercially. But as beasts of burden they are most valuable, carrying each a load of a hundred pounds and refusing to carry any more, even when it is put upon them. But with this load they will trudge along twelve or fifteen miles a day, for weeks at a time, asking for no water and but for little food ; and that little they pick up for themselves on the way. After journeying about forty miles the mountains showed symptoms of greenness; grass and shrubs and flowers became more numerous, for we were getting beyond the rainless belt into the section that enjoys a rainy season. To our sorrow we soon found that we were journeying in the rainy season, as the sequel of our story proves. AN ADVENTURE IN THE HIGH ANDES 105 For six hours we steadily climbed by curves and switch-backs this tremendous chain of mountains. At last our time was exhausted, and reluctantly we had to turn back, after reaching a height of some 12,500 feet, not the highest point on the road by any means, but one that afforded one of the grandest views. By this time it had begun to rain heavily. For an hour we descended merrily, running about twenty miles an hour, when suddenly, upon turning a sharp curve, there directly in our path was a landslide which had brought down tons of mud and soil and rocks upon the track. It was too late to avoid it. The engineer reversed his engine, but plump went the little locomotive into the soft debris, almost burying itself in it. Fortunately for us the mass was very soft, and neither car nor engine left the track; otherwise we should have rolled over a fright¬ ful precipice hundreds of feet into the valley beneath, for we were nearly nine thousand feet above the sea when the accident occurred. Our engine shrieked for help, with all its steam lungs, and soon a gang of workmen came to dig it out; but, as it threatened to be an all-night’s job, we walked on some five miles to the next station, through the drenching rain. Within a quarter of a mile we passed four other landslides, one much larger than the one which stalled our engine. Every moment there was danger of further landslips and boulders coming down upon our heads, for a heavy shower always loosens the soil, and makes travelling dan¬ gerous at this time of the year. But we reached the next station in safety, and there spent the night in a little village inn. By six o’clock the next morning our engine had been dug out of its muddy bed. It proved to be uninjured, and we went on our way rejoicing, down the great moun- 106 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY tain’s flanks, with a new realization of the beauty and truth of the words of the travellers’ Psalm, “ The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.” XIII WHERE THE STARS SIT FOR THEIR PORTRAITS A Jewel Worthy of Its Setting—How We Reach Arequipa—Travelling Sand Hills—A Wonderful Transformation Scene—A Garden of Eden in Bloom—Misti and Chachani—Hotel Horse Car—Big Busy and Bigoted Arequipa—The Great Cathedral—The Walk to the Observa¬ tory—The Great Telescopes—What the Camera Reveals. T HEEE are many observatories in the world, but none, I venture to say, quite like the one on the Andes in the heart of Peru, in the old and proud city of Arequipa. It is a jewel worthy of its setting, and all the more in¬ teresting in my eyes because it is an American observa¬ tory, manned by American astronomers, built and equipped by American money, a branch of Harvard University, separated from its parent institution by almost the diameter of the world. It is a far cry from Cambridge, Mass., to Arequipa, Peru, and a weary journey. With the best luck in mak¬ ing connections it cannot often be accomplished in less than a month. After sailing to Panama in seven days, and crossing the Isthmus, one must crawl down the west side of South America as already described in the slow¬ est kind of a coasting-steamer, which makes an average of about a hundred miles a day, stopping at all sorts of insignificant and unheard-of ports. At last Mollendo, a surf-lashed landing-place on the utterly unprotected shore of Peru, is reached. If we have good fortune, we may be able to get ashore the same day, or we may have to be carried by to the next port, and wait for a week before we can get back, as in rough 107 108 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY weather no one can embark or disembark at Mollendo for days at a time. Neptune favoured us, for it was reasonably calm when we landed, and after a tremendous tossing and bouncing on the mountainous swell which always rolls in on that coast, our sturdy Indian boatman guided our little craft in between the threatening rocks that bar the entrance to the landing-stairs, and we found ourselves in one of the driest, dustiest, most forbidding little towns on the planet. But everybody is so glad to get ashore at Mollendo that he does not mind dust or dirt, and rather rejoices in any¬ thing that savours of terra firma . The train was waiting, and we wasted no time in Mol¬ lendo, but boarded an American car drawn by an Amer¬ ican engine that was to take us over mountains three miles high and land us at last on the shores of Lake Titicaca. But long before scaling the loftiest of these dizzy heights we should reach Arequipa, which is less than half-way up the flanks of the Andes. For hours our sturdy engine puffed and panted to sur¬ mount the foot-hills and outer ramparts of the coast range of the Andes, ever rising higher and revealing new scenes of desolate grandeur. Eocky peaks, precipices frightful, abysmal gullies, a constant succession of them as far as the eye could see and as much farther as the imagination could reach. At one place where we crossed a plateau a few miles wide we saw hundreds of the famous travelling sand-hills which submerge railway stations and every¬ thing else in their irresistible progress, and which often keep an army of men shovelling out the rails and rolling- stock. Then more mountains, and more and more, our road ever crawling up, up, up, but never showing us a blade of grass, or a tree, or a green thing on all the vast mountainsides. WHERE THE STARS SIT 109 At last, after about six hours of climbing, we reach a height of nearly eight thousand feet, and suddenly a wonderful transformation-scene greets our eyes. Just below us is a valley of marvellous fertility,—the valley of the Chili River. Great fields of the greenest alfalfa line its banks and acres of the heaviest Indian corn I ever saw wave their tasselled plumes in the air; for it is the end of summer in Peru about the middle of March. Sugar-cane, banana-trees, palms, peach-trees, pome¬ granates, figs, and various rare and curious fruit-trees we never saw before, greet our eyes. At each little station swarms of swarthy Peruvians, whose natural complexion was enhanced by several layers of soil, beseech us to buy great baskets holding at least a peck of delicious green grapes for twenty cents in their money (ten tents in gold), or as many purple figs for the same price. The transition from the savage, uncompromising desert to this blooming Garden of Eden is so sudden that we can hardly believe our eyes. It is as if a panorama had been unrolled suddenly, and we are half inclined to think that the valley of the Chili is only painted upon canvas. But as this thought crosses our minds, the impos¬ ing city of Arequipa, with its cathedral towers, and many churches and plazas and public buildings comes in view; and we realize that we are in one of the most fertile and famous valleys in all Peru. The picturesqueness and grandeur of the scene are in¬ creased tenfold by two great mountains, Misti and Cha- chani, which stretch up nearly twenty thousand feet towards the sun, and form a magnificent background to the city only a few miles away. Misti is regular, sym¬ metrical, cone-shaped, a South American Fujiyama, only much higher than the beautiful mountain shrine of the Japanese. Chachani, though nearly as high, is ragged 110 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY and rugged, and rises in several jagged saw-teeth to the heavens, a mountain even more imposing than smooth and regular Misti. Both are covered with snow from an elevation of 16,000 feet to the top, and every morning we see donkeys, laden with snow and ice from this natural refrigerator, bringing down their cold product for the ice cream shops of Arequipa. At the railway station we are met not by a hack or bus of any kind, but by a special hotel horse-car which takes us to the u Gran Central/’ a hotel whose grandilo¬ quent name tries to make up for other deficiencies. Arequipa is one of the biggest, busiest, and most bigoted cities in Peru. Next to Lima, it is, perhaps, of the most importance. It is the stronghold of the oldest and most conservative families. Priestcraft flourishes ; the women especially are peculiarly fanatical; and until recently Protestantism has had no foothold at all within its borders. Even now the worshippers in the little back upper room which serves as a Protestant chapel are often stoned, as they were one evening when I attended it; and landlords, frightened by the priests, often compel the mission and the missionaries to move from place to place. But Mr. and Mrs. Jarrett and their assistants, Mr. Ritchie and Mr. Job of the “Regions Beyond” mission, are bravely holding this difficult fort on the very frontier of Protestantism. The meetings are well attended; a few converts have rewarded their efforts ; and a foothold has been gained for the Reformed faith, which the machi¬ nations of the dominant church, and the frequent false¬ hoods of the newspapers about Protestantism, and the constant attack on the Protestant missionaries, will not be able to uproot. The cathedral at Arequipa is an imposing building occupying a whole side of a large plaza, which, for some unaccountable reason, has just been destroyed by the WHERE THE STARS SIT 111 authorities, the trees and plants ruthlessly torn up, and the whole beautiful square made a howling wilderness. But for most Americans Arequipa is strictly the jewel- case which, as I have said, holds the jewel of the Harvard Observatory j and like most of our countrymen we soon made our way out to this famous spot two miles from the centre of the city. The walk to the observatory is a fine preparation for what we find at our journey’s end. It leads through the oldest, dirtiest, slummiest part of Arequipa. The narrow, cobble-paved streets are reeking with filth and thick with dust. Every other open door you pass in the long lines of mud and adobe houses (and they are all open, reveal¬ ing all the occupations and privacies of the families) is a low shop for eating and drinking, where frowzy women and pockmarked, low-browed men are eating themselves full, and drinking themselves drunk with cheap alcohol. Over many of the shops are curious tin signs, with all sorts of mermaids, sea-nymphs, and land hobgoblins painted on them. Through nearly a mile of such streets we pass, and then emerge into the comparatively open country. A little farther, and we mount a steep rise of ground, which in this rarified air makes us pant; and find ourselves out of the purgatory of Arequipa’s slums and in the paradise of a fresh, clean, sweet, flower-decked American home. Mrs. Frost, the wife of the director, welcomes us most hospitably to her comfortable home and spacious pi¬ azza, which commands one of the finest views in Peru, and indeed, in all the world. Around the house is a large garden of beautiful flowers. Here are geraniums and heliotropes growing as large as barberry bushes with us, exquisite roses, a great peach-tree loaded with blush¬ ing fruit, fine Norfolk Island pines, and all sorts of trop¬ ical and temperate fruits and flowers. 112 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY In the foreground lies the luxuriant valley of the Chili, and, just beyond, the city of Arequipa, which looks clean and fresh through the merciful spy-glass of dis¬ tance. Off to the west, but yet so near that every ridge and outline is defined in the marvellous atmosphere, are beautiful Misti and lordly Chachani, each towering more than two miles above us, while the rushing Chili River cuts a deep gorge at the foot of the observatory hill. What view in all the world combines such mountains and such a valley with roaring river and busy city to give life to the superb scene? The observatory is built for the sole purpose of pho¬ tographing the heavens, and this spot was chosen, after careful study of many other parts of the world, as the very best accessible place for the purpose, by reason of the rarity and exceeding clarity of the air in the dry season. Two telescopes are here mounted, one of which is the largest of its kind in the world. Though it weighs two tons, it is so nicely balanced and adjusted that it can al¬ most be moved with the little finger. Mr. Frost, the di¬ rector (and, by the way, his assistant is Mr. Snow), kindly explained the working of the tremendous camera, which cost $50,000, and has probably added more to the perma¬ nent record of the heavens than any other instrument. Every clear night when the moon is not too bright the great lens is pointed to some spot in the heavens ; and the stars are made to give up the age-long secret of their. numbers, their distance, and their composition. Mr. Frost showed us a single negative, seventeen by fourteen inches in size on which he had caught the pictures of— how many stars should you guess? A hundred, five hundred, five thousand? No less than four hundred thousand ! And it would take two thousand plates of this size to photograph the whole heavens as seen from the Arequipa observatory. WHERE THE STARS SIT 113 To be sure, not all these plates would contain so many stars as this famous one ; but, making all allowances, how many millions upon millions of worlds does this giant camera reveal, many of these worlds so remote that the eye could not detect them when aided by the most powerful telescope ! But the photographic plate is far more sensitive than the human eye. There is a luminous spot in the heavens that looks like a single star to the naked eye. When the Arequipa lens is turned upon it, and its photograph is taken, it resolves itself into eight thousand different stars, some of them so remote that their light has taken hundreds of years to reach us. In comparison with their distance a journey to our moon would be as a walk across the street when compared to a journey from Cambridge to Arequipa. Such marvels is this great telescope constantly bring¬ ing to light, and peopling our universe with hitherto un¬ seen worlds. I know of no place so good for a conceited man to visit as the Arequipa observatory. First, Misti and Chachani must dwarf him in his own eyes, if he has any sense of proportion ; and then, as he goes into the observatory, and sees the starry wonders reflected on the photographic plate, his mind is staggered at the vastness of the uni¬ verse ; and with a sense of his own insignificance it would seem that he must cry out: u When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? And the son of man, that Thou visitest him ? ” Like Coleridge, interpreting the voice of Mt. Blanc, one can only hear the stars at Arequipa say, “ God! God ! God ! God ! ” XIV BOLIVIA, THE COUNTRY OF THE GREAT PLATEAU Its Claims to Distinction—Its Twenty Lofty Mountains—Its Past Min¬ eral Wealth—Its Blood-stained History—The Natives Under Spanish Rule—The Revolt of Tupac Amaru—Bolivia, the Battle-ground of the Great Revolution—Bolivar’s Ambition—Years of Lawless Dicta¬ torship—The Happier Future. B OLIVIA has several claims to distinction among its sister states of South America, and indeed among the nations of the world. No other coun¬ try except Thibet is so near the heavens physically, what¬ ever may be said of its spiritual and moral proximity. It occupies the southern part of the great central plateau of South America, and except where this plateau drops sharply towards the Atlantic, its people live in the rari- fied atmosphere of 12,000 feet above the sea. Bolivia contains the largest number of lofty mountain peaks of any country except northern India, though the highest mountain of South America is not found within her borders, but in Chile. Yet, rising up from the enormous Bolivian plateau are fully twenty mountains that approximate 20,000 feet in height, and several that considerably exceed this enormous altitude. It is diffi¬ cult to obtain an idea of these Andean monsters until one sees them for himself lying along the horizon with their tremendous bulk and towering, here and there, in their white solitariness, far towards the zenith, dwarfing the highest Alps, as the Alps dwarf the white hills of New Hampshire or the Green Mountains of Vermont. In its mineral wealth, too, Bolivia is one of the leaders 114 BOLIVIA 115 of the nations. When we remember that in its isolation, cut off from the sea by four hundred miles of almost im¬ passable mountain wilds, it yet ranks third among the silver producing countries of the world, and almost as high in its production of tin and copper, we see that the Bolivia of the Great Plateau, in spite of its remoteness and its sparse and ignorant population, is a country to be reckoned with. It must be remembered, too, that Bolivia, of all South American countries, has been most distracted by civil wars, tyrannized over by dictators, and made the constant football of her stronger neighbours ; that she has enjoyed only about a decade of comparatively stable national life, and that she emerged from a perfect chaos of misrule and anarchical plunder only a score of years ago. Under these conditions, her present prosperity and future bright prospects seem all the more remarkable. Bolivia’s recorded history, like that of the other Inca states, begins with Huascar and Atahuallpa, the contend¬ ing emperor brothers, who, at the time of the Spanish conquest, divided all Incadom between them. Huascar’s portion was the southern plateau of Peru, including lake Titicaca and the great table-lands to the south and east (now Bolivia) where his ancestors had originated, and where the greatest temples and palaces of his race had been built. In the disastrous war with his stronger brother, Atahuallpa, he had been worsted and captured, when at that moment Pizarro came upon the scene, con¬ quered and basely killed Atahuallpa, and for the sake of making some show of legitimacy for his conquest, sided with Huascar’s line, as the rightful emperor, and rode with him in triumph into Cuzco, the capital, welcomed by the peoples of Bolivia and Chile as their deliverer and ally. Then follow, in Bolivia’s history as in that of Peru and 116 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY Ecuador, the long centuries of Spanish misrule and op¬ pression, when nine-tenths of the population was killed off by forced labour in the mines, during most of which the docile and patient Indians, as submissive under the pretensions of the Spaniards as of their own Incas, went to the wall. The great difference was that under the ancient regime of their emperors they were protected, preserved, regulated to the last degree ; their birth, mar¬ riage, life and death provided for ; regarded as splendid draft animals to be carefully cared for;—under the Spaniards they were worked to death in the shortest pos¬ sible space of time, regarded only as machines for the extraction of gold and silver from the mountains, ma¬ chines to be thrown upon the scrap heap as soon as they were worn out. “ To work the mines,’’ we are told, “the Spaniards ruthlessly impressed the helpless Indians. Each village was required to furnish a certain number of labourers an¬ nually. Lots were drawn as if for a proscription, and the unhappy creatures who drew the bad numbers went off to meet certain death in the dark wet pits and gal¬ leries, bidding good-bye to their wives and children like men stepping upon the scaffold. The destruction of life was frightful, the returns made by the officials charged with the impressment demonstrating that in the neigh¬ bourhood of Potosi, the Indian population fell within a hundred years to a tenth of its original numbers.” 1 Not that there were not laws, often complicated and carefully drawn, to protect the natives. But these laws, framed in the mother country, remained largely upon paper. The thirty corregidors or governors of the thirty different districts into which the country was divided, simply did as they pleased, each intent upon wringing the last dollar from the unhappy land. The Indians 1 Dawson’s “ South American Republics,” BOLIVIA 117 were entirely at their mercy, and even the whites and half-breeds could do but little, if anything, to restrain the avarice and cruelty of the governors. There was but one determined effort to resist this infamous rapacity, and this was made in 1780 by Tupac Amaru, a direct descendant of the Inca emperors, whose blood was stirred, like that of Moses, by the insolent oppression of the taskmasters. Like Moses, too, he took the law into his own hands, and slew one of the worst of these taskmasters, a corregidor whose misrule was par¬ ticularly intolerable. Then he called upon the people to rise, and they flocked to his standard by the thousands. Tupac was able to equip some of them with firearms, and at first his troops were successful. Wherever he went he addressed the people from the church steps, call¬ ing upon them to rise and redress their wrongs j but though he was hailed everywhere as the redeemer, he could not promote a general insurrection, so subservient had the Indians become to the Spaniards and so fearful of disobeying them. Vastly superior forces soon con¬ quered his small army, and “ he himself was sentenced to be torn in pieces by horses after witnessing with his own eyes the fearful tortures and death of his innocent wife and children .’ 7 But Tupac did not die in vain. The awful barbarity of the punishment inflicted upon himself and his com¬ rades aroused such indignation even in the breasts of the stolid Indians and half-breeds, and their threats became so ominous that the frightened home government abol¬ ished the office of corregidor and introduced many of the reforms for which Tupac fought. Even then the Spanish power was doomed, and the people only awaited the favourable moment for throwing off the yoke of three centuries. This time came to Bolivia, then called Upper Peru, as 118 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY to the other South American countries, when, in the early part of the nineteenth century, the troubles of the Bourbons at home occupied their attention and gave the oppressed people their opportunity. 11 From 1809 to 1825, 7 7 we are'told, u with scarcely an intermission, battle succeeded battle, campaign campaign, and insur¬ rection insurrection, as the Spaniards and patriots, alter¬ nately victorious, marched and countermarched along the great mountain road that winds through the plateau from Humahuaca, on the Argentine frontier, to the bar¬ rier north of Lake Titicaca. Not a village but what was captured and pillaged, not merely once but many times, and the tale of garottings, of massacres, burnings and depredations, of heads and hands spiked up by hundreds along the highways, wearies in the telling.” Bolivia was the battle ground of the contending armies more than any of the South American republics, being midway between the Argentine, Chile, on the one side, and Northern Peru and Ecuador on the other, and was the Virginia of the long rebellion which at last freed South America from Spanish domination. San Martin and Sucr6 are the two names that emerge from the welter of these awful years of bloodshed with distinction, because of their bravery and genuine patriot¬ ism. San Martin was an Argentine who fought unsel¬ fishly for South American freedom, and never yielded to Bolivar 7 s sin, the desire for personal aggrandizement and power. To be sure, Bolivar was in at the finish when the Spaniards, worn out by the stubborn resistance of the colonists, were about ready to give in, and the grateful people hailed him as their saviour and named their country for him—Bolivia. But his ambition was soon plainly evident,—to carve out a number of small states with his faithful henchmen for governors, while he himself should be dictator of the BOLIVIA 119 whole South American confederation. To this end he practically defined the limits of Bolivia or Upper Peru, which were substantially the boundaries of the Bolivia of to-day, though she was given a little strip of coast line, which, a few years ago, she lost in the disastrous war with Chile. Even yet her exact boundaries with Peru, Brazil and the Argentine are not exactly surveyed or definitely fixed, though, through bargain and conquest on one side or the other they are gradually approaching definiteness. On the 11th of August, 1825, the new Republic of Bolivia was proclaimed. In her Declaration of Inde¬ pendence we are assured that: u Upper Peru (Bolivia) is the altar upon which the first blood was shed for liberty and where the last tyrant perished. The barbar¬ ous burning of more than a hundred villages, the destruc¬ tion of towns, the scaffolds raised everywhere for the partisans of liberty, the blood of thousands of victims that would make even Caribs shudder; the taxes and exactions, as arbitrary as inhuman, the insecurity of property, life and honour itself; an atrocious and merci¬ less inquisitorial system; all have not been able to ex¬ tinguish the sacred fire of liberty and the just hatred of Spanish power. ” Though Bolivia had gained her independence, she had not learned to use it, and the next sixty years of her his¬ tory are years of miserable misrule, petty squabbles for power, violent and lawless dictatorships when some strong and unscrupulous man came to the fronta history not worth studying or reciting. Occasionally an honest man,' like Dr. Linares, made some effort to rid his countrymen from the rule of the official highwayman, but he made little impression upon its history. In three years during the rule of the bastard, Cordova, no less than nine revo¬ lutions were started and suppressed, and the average of a 120 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY revolution or an attempted revolution a year marked Bolivia’s history for nearly half a century. Things became so bad that Great Britain at last ceased all diplomatic relations with her, declaring that: i L Bo¬ livia could no longer be recognized as a civilized nation.” To this day, Great Britain is accredited with no minister at La Paz, but only with a consular agent. The Chilean war of 1879, though in one respect a great calamity, was perhaps a blessing in disguise, for since it deprived Bolivia of her strip of seacoast, her only outlet to the world over her own soil, it threw her back upon her vast resources of mine and forest, which she is now cultivating more industriously than ever. Since the Chilean war there have been few internal disturbances. In 1899 occurred the last revolution, when General Pando overthrew President Alonzo in battle. Under Pando’s presidency the country enjoyed tranquil¬ lity and greater prosperity than ever, which has been continued and increased under the wise rule of President Montt, who is still in power. All the revolutions and counter revolutions, tyrannies and usurpations to which unhappy Bolivia has been subjected, have not destroyed her natural resources, and her recuperating power is great. Her mountains are still full of silver and gold, tin and copper. Her forests have inexhaustible supplies of rubber and precious woods, American and European capital is pouring into the country to make these riches available, and a happier day is dawning for the Republic of the Great Plateau. XY THE SWITZERLAND OF SOUTH AMERICA Bolivia Like and Unlike Switzerland—Landing at Mollendo—Up the Andes by Bail—A Kibbon of Green—The Beautiful Yalley of Arequipa —The Travelling Sand Hills —14,666 Feet Above the Sea—Satiated with Mountains—The Marvels of Lake Titicaca—The “ Coya ” and the “ Inca ’’—Titicaca Island—A Capital in a Crater. B OLIVIA like Switzerland, must be entered through foreign territory, for since the last war with Chile she has had no outlet to the sea over her own ter¬ ritory. But Bolivia shares with Switzerland the advan¬ tages of a mountainous country, difficult of access by enemies, and capable of rearing and sustaining a sturdy race of progressive, liberty-loving people. Infinitely behind Switzerland in education, stable civil government, refinement and cleanliness of the people, it is yet like Switzerland in present-day prosperity, while its resources are infinitely beyond Switzerland, if only they were developed. Bolivia is a Switzerland with loftier Alps, larger lakes, and far more extensive table¬ lands, a Switzerland with silver, copper and tin in un¬ limited quantities ; a Switzerland that can produce rub¬ ber, coca, and quinine as can no other land were these riches fully developed ; a Switzerland where every prod¬ uct of the temperate or tropical zone will flourish. Such a country is worth careful study for it is sure to take a leading place among the South American Be- publics, unless conquered and annexed by some of her stronger neighbours. The approach to Bolivia is most unpromising. The 121 122 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY only two ports by which she reaches the sea to-day are Mollendo and Antofagasta j the one in Peru, the other in Chile, and each vies with the other for the unhappy dis¬ tinction of being the worst port in the known world. They are both merely open roadsteads on the unindented western coast of South America, and the swell of the Pacific is so heavy that often, for days at a time, no pas¬ sengers can be landed or freight handled. We landed at Mollendo in Peru. Even on a calm day the swell seems frightful to a landsman, as he steps off the ship’s ladder, or is lowered in a bucket by a derrick from the ship’s deck into a small boat. This is tossed about like a cockle shell, now we are thrown up to heaven on the crest of the wave, now dropped down towards the nadir in its hollow; the swarthy Peruvian oarsmen strain at the oars, they avoid the jagged rocks between the boat and the pier by a hair’s breadth, and, at last, land us safely at the steps which are submerged more than half the time, and where we have to watch our chance to jump out of the boat when it rises to just the right height, neither too far above or too far below the slippery landing place. And this is the chief port of entrance and exit for a nation larger in area than France or Germany with Great Britain added to either one. The further approach to Bolivia is just as difficult as the entrance. A single track railway starts from Mol¬ lendo, and after running a dozen miles along the shore, it strikes boldly in among the mountains, and climbs and climbs and climbs 5,000, 10,000, almost 15,000 feet before it can find a pass by which the Andes can be crossed into the great republic of Bolivia, the third largest in all South America. At last, after climbing two gigantic ranges of mountains in the course of 300 miles, we come to Lake Titicaca. It would seem as though nature intended to THE SWITZERLAND OF SOUTH AMERICA 123 put every barrier of land and water between Bolivia and the outside world. To be sure, a great lake is not of itself a barrier, but a link between states and nations. But when we remember that every timber and steel plate and bolt and piece of machinery to construct the boats that sail this lake, must be brought from Europe or America, and toilsomely tran¬ sported over some of the highest mountains in the world, we see that a great lake, more than the length of Lake Erie, lying in the way of traffic, is at first a most seri¬ ous barrier. Let us take this journey from Mollendo on the sea into the heart of Bolivia. After being tossed ashore in a big row-boat, over the tremendous swells, we are glad to find that there is a train about to start up the mountains. There is nothing to detain us in the hot, dusty, stuffy Peruvian town of Mollendo, and we board the train that daily winds its way among the peaks of the Andes to Arequipa, a sort of half-way station to Bolivia, where all the trains tie up for the night. Our train consists of two passenger cars and a baggage car, built on the American plan. The second class car has no windows, but is all open at the sides, except for flopping curtains, that may be drawn down in case of rain or snow which are very common on the higher passes. The one first class coach looks as though it had done duty forty years ago on a second class American rail¬ road ; it is shabby and dirty, and, when it rains, it leaks at every pore, so that the passengers have to put up their umbrellas to keep from being soaked. The engines, however, seem new and of a good pattern, and were recently built by the Rogers Company of Wilmington, Delaware. For the first hundred miles or so there is no danger of a drenching, for it never rains on this arid coast, as the ) 124 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY sterile, parched mountains, through which we wend our way, declare. Their very barrenness is impressive, it is so absolute and uncompromising. Not a bit of sage brush or grease wood, even. Now and then a prickly cactus shows its head and builds itself up like the pipes of an organ, but, for many, many miles, even this plant of the desert cannot grow. Soon the engine begins to puff and labour, and we feel that we are rising in the world. In less than twenty miles we mount more than 3,000 feet, and the ascent is but just begun. Yawning gullies are on one side, tower¬ ing peaks on the other. There are no tunnels on this line, or at least only one in 300 miles, but the road winds around the head of all the ravines that cut into the mountainsides, and skirts the edge of the Andes, often hanging to the narrowest shelf of rock, while a thousand feet below is—destruction. But it is not all bitter barrenness. Way down in that cleft of the mountains, so far down that the eye can just perceive it, is a ribbon of green, and if we could get there we should find a narrow valley clothed with the heaviest alfalfa, where grapes and figs and oranges and pome¬ granates grow, all of which are brought for sale to the stations above by slatternly Peruvian women, and un¬ speakably dirty Peruvian boys. At a height of about 7,500 feet a wonderful scene bursts upon the eye. The valley of the Chili River widens into a broad expanse, green with Indian corn, wheat, barley, potatoes and alfalfa, and well up in this valley is the city of Arequipa, with its imposing cathedral, its many churches, and public buildings, and above all, its Har¬ vard Observatory, while ragged, rugged Chachani and symmetrical Misti dominate the city, as Table Mountain dominates Cape Town. Both of these magnificent moun¬ tains are nearly 20,000 feet high, and Misti is as regular THE SWITZERLAND OF SOTJTH AMERICA 125* in its conical beauty as Fujiyama, which it very much resembles, though it is fully 6,000 feet higher. But we will not stop in Arequipa for we have not yet nearly reached the border of Bolivia. The next morning our train pushes on again, around other fathomless ravines, skirting other sky-piercing mountains, always upon the edge of a tremendous precipice, except where the road crosses a high plateau, between two ranges of the Andes. One curious feature of the plains of the lower Andes is the travelling sand-hills. The prevailing colour of the mountains is a rich reddish brown, but these sand-hills, apparently blowing up from the sea, are composed of fine, white, drifting sand. As the wind drives the sand up the hillock, it falls down on the other side, forming a well-defined crescent, with the two horns pointing away from the prevailing direction of the wind. These travel¬ ling sand-hills, which are sometimes twenty feet high, and contain thousands of tons of sand, move along with a steady march in one direction, at the rate of several inches a day. No obstacle can stop them. When they come to a railway track all the line men cannot stay their progress, and either the hills must be shovelled off by many hours or days of work, or the track must be taken up and laid on the other side, for the moving sand is more resistless than an army with banners. Up, up, ever up, the railway climbs. At last after some twenty hours of steady ascent from Mollendo, the highest pass, 14,666 feet above the sea, is reached. We are nearly at the height of the top of Mt. Blanc, but the snow line in these tropics fifteen degrees from the equator, is 2,000 feet higher still. On all sides are these mag¬ nificent snow mountains, some of the highest in the world. At a height of about 10,000 feet even the cactus gets discouraged and only some tussocky grass, made possible 126 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY by the rains which are frequent here, and a kind of resinous moss much used for fuel, are found. But on this poor herbage great flocks of sheep, llamas, and alpacas thrive, and occasionally a yellow vicuna scampers away as the train approaches. The eye gets satiated with mountains after two days of such travel. It can take in no more Alpine wonders. We thread a precipitous mountainside without a shud¬ der, and calmly look down into an abysmal ravine on either side without any emotion. As we approach Bolivia the railway descends some 2,000 feet until it comes to Lake Titicaca, some 12,500 feet above the sea, a lake which is divided about evenly between Peru and Bolivia. In many respects this is the most wonderful lake in the world, as it is certainly the highest in altitude of any of the great lakes. Think of Lake Geneva, increased in size many times, until it is as large as all the Swiss lakes together, raised nearly two miles and a half in the air, and surrounded by peaks three times the height of the Eocher de Naye or the Dent du Midi, and one has some conception of this enormous reservoir among the Andes. This great lake, though it receives the waters of twenty rivers, has but one outlet, the sluggish Desaguardo river, through which part of its waters flow into Lake Poopo, another very large body of water, that lies at a somewhat lower level. But where do the waters go then ? No one can tell, for Poopo has apparently no outlet. Probably an underground river carries off the surplus waters of both lakes into the Pacific, 300 miles away, for it is said that a certain kind of small fish found in Lake Titicaca and Lake Poopo are also found in the ocean opposite these highland seas, and nowhere else. Two or three fairly comfortable steamers of consider¬ able size ply the waters of Titicaca, and the journey from THE SWITZERLAND OF SOUTH AMERICA 127 one end to the other, though only 120 miles in length, takes a night and half a day. The natives navigate a curious craft called a balsa, a small sail boat made of coarse rushes that grow abun¬ dantly on the shores of the lake. These reed boats will withstand the heavy seas which frequently roll against the shores of Titicaca, but after a few weeks become water-logged, and have to be hauled up for repairs,— i. e., to be dried in the sun, thus regaining their buoyancy. We crossed the lake for the first time on the Coy a, a steamer built in England and transported in small sec¬ tions to these almost inaccessible fastnesses of the Andes, and here put together, to sail the cold waters of this mountain lake. In Peruvian revolutions the Coya has witnessed exciting scenes, and contains many a bullet hole to show where the contending factions have fought for her possession, and many a blood stain, it is said, where one side or the other has bit the dust, or rather the dirt, on her deck. There is plenty of dirt to bite, surely, in any part of the boat, and the galley and the cook are probably the two dirtiest objects inanimate and animate, to be found in Peru or Bolivia. The Inca is a larger, cleaner, newer boat, which also plies these waters. May it always be the fortune of my readers to find her waiting for them when they essay to cross Titicaca. Most attractive are the shores of Titicaca on a bright summer’s day. In the middle of the lake we pass the famous Titicaca island, where the great God of the Incas, the first emperor, had his traditional birth, and where are the remains of an enormous and most interesting temple. The shores, on either side, are well cultivated in many places, and terraces reaching far up on the hill¬ side attest the industry and skill of the ancient Incas. From this enormous plain, surrounding Titicaca, came the great conquering race of Bolivia, which, 700 years 128 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY ago, swept north over the table-lands of Peru and Ecuador, carrying all before them, until they were the acknowledged rulers of South America, building their cities, their palaces, and their temples whose ruins are still the wonder of the world. On a bright day in the rainy season the shores of Titicaca are peculiarly attractive. The fresh vegetation of livid green contrasts with belts of red soil giving a rich and varied hue to the nearer hills, while the great mountains, Illimani and Sorato, always snow-clad, rising twenty-two thousand feet above the sea, and ten thousand feet above the lake, seem to guard the ancient possessions of the Incas, with their impenetrable ribs of rock and ice. On the Bolivian side of the lake we take the railway again for a ride of sixty miles across a gradually descend¬ ing plain to La Paz, the seat of government of this moun¬ tain republic. Past miserable little mud villages the train crawls, past flocks of sheep and llamas guarded by dirty shepherds, drenched by frequent rains, past plowed fields turned up with the same kind of a rude crooked stick which the Incas used a half century ago, until the most surprising sight of all our journey breaks upon our view. Nothing is to be seen for miles and miles but this vast level plain, some ten thousand square miles in extent, with the great mountains of Bolivia beyond, twenty of which rise to an elevation of nearly, if not quite, 20,000 feet. Suddenly we come to the edge of what seems to be a deep, wide crater, but is really a great hollow in the plateau, made by the erosion of water, and there, looking down into this vast hole in the earth, twelve hundred feet below, we see the city of La Paz, with its red-tiled roofs, its great churches, public buildings, plazas and market places. Nothing in all my travels has ever struck THE SWITZERLAND OF SOUTH AMERICA 129 me with more amazement, so sudden and unexpected is the sight of the great, ragged valley, in which nestles a city of 70,000 people, wholly hidden from view, until one peers over the edge of the sheltering cliff. A medern American trolley car takes one down the side of the crater, by many zigzags into the city, which is the real, though not the nominal, capital of Bolivia, the latest republic of South America to feel the throb of modern life, but one that is waking up with marvellous rapidity, one that has resources unequalled by any coun¬ try of its size in the world—a country that with a good government and an untrammelled, enlightened religious life, doubtless has a future commensurate with the heights of its mountains, the depths of its valleys, and the extent of its vast plateaus. XVI THE HERMIT REPUBLIC OF THE ANDES The Worst Seaport in the World—Reaching the Outer World—Bolivia and Utah—The “Seat of Government” and the Capital—Bolivia’s Immense Territory—Her Magnificent Distances—Her Vast Resources —Invigorating Coca Leaves—Chinchona Bark and the Quinine Pill— “ A Table of Silver on Legs of Gold ”—The Famous Potosi Mine- Silver, Tin and Copper—The Gentle Llama, the Camel of the Andes —Religious Liberty in Bolivia. I N some respects Bolivia is the most interesting Re¬ public in South America, though, at the same time, it is one of the poorest and decidedly the most inaccessible. Far more remote from modern civilization than Corea, the so-called Hermit Nation, which has many fine sea¬ ports, Bolivia, after the war with Chile in 1879, lost her little strip of seacost, which, at the best, was so remote from her centres of population and wealth as to be of little service to her. The only communication she has with the outside world as we have said is over a single track railroad line running from Lake Titicaca through Peru for 300 miles over lofty Andean passes, 14,500 feet above the sea ; or by a still longer and more difficult narrow-guage road from Oruro on the table-lands to Antofagasta on the Chilean shore. Two or three passenger trains a week, consisting of two cars each, and a few short freight trains every week, are all that surmount the tremendous Andean heights, to reach the mere outskirts of Bolivia, whose rich centre has never yet been pierced by rail or carriage road. 130 THE HEEMIT REPUBLIC OF THE ANDES 131 Unlike Corea, however, Bolivia is not a Hermit Nation by choice. Her isolation has been thrust upon her by nature and by the disastrous Chilean war, and now her people are doing all they can to remedy this remoteness and to bring her rich plateaus and richer mountains nearer to the rest of the family of nations. With a liberal and progressive and apparently stable government in power, in spite of enormous difficulties, Bolivia will doubtless succeed in this great undertaking. To picture Bolivia to yourself, imagine the state of Utah quadrupled in size, raised to twice its present height above the sea, and much of it spread out over a vast plateau, surrounded by mountains that rise to a height of 20,000 feet, while an occasional peak pierces the sky at an altitude of 22,000 or even 23,000 feet. Imagine the Great Salt Lake freshened and increased in size a dozen times into a lake half as large as Ontario, and you have Lake Titicaca. Imagine Salt Lake City dropped down into an immense crater 1,200 feet below the summit of the surrounding plain, and you have an idea of La Paz, the seat of government of Bolivia. I have said “seat of government” advisedly, for La Paz is not the legal capital, though the President of the Republic, the ministers of state, and all the foreign ministers live here. The Congress of the Republic convenes here, and all official business, except that of the Supreme Court, is transacted here. Sucr6 is the legal capital, but only in name, no government business, ex¬ cept that of the Supreme Court, being transacted there. In the last Revolution, some dozen years ago, the La Paz faction triumphed, and one of the spoils that be¬ longed to the victors was that the seat of government should be theirs, while the empty name of the legal capital went to Sucre. Before this, the capital had been a peripatetic affair, moving from La Paz to Sucre, then 132 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY to Cochabamba or to Oruro, or wherever the fancy of the ruling faction might take it. But during the last ten years Bolivia has won a new lease of life and prosperity, as we have said, under the enlightened presidency of Gen¬ eral Pando, continued by President Montt, who now holds the reigns of government. Under him the Hermit Republic of the Andes is emerging from her isolation, and taking an honourable, if still somewhat inconspicuous place among the nations. Bolivia has many things in her favour,—her immense territory, for one thing. No nation can become truly great that has not room for expansion either within her immediate borders or her colouies. Bolivia has room and to spare. The third largest in size of the South American Republics, surpassed only by Brazil and the Argentine Republic, no country in Europe is as large, with the exception of Russia. Bolivia extends for nearly 1,200 miles from north to south, and almost 700 from east to west. In all this vast extent of territory there are only about 1,600,000 people, a population much less than Connecticut’s to cover a ter¬ ritory larger than France, Belgium and Holland com¬ bined. The white people of all Bolivia would not make a city as large as Providence, however liberal one might be in construing the word “white.” More than half the people are full blooded Indians, degenerate descendants of the valiant Incas. In number of inhabitants to the square mile, the Hermit Republic ranks the lowest of all the nations of the world, having at the last census only ninety-nine one-hundredths of a person to every square mile, while Tripoli, which comes next in this respect, has one full inhabitant to the mile. But Bolivia is a country of vast resources as well as of magnificent distances—resources the very surface of which have hardly been scratched as yet. Its different climates THE HEBMIT REPUBLIC OF THE ANDES 133 at varying altitudes make every agricultural product possible, while its mountains contain every known mineral. From an elevation a thousand feet above the sea in the Amazonian region, to the plateaus of Titicaca, 13,000 feet above the sea, the country extends, and at those varying heights, tropical, subtropical, temperate, subarctic and arctic zones are found, and everything, from rubber, cof¬ fee, sugar-cane, and coca, to the hardiest grains and vegetables, will thrive. Several of these vegetable and mineral products are so interesting for various reasons that they deserve some paragraphs of special description. Coca, for instance, the plant from whose leaves cocaine is extracted, is one of the most valuable products of Bolivia. In no other country does it flourish so well. It is a shrub growing from two to eight feet high, and is cultivated in the temperate regions of the western plateaus. The third year after sprouting, a coca plantation begins to bear, and yields fifty per cent, annually on the original cost, and will last for thirty or forty years. The leaves, which are small and oblong in shape, are stripped off the shrub and dried flat, and are then brought to La Paz in large bags, where they are peddled out to the natives by the pennyworth, or sent off to France to be manufactured into the cocaine of commerce. As used by the Indians, it seems to be a harmless stimulant, for they simply chew the dried leaves, some¬ times mingled with a little lime stone, and you often see an Indian on the street of La Paz with his cheek bulging out on the side as though he had a big internal wen. Thus used, coca leaves are said to be slow, steady and in¬ vigorating in their action, enabling a labourer to walk for long distances with a heavy pack on his back, or to work all day without food. The results of cocaine, when used unintelligently as a drug, are deplorable enough, and it 134 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY is a question whether the Bolivian coca plantations are more of a curse or a blessing to mankind. Chinchona bark, from which comes the quinine of the drug store, is another important product of Bolivia, about whose benefit to mankind there can be no such question. Bolivia is the natural home of the chinchona tree and the very best quality is raised here. There are said to be 6,000,000 chinchona trees in the country, and to every one who has taken a two-grain quinine pill, they are of in¬ terest. They grow on rough mountainsides a thousand or two thousand feet above the sea, and the trees are raised from seed sprouted in a hothouse. In about five years the trees attain a height of twelve or fifteen feet, and can then be peeled for commerce. They have slender, smooth trunks, and glossy leaves, not unlike an orange tree. Two or three times a year narrow strips of bark from one foot to ten feet long are peeled off and thrown upon a brick platform to dry. They curl up like cinnamon bark, and after being dried for two or three days are packed in rawhides and shipped from Mollendo in Peru or Antofa¬ gasta in Chile, to all parts of the world. A year or two after the bark has been peeled off the tree, it grows again, and the process can be repeated almost indefinitely. Sugar, coffee, of an excellent quality, rice, and indeed almost all products of the tropical or temperate zones are raised in Bolivia, and a walk through the markets of La Paz, Oruro, or any other large town, shows the abundance of fruit that the country boasts; oranges, bananas, peaches, grapes, pears and apples of poor quality, cher¬ ries, grenadillas, avocado pears, and some fruits and vegetables that one rarely sees outside of Bolivia, are found in abundance, brought to the cold, arid table-lauds from the warm valleys less than thirty miles away. The mineral products of the Hermit Bepublic are THE HERMIT REPUBLIC OF THE ANDES 135 quite as numerous and interesting as its flora. An old writer has described Bolivia as “ a table of silver on legs of gold,” and this poetical description is scarcely an ex¬ aggeration. It contains some of the most famous silver mines in the world, and with all their enormous produc¬ tion, they are far from exhausted. Potosi Mountain, for instance, is the very synonym for silver. In fifty years, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this mountain yielded in taxes to the Spanish crown three billions and a quarter of dollars, and as Spain mercifully took only one-fifth of the product of these mines in taxes, they must have produced sixteen billions of Bolivianos (the national dollar) in half a century, to say nothing of what was smuggled out of the country. Potosi is still producing silver, though to no very large extent, and there are said to be ten thousand abandoned silver mines in the country. Modern machinery and methods of mining and reducing the ore, will doubtless in the future make silver mining in Bolivia as profitable as ever, for the silver mountains still contain fabulous treasure. As a matter of fact, tin and copper have been dis¬ covered in such large quantities of late, and of such a high grade that they have decidedly eclipsed the silver inter¬ est. In tin Bolivia is especially rich. For 250 miles, from the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca, to the southern frontier, tin is found, and these mines completely throw the mines of Cornwall in the shade, and even rival the tin deposits of the Straits Settlements. In many places the metal is more than fifty per cent, pure, and both the tin and copper ore is so rich that it can be transported for scores of miles on mule back, for hundreds more by rail, for still other thousands by sea, before it is smelted in Europe or America, and yet be mined at a profit, in spite of all these enormous transportation charges. Perhaps in these days of high prices for the metal, copper is the most 136 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY important mineral product of Bolivia, for it is found in immense quantities and of remarkable purity. It is difficult to determine whether the vegetable, mineral or animal products of the Hermit Eepublic are most interesting. The possibilities in live stock raising are almost unlimited on the vast uplands in the neigh¬ bourhood of Lake Titicaca, where sheep, cattle, horses, llamas, alpacas and vicunas thrive. Of all these animals the llama is by far the most interesting and important. Wherever you go in Bolivia this attractive and gentle creature is in evidence. Look out of the car window and you are likely to see a herd of them scampering away from the train. Take a lonely trail through the moun¬ tains, and thousands of those little burden bearers will pass you in single file in the course of the day. Walk through the streets of La Paz, Sucre, or Oruro, and every few minutes you will pass a flock of these animals with ears pricked forward, inquisitively and timorously, their long graceful necks stretched out, and their big liquid eyes full of fear and wonder at the unaccustomed city sights. They are a little larger than a donkey, and are of almost all shades, buff, black, white, reddish, and mixed colours. They partake of the nature of the camel and the sheep, for their wool is good for clothing and their backs are easily bent to the burden. They will plod along at the rate of fifteen miles a day for weeks, with a load of one hundred pounds tied to their backs, never asking for a drink of water, and content to board themselves on the grass and moss and leaves they can find by the roadside. Their only vice is an unpleasant habit of spitting an evil smelling saliva when provoked or frightened, but even this habit they indulge in but seldom, and on the whole are among the most gentle, attractive and beautiful ani¬ mals I have ever seen. They are almost as useful as the THE HERMIT REPUBLIC OF THE ANDES 137 reindeer to the Laps, for tlie flesh is good for food, the wool for clothing, the hide for footwear, and the bones for looms and spindles. A llama can be bought for five dollars in gold and is well worth the price, one would think. The vicuna is another animal peculiar to the uplands of South America. It looks not unlike a llama, but is really, I believe, a species of antelope. It has never been tamed, but its skin is prized for the softness and beauty of its furry wool, from which elegant rugs are made. Bolivia is also the natural home of the alpaca, but un¬ fortunately little attention is given to its development, and the exportation of alpaca wool has fallen to almost nothing. Rich as Bolivia is in all natural products, the problem still remains, how to utilize them and how to transport these riches to the outside world. To this problem the government is addressing itself with vigour and intelli¬ gence. Railroads are being projected in several direc¬ tions ;—to connect with the head waters of the Amazon, to reach the Pacific through Peru and Chile at Mollendo and Antofagasta, and to connect with the Argentine rail¬ road in that great republic, thus affording another outlet to the Atlantic. For the manufactures of Bolivia, little can be said. They are confined to a few rude native products, and almost everything that the higher classes use is brought in from Europe or America. The school system of Bolivia is still in a primitive and rather chaotic condition, but the government is earnestly turning its attention in this direction. To Rev. Mr. Harrington, a Methodist missionary from the United States, the government has given a subvention of $35,000 to look after the schools of Oruro, and, if he succeeds in this undertaking, as he undoubtedly will, for he is an 138 THE CONTINENT OP OPPOETUNITY able and experienced educator, the whole school system of Bolivia may be put in his charge. In August, 1906, religious liberty was proclaimed as the law of the land with only two dissenting votes. Bolivia has evidently started upon a new career and a happier one than she has ever known. Foreigners and foreign capital are pouring into the country. The American colony in La Paz has more than trebled within three years. New routes are being explored, new mines are being opened up, new agricultural regions are being de¬ veloped, the immensely rich rubber country at the head¬ waters of the Amazon is being exploited, highways are being built, and, as I have said, railways projected in various directions. Bolivia is a country without a debt, without a tax on property, all her resources being raised by customs duties. She has millions of dollars in her treasury, the price of territory sold recently to Brazil, to be used for the de¬ velopment of the railway system both towards the At¬ lantic and the Pacific. When these outlets to the outer world are completed, as doubtless they will be within a half dozen years, Bolivia will no longer be the Hermit Eepublic of South America. XYII OUR WINDOW IN LA PAZ In tha Gran Central Hotel—Twelve Thousand Feet Above the Sea—A Scene of Desolate Grandeur—Glowing Colours—The Headwaters of the Amazon—Female Flower Gardens—No Bace Suicide—The Poncho —Human Burden Bearers—Donkeys and Llamas—Frozen Potatoes —The Beggars Coming to Town—More Commonplace Sights. O UE window in La Paz affords no ordinary out¬ look. I venture to say there is not another in all the world from which such sights can be viewed, except perhaps other windows in this same Bolivian capital from which I am writing this chapter. In the first place, it is no light task to get to our win¬ dow. To be sure, it is only in the third story of the “Gran Central Hotel,” as this very poor and very ex¬ pensive hostelry is grandiloquently named, and one has only to mount two flights of stairs to reach our window j but those two flights make the heart palpitate and the breath come short, for our window is just twelve thousand feet above the sea, and the air is so rare and contains so little oxygen that it makes even the hardened native puff to mount the stairs, and the “gringo” (any foreigner) has to stop at least once on the way up, to regain his lost wind. But take three or four short, panting breaths, and then one or two long ones to fill the lungs once more, and you are all right for the second flight, which leads you to our window. It is worth the exertion, for it is a wonderful view which meets the eye when you reach it. Directly in front of our window lies the Alto or edge of the table-land a thousand feet above us ; and we see that, 139 140 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY high as we are above the sea, we are yet down in a tre¬ mendous valley scooped out by the action of water,—a great, broad basin hollowed out of the vast plateau of Bolivia, which is five hundred miles broad between the ranges of the Andes, and nearly twice as long as it is broad. The sides of our basin slope steeply up to the Alto on either side ; and, since this is the rainy season, the red soil is streaked in places with green, where the Indians raise a little afalfa or barley or a few potatoes. But for the most part it is a scene of desolate grandeur that we see from our window. It is so high that only the hardiest plants thrive, and the trees are stunted and few. The great basin of La Paz has been cut up by innumera¬ ble floods into many earth monuments, composed largely of stones and small boulders, many of them as sharp as the aiguilles of Switzerland or the needles on the coast of the Isle of Wight. Some one has said that man has built the ramparts of every other walled city, but God built the walls of La Paz. And so He did. He built them more than a thou¬ sand feet high on every side but one, and on that side He left but a narrow gateway through which the people can get out into the rich and fertile lowlands, or rather lower lands, that lie a day’s journey from La Paz towards the Pacific. The colours that we see from our window are remark¬ able. The mountains here and there seem to be painted with yellow ochre. Occasionally we see a stripe of Indian red, while, towering up above them all, is grand Illimani, one of the three highest mountains in this land of tremendous peaks, its head and shoulders always clad in spotless, perpetual white. The La Paz River rushes turbulently through the city, its muddy, yellow waters dashed to foam in its eagerness OUR WINDOW IN LA PAZ 141 to get on to the Atlantic, for we have crossed the water¬ shed between the great oceans, and, after toilsomely climbing for four hundred miles from the Pacific, and after crossing two great ranges of the Andes, one of which at its lowest pass is almost three miles above the sea, we have come to the great divide, the roof of South America. To be sure, the La Paz River is not a mighty stream, even in the rainy season, and in the dry season it dwindles to a good-sized brook ; but it is interesting as one of the head waters of the Amazon, and in imagina¬ tion we can trace its course as it swells in volume in its precipitous course, changing its name frequently, until at last it joins the Madeira, and then later on the mighty Amazon, to which the little river which we see tumbling through the capital of Bolivia, thousands of miles away from the waiting sea, is less than the drop in the pro¬ verbial bucket. But there are other interesting things to see from our window besides mountains and rivers and the edge of the great saucer in which La Paz lies so snugly. The level, flat, red-tiled roofs, covering so many acres, show that here is a large city, large at least for the heart of the Andes, a city of seventy thousand people, the most populous and important place in all the republic of Bolivia. Here and there the red-tiled roofs are broken by a church tower, the soft white stone of which it is built carved into many symbols in a rude but effective way ; and from the belfry float the musical tones of the fre¬ quent bells, calling the people to worship. Every picture gains in interest from the life which animates it, and the picture from our window is full of human movement and colour. A constant kaleidoscope of changing hues is that narrow cobble-paved highway be- 142 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY low us. Here comes a woman in vuluminous skirts that stand out all around her, reminding us of boyhood’s days, when wide hoops were fashionable ; but a feminine friend more versed in such matters tells us that the effect is produced not by hoops, but by very full skirts, and several of them, one over another. However little we understand such things, we know bright colours when we see them, and of all female flower- gardens the Indian and Cholo (half-breed) women of La Paz take the prize. Reds of all shades and tints pass our window constantly in these full, flaunting skirts, until we think the natives have all adopted Eugene Field’s maxim, “ Any colour, so long as it’s red, Is the colour that suits me best.” But as soon as we conclude that they all dress in flaring red, a group of women in yellow, sky-blue, orange, grass- green, or purple comes along. One can never look out of our window in La Paz in the daytime without seeing this moving procession of colour, the brightest and most striking to be seen on the planet. Cairo and Bombay are full of bright and gay costumes, but for pure, unadulterated colour La Paz out¬ strips them all. On their heads the women wear homely round chip hats, and often over their shoulders a dark manta, thus concentrating all their colour upon their wide, flowing skirts. Almost all of them, too, have a burden on their backs. It is often a baby, whose red-brown face and sparkling black eyes peer out of the shawl tied around his mother’s neck ; for there is no race-suicide in Bolivia. Either on the back, or in front at the maternal fount, two women out of every three seem to carry a baby. OUB WINDOW IN LA PAZ 143 If by any chance it is not a baby, the woman is sure to have some other burden quite as heavy—a bag of potatoes or fruit, a load of coca leaves, or a basket of llama manure, their common fuel. The men are not so picturesque in their attire as the women, but even they are very gay—for men. Their characteristic garment, without which no Cholo is half dressed, is the poncho, which is nothing more than a bright blanket with a hole in the middle, through which the wearer sticks his head, while the blanket falls down in folds on all sides. Edmund Spenser’s description of the Irishman’s mantle in his day has been well applied to the Bolivian’s poncho : i 1 When it raineth, it is his penthouse; when it bloweth, it is his tent; when it freezeth, it is his taber¬ nacle. In summer he can wear it loose ; in winter he can wrap it close ; at all times he can use it, never heavy, never cumbersome.” Though the men do not affect such bright colours as the women, their ponchos are usually red, green, or blue, often with a border of still brighter colours. On their heads they wear a woolen cap like a Canadian toque, with big ear-laps that cover their ears, even in the hottest weather, and on top of that a dirty felt hat. Their trousers are of some dark material, slit up behind to a point above the knee, so that they may roll them up easily when walking through wet grass or mud. They, too, are burden-bearers as well as the women, and we often see one staggering up our street from the railway station half a mile away, with a trunk weigh¬ ing two hundred pounds upon his back. Anything from a pound of peas to a piano they will carry on their patient, long-suffering backs; for there are very few cabs and no wagons in La Paz, and every burden must be carried on the backs of men, women, donkeys or llamas. 144 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY And this brings me to say that the brute beasts that we see from our window are almost as interesting as the human beings. There is a long line of patient donkeys, each with his apportioned load, it may be a hundred bottles of beer, their necks stuck through holes in the case, or two great panniers of bread, one on either side, or four large milk-cans balanced in the same way, or perhaps a load of flattened carcasses of sheep, which have been frozen and dried until they are as tough as sole leather, and quite as dry. More interesting than the donkeys are the llamas, the graceful, timid, obedient little camels of the Andes, with their long, graceful necks and their ears pricked for¬ ward, scenting danger in these unaccustomed streets. They, too, have their burden, each of about a hundred pounds, which they have brought down from the higher plains ; alfalfa, perhaps, or barley cut green for fodder, or pineapples, oranges, figs, and bananas from the lower plains. Opposite our window a Cholo woman has opened a fruit stand, where she tempts the passer-by with big green grapes, purple figs, yellow quinces, and red cher¬ ries. She also sells cauliflowers, beans, pink potatoes, and some curious white things about as big as large marbles and fully as hard. No one unlearned in things Bolivian could guess what they are, if he should guess a hundred times; but you would be told, if you asked a native, that they, too, were potatoes. Potatoes, of all things ! They look more like stones, little snowballs, anything but potatoes. But po¬ tatoes they are, frozen and dried, with their skins rubbed off, and frozen again and dried once more, until they have lost their identity as potatoes, and become dried starch, that will keep for years. The Indians rub off the skins by trampling on the tubers with their bare feet ? OUK WINDOW IN LA PAZ 145 which does not add to onr appetite for our next dish of Bolivian soup, in which frozen potatoes are a chief in¬ gredient. We see rags and dirt and filth unspeakable from our window, as well as bright colours and brilliant costumes. Dirt in layers, in patches, in scales j dirt ingrained and ineradicable. And such rags! “Some in rags, and some in tags, But none in velvet gowns,” do the beggars of La Paz come to town, to vary an old nursery rhyme. To be truthful and tell all that we see from our window, we must record that the fruit-woman opposite does not spend all her time in vending her fruit and vegetables ; but, when trade is slack, she turns to live stock, and over¬ hauls the head of her little daughter. When she finds a particularly choice morsel there, she gives it to her, though she generally eats them herself. Disgusting I Truly; but, if you would know how the people live, we must tell you all; and this is a not uncommon sight in La Paz. But there are other more wholesome, if more common¬ place, sights. There come a man and woman, both dressed in the height of fashion. Paris styles and picture hat for the lady ; Prince Albert coat, silk hat, gloves and cane for the man. The distant church bells call to mass, and neat, black-robed figures hurry through our street, with black mantillas over their heads and prayer-books in their hands, while behind each one a little slavey, bearing a prayer-stool quite as big as herself, stumbles along. Let us hope that the black-robed lady finds consolation and strength in her service, however formal and mean- 146 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY ingless it seems to us; and let us hope that she does not forget the soul or the body of the little slavey who trots patiently after her. Truly our window in La Paz reveals many a strange glimpse of life in the high Bolivian Andes. XVIII ANCIENT AND MODERN CHILE The Topography of Chile—Blessed by the Absence of Gold—The Ancient Chileans—The Brave Araucanians—European Blood and European Names—The Heroic O’Higgins—Chile’s Struggle for Independence— San Martin, the Hero of the War—Who Can Vote in Chile—The Pres¬ ident’s Power—The War with Peru and Bolivia—The Last Civil War—A War Happily Averted. T HE history of Chile, though following the gen¬ eral outlines of the other South American Re¬ publics, has distinctive peculiarities of its own which make it of decided interest. In the nomenclature of some of our congressional districts it would be called the “ Shoestring Republic, ” being very long and exceed¬ ingly narrow, and extending from about the eighteenth degree of south latitude to the fifty-fifth, a distance of fully twenty-five hundred miles, while its average breadth is scarcely more than a hundred. Imagine the United States as stretching from Nova Scotia to the Isthmus of Panama, running back from the shore as far as the Catskill Mountains from New York, or the Berkshire hills from Boston, and we have some rough idea of the general topography of Chile. Chile was greatly blessed, especially in her early his¬ tory, by the absence of gold and silver mines. Para¬ doxical as this statement sounds, its truth will be seen when we remember how Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, the Inca states to the north, were cursed by the gold which provoked the cupidity of the Spaniards, and resulted in the cruel wars and horrible oppressions that, over and 147 148 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY over again, decimated the people, and reduced them, in two centuries, to one-tenth of their original numbers. In fact when Almagro, the chief lieutenant of Pizarro, to whom was assigned the southern part of South Amer¬ ica, pushed his way into Chile, in his insatiable search for gold, and found, instead, a pastoral and agricultural people, who knew little about gold and cared less for it, he turned north again, in disgust, raised the banner of revolt against Pizarro, and was promptly beaten and as promptly beheaded by that uncompromising tyrant. Almagro found that almost the whole of the territory occupied by modern Chile had been conquered by the Incas, about a century before the Spaniards landed on their shores. Agriculture in these long and fertile val¬ leys to the south of Peru and Bolivia, we are told, was highly developed ; u the people were clothed in substan¬ tial stuffs of their own manufacture ; they mined copper, tin and lead, and possessed excellent arms and tools. The tribes all spoke the same language, but each enjoyed a degree of autonomy under its own chiefs. Their habits were democratic; they loved freedom and independence, the Inca socialistic system did not prevail, and each farmer owned his own field and could transmit it to his children. The race was large and vigorous, the selected survivors from among immigrants who had been greatly improved by countless generations of struggle in the more rigorous climate.” In this last sentence we have another decisive element in Chile’s comparative prosperity and almost uniform success in battle. Her territory lies largely in the tem¬ perate zone, and even the part which comes within the tropics is so near the sea, and so affected by the cool and life-giving Humboldt current, that a hardy, vigorous, self-reliant race has been the result. But to return to Chile’s early history. Having dis- AN INDIAN OF CHILE. A BOLIVIAN INDIAN. ANCIENT AND MODERN CHILE 149 posed of liis rebellious lieutenant Almagro, Pizarro in 1540 sent Valdivia, an able Spanish general, to conquer all the region to the south of Peru. He met with little opposition and indeed was welcomed by some powerful tribes as their ally against the fierce Araucanians who dwelt south of the river Biobio. A long war followed with these valiant and warlike Indians, which lasted with various intermissions for sixty years, and resulted in leav¬ ing the Araucanians masters of the situation, and rulers of all the land below the Biobio. This mastery they maintained during all the Spanish occupation, and it is only in comparatively recent years that these valiant warriors have really been incorporated into the Republic of Chile. Of late an important and successful missionary work has been undertaken by the South American Missionary Society of Great Britain to which this brave race happily and readily responds. The development of Chile in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was slower, but much more natural and substantial than in the Inca states to the north. She was not oppressed and ravaged by gold-thirsty tyrants as they were, and the wars with the Araucanians on the southern frontier proved a school of military training which developed many local heroes, who rose to high places of influence and power. Agriculture and stock-raising, being the chief indus¬ tries of the country, rather than gold and silver mining, proved to be a slower but far more substantial and desir¬ able basis of wealth which could not so easily be trans¬ planted to Spain, leaving the country impoverished as were Peru and Bolivia. Most of the landed proprietors lived upon their estates, and treated their labourers with some kind of decent consideration, and these labourers were docile and obedient. 150 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Thus the history of Chile wrote itself for the most part in peaceful characters for nearly two centuries, until the great upheaval came which, in the early part of the nineteenth century, wrenched, one after another, every province of South America from the control of Spain. To be sure, the inhabitants were ignorant and backward, and the common people lived in wretched poverty, but, compared with their northern neighbours, they were con¬ tented and happy. Another thing which has promoted the greater pros¬ perity of Chile has been the large infusion of European blood from different nations, especially from Great Britain in the earlier years of her independence. To call the roll of the leading families of Chile to-day, would seem like reading a page of the London or Glasgow or Belfast directory. O’Higgins, Mackenna, Walker, Edwards, Prat, Tupper, MacClure, Ross, Cumming, Day, are still the leading names, and, in most of the larger towns and many smaller ones, we see Edwards Street and Walker Street and Prat Plaza and O’Higgins Square. O’Higgins is perhaps the most famous name of all. A young Irish lad of this name, in the later days of the Spanish rule, drifted to Valparaiso from Argentina, and by his ability, military and executive, became in the course of the years, governor of Chile, and finally viceroy of the Spanish dominions. A good and honest adminis¬ tration he gave the people, and his son, Bernardo O’Hig¬ gins, was no less distinguished, though less successful, in the later revolution. The struggle of Chile for independence was a long and arduous one, lasting throughout the decade from 1809- 1819. The last Spaniards indeed were not driven from her southern shores until 1826, though victory was prac¬ tically won six years before. In this tedious war San Martin, the Argentine general, ANCIENT AND MODEEN CHILE 151 was the chief heroic figure, as on all this western coast. Lord Cochrane, the erratic British naval commander, was another large factor in obtaining the freedom of Chile, though he did not reach her shores until near the close of the war. But his energetic maneuvres made up for the lateness of his arrival, and he soon drove the Spanish fleet for refuge under the guns of the fortress of Callao, and made the coast line and the southern seas free for the patriots. He performed some prodigies of valour, which will always live in the gallant history of the sea, but per¬ haps the best service he performed for Chile was bringing in his train a number of Scotchmen and Englishmen who, remaining, and marrying in Chile, have now become her leading families, furnishing some of the eminent names we have before recorded. Since the war for independence Chile has suffered the usual internal disturbances, common to all the South American states. But her birth-throes have not been so severe nor as prolonged as those of her sister states. She has enjoyed more periods of rest and recuperation, and of late years, with the exception of one civil war, she has turned her attention to foes without, rather than foes within. One reason for this is that she has had a larger body of conservative landed proprietors as the backbone of her society than her neighbours to the north, and conserva¬ tive and business conserving politics have ruled during most of her history. The earliest constitution of Chile recognized the aristoc¬ racy as a ruling political element in the government and the constitution, even though amended, more than once, is “the most aristocratic and centralized of American constitutions.” To vote, a man must have an income of a thousand pesos or dollars, but as the dollar is worth to¬ day only about twenty-five cents in gold, it is not a high 152 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY property qualification. There is an education clause in the suffrage bill as well, but men who can read and write are generally allowed to vote, though the constitution de¬ mands both education and property. In theory the President has far more power than the President of the United States. He is not only comman- der-in-chief of the army and navy, but controls the judi¬ ciary and has practically an absolute veto over the legis¬ lature. This power, however, he has rarely used, and in effect the government of Chile seems about as democratic and more stable than that of the other South America republics. Little by little the constitution has been liberalized and the power of the aristocracy curbed without many serious internal commotions. Practical religious liberty is secured, though the constitution recognizes only the state church. Civil marriage, a great boon, has also been secured by the people. The war with Spain in 1865 was one of the marked events in later Chilean history. Spain’s strong navy had the coast at its mercy, but accomplished nothing perma¬ nent in the way of humbling her former colony, beyond bombarding Valparaiso, where ten millions of dollars’ worth of property was destroyed, in three hours and a half. Then the Spanish fleet sailed away, without even extracting the demanded apology for alleged insults from the Chileans. During all these years and up to the present time, with the usual interruptions, to which all nations are subject, the financial and commercial prosperity of Chile has con¬ tinued. Foreigners, especially Germans, have flocked into the country of late years and have often made them¬ selves rich by their energy in exploiting the resources of the country. In 1879 when the fortunes of Chile had suffered a A. MARKET SCENE IN CHILE. ANCIENT AND MODEEN CHILE 153 temporary reverse, and her revenues were at their lowest ebb, her war with the allies Peru and Bolivia for the nitrate beds, though considered by many an unjust war, recuperated her resources, and by a single victory over the celebrated ironclad Huascar , commanded by the heroic Admiral Grau, Chile captured the chief source of her enemies, and was able to double her wealth of both revenues in a single month. The great event of the last decade of the nineteenth century was the civil war between the party of President Balmaceda, who had been elected by the liberals, and the congressional party who represented the conserva¬ tives. The President retained command of the land forces, and the Congressionalists captured the navy in the early days of the struggle. With this they terrorized the coast, blockaded the principal ports, captured the nitrate fields, and, with them, most of the revenues of the country, and soon routed the Balmacedists, horse, foot and dragoons. President Balmaceda took refuge in the Argentine legation where he remained unknown to his enemies who had captured Santiago, the capital, until the last day of his term of office, when he com¬ mitted suicide, from a lofty but mistaken view of patriotism and friendship, that his death might unify the warring factions, and relieve his friends of the Argentine legation of any responsibility for his escape. Since that disastrous civil war, Chile has enjoyed peace, though she has been on the brink of war more than once with her powerful and rapidly growing neigh¬ bour to the east, the Argentine Eepublic. Both countries nearly impoverished themselves in the purchase of iron¬ clads in anticipation of war, but in 1898 a conflict was averted by the arbitration of the American minister, and in 1902 by the intervention of England, and now happily the ironclads are for sale. An heroic figure of the Christ, 154 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY the Prince of Peace, on the very highest point of the Andean pass between the two countries, happily tells of the triumph of arbitration over war. Just now (1907) Chile seems to be in a period of de¬ pression compared with Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. President Montt has many enemies within the govern¬ ment, who often thwart his well-meant efforts; the cur¬ rency of the country is greatly depreciated, being worth only about half as much as that of Peru, which is on a gold basis; and Valparaiso, the chief commercial city, was sorely smitten in the awful earthquake of 1906, which destroyed so many thousands of lives and so many millions of property. But Valparaiso is already rising from her ruins, and her ashes, and Chile will doubtless come forth from this present depression in her fortunes, stronger and more stable than ever, as she has so often emerged from more serious troubles in the past. XIX THE WEALTH OF CHILE A Sombre, Monotonous Scene—The Jewel in the Rough Casket—The Animal Life on the Chilean Coast—How the Guano Islands are Made —The Lobos Islands—The Nitrate Business of Antofagasta—Shooting the Chute—The Origin of the Nitrate Beds—The “Nevada” of the Andes—How the Nitrate is Extracted—How Long Will It Last—The Bitter Antipathy of Peru—What the United States Sends to Chile. S I write I am sitting on tlie upper deck of the Chilean steamer, Loa , in the rough, surf- lashed roadstead of Antofagasta. Behind one of the dreariest, dullest looking towns in the world, rise some of the dullest, dreariest hills that my eyes ever rested on. They are not high enough to be grand. There is not a tree or a blade of grass or a flower or even a cactus plant to be seen as far as the eye can reach in any direction. The dun-coloured houses can hardly be distinguished from the dun-coloured foot-hills of the Andes into which they seem to melt. One or two great copper smelters, idle because it does not pay to work them any longer, only add to the sombre, hopeless monotony of the scene. For hundreds of miles on either side of Antofagasta, the same unpromising scene greets the eye ; dull, brown, rainless, verdureless hills and surf-washed shores, entirely inaccessible in most places because of the heavy Pacific swell. Yet in this miserable harbour of Antofagasta, one of the worst and most dangerous in the world, I can count at this moment more than a dozen large steamers from all parts of the world, and more than twenty great 155 156 THE CONTINENT OF OBPOETUNITY square-rigged sailing ships, all drawing full cargoes from this unpromising coast. Behind these dreary hills of sand and rock lies the wealth of Golconda, which the rapacity of three hundred years of Spanish rule and the recklessness of recent re¬ publican days have not been able to squander. It is in¬ teresting to enquire further about the jewel enclosed in such a rough casket, as the wealth of Chile. This consists largely in copper, nitrate and guano, though much tin, silver, quinine, coca, and other pro¬ ductions of isolated Bolivia, for which Chile gets the credit, come through these ports. Copper mining and smelting are much the same in all parts of the world, whether in Montana, Michigan or Chile, and I need not dwell on this source of Chilean wealth, except to say that there are probably no richer mines in the world than those of the west coast of South America, and they are being developed, and their yellow treasures extracted on a larger and larger scale every year, by American and European capitalists. But guano and nitrate present sources of wealth that have unique and interesting features, and Chile controls the world’s supply of both these fertilizers. If Horace Greeley’s dictum about the man who makes two blades of grass to grow where one grew before, is true, what shall we say of the country that supplies plant food enough to nourish four blades of grass on the sterilest New England farms, where none grew before ! Manure may not seem a very savoury subject, but it is a vastly important one in the world’s economy, and I have considerable sympathy for 1 ‘Elizabeth in Buegen” who spent on fertilizers for her German garden, the money her husband gave her for a birthday present. A few days ago in the long journey down this monoto¬ nous coast, the tedium was broken, as was remarked by the THE WEALTH OF CHILE 157 flight over our ship of millions and millions of sea birds ; gulls, ducks, divers of divers kinds, and great pelicans with huge pouches hanging from their under bills. The sea was as lively as the air, and tens of millions of fish, large and small, in huge schools, were darting through the still waters, sometimes showing their fins above the surface, as they were chased by the larger monsters of the deep. Every second the keen-eyed gulls would poise on even wing, and then drop like plummets into the sea to re¬ appear with a fish in their bills, while the big, sociable, lumbering pelicans would drop in battalions, making a splash that could be heard half a mile away, and sending up foam and spray like a dozen park fountains. Their whole bodies would be submerged for several seconds, but they seldom missed their prey, which they would comfortably dispose of in their pouches, and then rise to pounce once more upon their quarry. After a time these greedy birds would get so much in their pouches that they could no longer rise into the air, until the first load was digested. The seals and porpoises and sea lions were as busy as the birds, and were constantly showing their shiny, sinu¬ ous bodies above the surface, as they chased the fish, or came up to breathe. This marvellous fecundity of life in sea and air, which can probably be matched nowhere else in the world, ac¬ counts for the guano islands, those sterile, gray volcanic rocks by which we had been sailing. These islands, so convenient to their dinners and breakfasts, these birds for countless ages have chosen for their night encamp¬ ments. Here they have brought and dropped the fish they could not eat. Here the seals have also crawled up to bask in the sun, and often to die, as it would seem, for it is said that five hundred tons of sealskins have been 158 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY found on a single island, and here, unconsciously, bird and beast and fish have been accumulating wealth for Peru and Chile, and fertilizers for all the rest of the world. For hundreds of miles along the South American coast, these guano islands are scattered. Near Salaverry, a long way north of Callao, in Peruvian waters, one finds them, and far south beyond the borders of Peru. In the war of 1879 they were largely taken by Chile, but not be¬ fore Peru had extracted a billion dollars’ worth of guano from them and reaped a revenue of many millions for her national treasury. They are now partially exhausted, though the supply of birds and fish and seals is inex¬ haustible, and, as the birds are protected, new deposits are constantly made. The guano of the Lobos Islands, which the United States once controlled and then gave back to Peru, to the everlasting gratitude of the Peruvians, is found in pockets, we are told. “ It is covered with layers of sand from two to fifteen feet thick. The sand is shovelled off, and the guano taken out. As it is dug into, so strong a smell of ammonia arises that men have to wear iron masks over their faces to keep the ammonia dust out of their mouths, noses and lungs. The guano looks like fine sand, which is first loaded on trucks, and then carried on a tramway to the shore, where it is transferred to the ships to be taken to Europe and America. After a few days at sea the odour disappears. The ammonia of the upper crust passes off, and the filthiness of the cargo is not detected until one goes into the hold.” A far greater and more inexhaustible source of wealth of the west coast of South America is the nitrate beds, for which chiefly Chile went to war, and which she cap¬ tured from Peru nearly thirty years ago. The town of Antofagasta, on which I look whenever, as I write, I turn my eyes landward, is chiefly a nitrate town, and the THE WEALTH OF CHILE 159 many large ships in the harbour are largely nitrate ships. To be sure, Antofagasta is also a shipping port for Bolivia, by which she is connected by a slender line of narrow gauge railway six hundred miles long, that stretches far up towards the centre of South America, but if it were not for the nitrate business, this busy port would soon be deserted. Two hundred miles to the north is the town of Iquique, the largest and most important between Callao and Val¬ paraiso, a town of 30,000 people, with good streets, good stores and several banks, and a wealth of shipping in the harbour, all dependent on the nitrate fields. A hundred miles farther north still, is Pisagua, a similar but smaller port, from which a railway starts that does nothing but haul nitrate and supplies for the nitrate works and workers. Besides these, there are half a score of smaller, but busy, ports where nitrate is the sole business. For half a day we lay tossing on the long rolling swells of the Pacific of the little harbour of Caleta Buena, to whose nitrate miners we were bringing supplies of cabbages, potatoes, oranges and bananas. A precipitous cliff rises almost directly from the shore, and, on the face of this cliff, almost as steep as the side of a house, in four great chutes, nitrate cars were running up and down; the full cars coming down, forced the empty cars up, like so many great buckets in a well, only that in a well the full buckets come up and the empty ones go down. So high was this cliff that the men who got off half-way down to adjust the machinery looked like flies, while, at the top, I could not make them out at all. To the top of this cliff the nitrate is brought in the cars, and then “shoots the chutes” until it reaches the beach below, to be loaded for Germany or England or the United States in the ships that are always eagerly wait¬ ing for it. 160 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY The source of this supply of the world’s wealth, wealth that vastly increases the agricultural productiveness of many lands, is interesting and but little known. For hundreds of miles along the northern coast of Chile, in the territory that formerly belonged to Bolivia and Peru, there runs a low range of mountains, which rarely rise to a height of more than 4,000 or 5,000 feet, and are usually considerably lower. Beyond this coast range runs a long valley, north and south, for hundreds of miles, and, be¬ yond the valley, the high Andes rise, peak on peak, towards the interior. On the western side of this valley which is bleak, barren and forbidding as the worst parts of New Mexico or the desert of Sahara itself, the nitrate beds are found. In some places they are three, and even four miles wide, iu others they almost disappear, only to crop out farther on. Sometimes the nitrate lies upon the surface, at other times it is fifty feet below ; sometimes it is almost pure, at other times the rock does not contain more than ten per cent, of nitrate, but, even then, it pays to mine and refine it. Some curious theories of the origin of the nitrate have been propounded. Mr. F. G. Carpenter records three : one, that the desert was once the bed of an inland sea, and that the nitrate came from the decaying of the nitro¬ genous seaweed. Another theory is that the ammonia rising from the beds of guano on the islands off the coast was carried by the winds over the range of coastal hills, and there condensed, settled, and united with other chemicals in the soil to form the nitrate deposit. Still a third theory is that the electrical discharges of the Andes combined with the elements of the air to make nitric acid. This acid, it is supposed, was carried down through the ages in the floods of the Andes, and deposited in these beds, in the form of nitrate of soda. No wonder that Mr. Carpenter adds that “none of ALONG THE ROADSIDE IN CHILE. IN THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN. THE WEALTH OF CHILE 161 these theories is entirely satisfactory. ” That is a mild way of putting it. Each seems a little more absurd than the last, but who will furnish a better one ? It is known that the electric discharges of the Andes are on the grandest scale in the world. “ Dry storms ” often occur, and it is said that persons sitting in a current of air are sometimes struck dead by lightning when there is not a cloud in the air, or any apparent hash. The wind rises to a hurricane, we are told, and “ the heavy electric accumulations in the air produce terrible atmospheric ex¬ plosions and violent detonations, while the surface of the ground sparkles and crackles with electric fluid. When this phenomenon takes place, men and animals and in¬ animate objects give forth a sudden, glimmering light, and the quivering, stifling atmosphere takes a reddish hue.” While in the high Andes of Bolivia, and especially on Lake Titicaca, we saw terrific thunder-storms hovering over the mountains nearly every day, and my friends spoke of a curious feeling when the electric fluid was in the air, which they call the “ Nevada,” and which makes them feel cross and “ edgy,” though the day may be fresh and fair to all appearances. The “ Nevada” affects old residents more than newcomers, strange to say, for the electricity seems to “get into their bones.” So it would seem that the superabundant electricity of the Andes may account for anything, even for the nitrate beds. However they are accounted for, these beds are very substantial and important facts for the country that owns them. In a single month, after Chile had captured these nitrate beds from Peru, her revenues had doubled. In other words, all her customs revenues, on all other articles combined, are not equal to her revenue from this one article, of which she annually exports more than $30,000,000worth. A million tons goto Europe every 162 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY year, largely to fertilize the sugar-beet fields of Germany. Perhaps a tenth as much goes to the States, and is used for making powder and other explosives, as well as for fertilizers. The method of extracting the nitrate wealth of Chile from the soil is interesting and novel. When it lies upon the surface, of course it can easily be shovelled into carts or cars, but when it lies as it usually does below a crust of salt or other rock, two or more feet thick, it is a diffi¬ cult proposition to get at it. Then a round hole is bored through the top crust, a little larger than the body of a small boy, into the soft earth below the layer of nitrate rock. Into this hole a boy is lowered who places a charge of dynamite under the nitrate and attaches a fuse to it. The boy is hauled out, the fuse lighted, a tremendous ex¬ plosion occurs, and tons of nitrate rock are blown into the air. This is broken into smaller pieces, loaded into cars, and sent to the refinery where the foreign substances are extracted, until the nitrate is ninety-five per cent. pure. Again it is loaded into the cars, carried forty, fifty or eighty miles to the coast as the case may be, shot down a mighty chute, perhaps, in other cars, as at Caleta Buena, and from there shipped around the Horn to Germany, Great Britain, or the United States. When the big canal is finished at Panama, if the nitrate ships can afford the tolls, it will prove a large item of the freight that will pass through that redoubt¬ able ditch. A bi-product of the nitrate fields is the iodine of com¬ merce, all of which goes to a London firm, which has a monopoly of the iodine trade of the world. Five years ago it was said that at the present rate of consumption, the nitrate fields would be exhausted in fifty years. The rate has continued and increased, but pew fields have been discovered, and now it is said that THE WEALTH OF CHILE 163 enough nitrate is known to exist, to last the world for 200 years more. The Chilean government owns all the un¬ developed fields, and holds the best of them at about $2,000 an acre. Such is the strange product of the soil that has peopled the barrenest, most inhospitable coast in all the world with thriving and prosperous communities ; that has at¬ tracted millions of dollars worth of capital from Europe and America ; that has enriched the two Eepublics that have ^owned the fields; that has caused at least one war, and may precipitate another at any time. Peru, as may be imagined, is very much exasperated over the loss of her chief source of wealth. “ We are only biding our time,” you often hear it said in Peru. “We will have our nitrate provinces back again.” “Did Christ die for all men!” was asked of a little Peruvian in a mission school. “ Eo, not for the Chileans, ’ ? was the reply, 11 but for every one else. ’ 1 And the teacher could not make him retract the unorthodox and ungenerous statement. If the nitrate beds have made the fields of Europe to blossom like the rose, they have sown bitter dissensions and unending hate between the Western Eepublics of South America, and the end of the dispute is not yet. Of course Chile has other sources of wealth beside guano and nitrate, but these are so unique and exclusively Chilean, that they seem best worth describing. What does Chile take in return ? A look into the hold of our steamer would answer the question in part. Flour, kerosene oil, machinery, locomotives, cars, electric ap¬ pliances, lumber from Oregon, shoes from Massachusetts, furniture from Michigan, and a vast and miscellaneous assortment of goods from Europe that has come across the Isthmus and been transhipped to our steamer at Panama. It must be admitted that Americans still have much to 164 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY learn about the South American trade before they get their full share. “ Tell the American merchants,” said a prominent railroad man of Bolivia, “that their represent¬ atives here must learn Spanish, and must pack their goods better, if they wish the trade.” Too many North Americans regard all South Ameri¬ cans as “Dagos,” and treat them and their language with the contempt which the word implies. As for the bad condition in which American goods arrive in these ports, it is proverbial. Articles that have to be transhipped half a dozen times, dumped into the lighters that roll up and down on the heavy swells of the West Coast, often ris¬ ing or falling ten or fifteen feet as the swell strikes them or leaves them ; goods that have to be handled by ignorant stevedores, who do not know a word of English or any other written language, and to whom “Fragile,” “Handle with care,” “This side up,” are all “Greek” ;—such goods are packed as though going from New York to Hoboken. I have just seen a large consignment of thousands of American pickaxes unloaded. The iron heads were packed in ordinary flour barrels, and old ones at that, apparently. Before they reached Antofagasta the heads were knocked out and the sides staved in, of half of them, and the pickaxes were dropping out in every direction, sometimes dropping overboard as they swung from the derrick over the side of the ship. This is only one ex¬ ample of the notoriously bad way in which some Amer¬ ican merchants ship their goods. Until a reform is af¬ fected, they will not reap their fair share of the harvest of South American wealth. XX VALPARAISO—THE EARTHQUAKE-STRICKEN Valparaiso and San Francisco— Xo Insurance Balm—The Earthquake at Ashore and What It Oasts—The Scars of Valparaiso—The Health of the City—The Benefits of Outdoor Life—How the Cemeteries Gave np the Dead—Twenty-five Seconds and Twenty-five Years—Prices in Chile—The View From the Top. AX FRANCISCO. Valparaiso, Kingston,—in this order were these three cities smitten by the direst of all calamities, in the quaking months between April, 1906, and January, 1907, and, of all these cities, Valparaiso undoubtedly suffered the most severely. To be sure, the absolute loss 'of property was perhaps no greater than in San Francisco, but the relative loss was much greater, and the resources behind Valparaiso are not a tithe of those which will rebuild San Francisco. The population of the former city at the time of the earthquake was about 150,000 (the estimates vary from 130,000 to 180,000) while the metropolis of California claimed twice as many people. In all Chile there are not four millions of people, less than the population of Xew York City, while nearly eighty-four millions of people are interested in, and in a sense committed to the re¬ building of San Francisco. Conservative people estimate the damage by the earth¬ quake and resulting fire in Valparaiso at five hundred million Chilean dollars (say $120,000,000 in gold at the present rate of exchange)—a stunning blow, that, to any country, to have so much property wiped out in a day, 165 166 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY but particularly disheartening to a country whose gov¬ ernment is none too stable and whose currency sometimes fluctuates several points in twenty-four hours. Valparaiso’s loss, too, was an utter loss, no insurance balm being poured upon the wound as in San Francisco, for all the policies contained an u earthquake clause, ” and I understand that not a single claim has been settled or is likely to be settled on any kind of a compromise. In Kingston, which I visited only ten days after its destruction, the ruin is far more complete than either in San Francisco or Valparaiso, for not a store or a church or public building or scarcely a home was habitable, but then Kingston contained scarcely a third of the popula¬ tion or the wealth of Valparaiso and the absolute loss was much smaller. In Jamaica, too, the severe earthquake was very largely confined to Kingston, while in Chile a great part of the Kepublic was shaken. The evidences of the earthquake are seen in demolished houses, tottering walls, wrecked railway stations, all the way from Valparaiso to Santiago, a distance of more than 150 miles. Some of the smaller towns on the line indeed suffered more than Valparaiso. Llai Llai, for instance, which stands at the juncture of the Trans-Andean Railway, was almost completely demol¬ ished, and many other small places suffered quite as much. Santiago, the capital and the most beautiful city on the west coast of South America, largely escaped, though even here the damage amounted to millions of dollars, and churches with cornices and pilasters knocked off, and public buildings half in ruins, are common sights. Compared with the rude shaking of Valparaiso, however, Santiago received only the earthquake’s love pats. Yet, as one approaches Valparaiso from the sea on a lovely autumn day in the last of March, one cannot VALPARAISO 167 realize that he is gazing at a city that lost in a single night five thousand of its people and hundreds of mil¬ lions of its wealth, and that many of its business streets are still lined with rent and charred and blackened ruins. The city lies on the slopes of steep hills that rise almost from the water’s edge, and, after a journey of twenty- eight days down the barrenest coast in the world, where a tree or a blade of grass would have rejoiced the sore eyes of the traveller, the comparative verdure of the Valparaiso hills and the patches of green that indicate her little parks, are welcomed with delight. We even think that she deserves her name, the “ Vale of Para¬ dise,” until a nearer view shows how long and black a trail the earthquake serpent has left in this Paradise. To be sure, the situation is by no means as fine as that of San Francisco, but the best preparation in the world to enjoy the beauties of Valparaiso is the interminable, monotonous journey down the west coast of South America, and I can forgive the glowing newspaper ac¬ counts I have read, which make this city the peer of any of the great seaports of the world, from the Golden Horn to the Golden Gate. As our ship drops anchor and the flag is hoisted to show that we have been u Received” by the captain of the port, a new Spanish armada bears down upon us. At least a hundred row boats, each manned by three or four piratical-looking longshoremen, start as though a racing gun had been fired, each trying to get to the ship first that he may secure a helpless passenger and his baggage. In an incredibly short space of time they have reached the ship, swarmed up the side, pushing, crowding, fight¬ ing, cursing one another. The passengers are at their mercy, unless some kind friends from the shore come to the rescue, as in our case. 168 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY There is no lawful tariff of charges for landing, or, if there is, it is never regarded, and the extortion of these highwaymen of the harbour, if I may be excused an Hibernicism, is most unblushing. They will often charge $60 (Chilean) for landing two or three people and their baggage, and one must make the best bargain he can. Before my friends arrived, I had beaten the least piratical looking of these harpies down to $15 Chilean (about $4 gold) which I afterwards learned was three times too much. However, we were so glad to get ashore at all, that for the moment money was no object, any more than it would be in getting from purgatory into the real vale of Paradise. The landing was at a miserable, slippery, surf-washed pier, and is quite impossible in stormy weather. Almost as soon as we reach the pier, the scars and wounds of Valparaiso become visible. Whole streets in the busiest section of the city are still blackened ruins, where, until within a very few weeks, fire has been smouldering. Acres and acres of the business section are to-day covered with burned bricks, blackened rafters and ashes, with no attempt as yet to even clear away the debris, much less to rebuild the waste places. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of goods of all kinds are piled up in the open air; grain, provisions, dry goods, furniture, household utensils, guarded from the looters as well as possible by armed police and soldiers. Fortunately, as yet there has been no rain since the earthquake, but when the rainy season sets in, as it is likely to do very soon, the suffering of many of the poor people still living in temporary shacks is likely to be intense. Some of the wider streets for miles of their length are lined with huts built of corrugated iron, which, for months, have furnished shelter for thousands of people. VALPARAISO 169 Here in little seven-by-nine shelters they cook and eat and sleep. Here babies are born and babies die. Here people well and sick are herded together, and here they are likely to exist for months to come. It speaks well for the sanitary authorities that as yet no great epidemic has broken out. In fact the general health of the city is excellent, and it is said that many people of the better families have been greatly benefited by the outdoor air they have been forced to breathe since their homes have fallen down and they have taken to camp life. Marvellous stories are told of the recovery of helpless invalids, of feeble children and puny babies even, who, since the earthquake have been forced to take the “fresh air treatment.” Many feathers may be plucked in Valparaiso to-day for the caps of those who advocate camp life and outdoor sleeping platforms. A ride around the city on the top of a street car is most interesting in spite of the sad desolation one sees everywhere. Here is a street stretching its grim and ruined length ahead of one for fully half a mile without a turn and without a single habitable house or store as far as one can see on either side. There is a great church, the outer walls caved in and heaps of unsightly rubbish where chancel and altar used to be. Near by is a school, or the blackened walls of a former school building, teacher 7 s desk and scholars’ forms alike buried under a mountain of adobe bricks and mud, which had been used for plaster. Here is a statue of Lord Cochrane, the de¬ liverer of the Chileans from Spanish rule, rising from the roof of a “tin” (corrugated iron) house, which has been built around the statue up to the top of the pedestal. In another place the marble effigy of the patriot Prat, so much honoured in Chile, is standing, but he has lost his sword, wrenched out of his hand by the earthquake, 170 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY while it injured the statue in no other way,—so many strange pranks did the terrible “terremoto y7 play. Most gruesome of all were the scenes in the cemetery where monuments were overthrown, graves were opened, and rows of tombs, built like the Roman columbarium, vomited forth their dead. Many of these were tem¬ porary niches for the dead, hired for a year and in¬ securely sealed, and when the great earthquake came, the corpses shot out of their narrow houses, as though the day of resurrection had come indeed. Even in Santiago, so far away, the dead were disturbed in their last resting-place, and great damage was done in the cemetery, which is probably the most beautiful in the western continent,—certainly in North America we have nothing equal to it in the magnificence and sculptured beauty of the tombs. But to return to Valparaiso—a ride around the loop on the top of an electric car convinces one that those who say that the city will not recover from the twenty- five seconds of earthquake shock in five and twenty years, are not far wrong. Certainly, at the present rate of progress it will be fully a quarter of a century before the last vestiges of the earthquake disappear, but these South American cities, I am told, have a fashion of lying dor¬ mant for a time, and then taking a tremendous spurt, and accomplishing the work of a decade in a year; so Valparaiso may falsify all pessimistic predictions and rise from her ruins and her ashes far sooner than even her friends predict. Not that Valparaiso is dormant. Much building is going on, but the high prices of materials and of labour are at present a great handicap. Lumber is brought from Southern Chile, five hundred miles away. It has greatly risen in price, and is still scarce at any price. Labour is still scarcer and higher than materials. Work- VALPARAISO 171 men who were glad to get $1.50 a day a year ago, now demand $6. Carpenters ask $8 and even $10 and a friend told me of one workman whom he found lying in bed at ten o’clock in the morning because the best offer he had had for his day’s service was only $6. To be sure, the rate of exchange and the rise of gold in part accounts for this, since the same money does not buy so much as it did a year ago. A five dollar American bill will purchase nineteen Chilean dollar bills, and no one knows when the rise of the rate of exchange will stop. It is changed nearly every day, Chilean currency steadily dropping with each fresh issue of paper money. Here is a country that is trying the greenback remedy with a vengeance, and plunging deeper into the financial mire with every step. Yet, considering the rate of exchange, some things are very cheap. A street car ride in Valparaiso costs five cents,—a cent and a quarter in our money j a postage stamp for a foreign country ten cents, two and a quarter cents gold ; postage for a foreign post card is three-quar¬ ters of a cent gold, while in Bolivia it costs ten cents gold to send a foreign letter and three cents to send a foreign post card, and in the Argentine Republic postage on for¬ eign mail is double the cost of the same articles on the other side of the Andes. Living at the hotels of Chile is by no means extrava¬ gantly expensive, and for two dollars gold, a day, one can secure as good accommodations as he can get for four dollars in the neighbouring republic of Argentine, where all charges of the sort are on an exorbitant scale. There are not a few who predict ruin, financial, in¬ dustrial and political, for Chile. The republic is cer¬ tainly passing through troubled seas, but I believe she will weather this gale, as she has many another. An old resident of Valparaiso said to me : “Chile is 172 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY like a young spendthrift. She has wasted her substance in riotous living. She took by force the nitrate provinces and the guano islands from Peru, thus enormously in¬ creasing her revenue, but instead of establishing her credit and securing a balance against a time of need, she wasted it on the army and navy and thievish officials, and now she is at the mercy of her creditors. Prosperity knocked once at the door of Chile, but there was no one at home to receive her, and she has gone away forever.” Most of my friends, however, were not so pessimistic, and with the limited knowledge I could gather during my stay, I am inclined to agree with the optimists. There is certainly a strong, enterprising body of citizens, left to build up a new Chile. Much foreign capital is already invested there, and more is coming. The government, though beset with difficulties, and rent by dissensions, is apparently stable, and His Excel¬ lency, President Pedro Montt, whom I had the honour of meeting, seemed to me a safe and sensible, if not a brill¬ iant, executive. After all, the point of view has much to do with one’s estimate of the future of Chile or any other country. The American muck-raker would make any foreigner believe that our own country was nearing the last ditch. Thank fortune, the professional muck-raker in any country soon discredits himself by his unfulfilled prophecies. Before leaving Valparaiso, I went up the steep hill which forms a background to the city, by one of the ten hydraulic elevators which connect the upper city with her harbour. From the top of the u lift” I could see the wide bay with its innumerable steamers, sailing ships, and lighters. All around were the beautiful houses and gardens of the wealthier Valparaisans; in the distance the fertile fields and irrigated farms, producing anything that any soil will grow. The seams and gashes made by VALPARAISO 173 the awful earthquake and fire in the business section of the city were largely hidden, for the upper city suffered but little. Then I said to myself: “This is the true viewpoint for Valparaiso and Chile, not down among the fallen bricks and dust and dirt of the ruins, but from this fresh, breezy landing, one can see what the city will yet be.” It can never be blotted out. There will always be a reason for a great commercial metropolis on this coast. Chile, with its vast stores of copper, nitrate and agri¬ cultural produce ; with its 2,600 miles of seacoast; with its vigorous, hardy, patriotic people, has yet an im¬ portant place to fill in the family of nations. She loves liberty, fosters education, guarantees religious equality, and welcomes foreign enterprise and capital. She has had a notable past; she will have a more notable future. Long may the lone star flag of Chile wave over a united, prosperous and free people ! XXI THE JAMESTOWN OF SOUTH AMERICA Valdivia at Santiago—The Gem of the West Coast—Some Beautiful Parks —Santa Lucia the Lovely—The Westminster Abbey of Chile—The Grave of O’Higgins—Santiago in Holy Week—Women in Black Man¬ tas—The Sacred Images in Procession—The Institute Ingles. S OUTH AMEBIC A has a Jamestown as well as North America, for Santiago is the Spanish for St. James and also for plain “James.” Santiago, too, is one of the oldest cities of South America, as James¬ town is of North America ; for here in the southern con¬ tinent, before Virginia was settled, Valdivia, the great Spanish general, set up his standards on Santa Lucia, the wonderful rock in the centre of Santiago, defied the In¬ dians, and established the Spanish power for nearly three centuries in Chile. But here ends the comparison between the Jamestown of the south and the Jamestown of the north. The one in the north has largely stagnated, and is interesting chiefly because of its history. The city of the south has grown in importance, wealth and beauty with every dec¬ ade, until now it is by far the finest and most prosper¬ ous city on the west coast of South America. The open door of Santiago from the sea is Valparaiso, a hundred and fifty miles distant; but the doorway does not fully prepare one for the beautiful city beyond, for Valparaiso is blackened and scarred and rent by the ter¬ rible earthquake and awful fire which in August of 1906 nearly wiped it off the face of the earth. Then comes a hundred and fifty miles of dusty railway 174 THE JAMESTOWN OF SOUTH AMERICA 175 journey through a country which has not, as I write, had a drop of rain for nearly nine months. After climbing to a height of some two thousand feet above the sea we come out into a vast, well-watered, fertile plain surrounded by snow-capped mountains. In the midst of this plain is Santiago, the capital of Chile, the gem of the Pacific slope. Its great municipal buildings, its imposing cathedral and many fine churches, its tree-lined streets, its flower-decked parks, all impress one with a kind of childish wonder after the long journey down the barren, rainless coast; and the traveller is in¬ clined to pinch himself and ask his neighbour whether he is really awake and whether this is truly the same country in which he has been travelling so long. Undoubtedly Lima is a fine and interesting city, and La Paz has its own peculiar attractions; but the tiresome journey along the interminable Chilean coast, with its in¬ significant nitrate ports, its tedious waits while the steamer heaves up and down, all day and all night, on the long Pacific swell, when one has nothing to look at but the gaunt, verdureless Andes, has dimmed the recol¬ lection of these cities, and has prepared one to view with most extravagant delight a really fine city that need not fear comparison with the best in any continent. To be sure, Santiago remembers that it is in the earth¬ quake zone, and does not indulge in skyscrapers, and most of the houses are built of adobe bricks covered with plaster ; but they are kept well painted or whitewashed, and present a very comely appearance, while there are enough really fine specimens of architecture in churches, private dwellings, and public buildings to relieve the monotony of the low, flat-roofed buildings, and to give the impression to the stranger that he is in one of the first- class cities of the world. Let us take two or three excursions together with Dr. 176 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Browning, our kind host, the principal of the famous boys’ school, the Institute Ingles , of Santiago. First, we will see some of the parks. These are worthy of any city. Even Boston, which rightfully claims to have the finest park system in the world, would not blush to own them. They have many features, too, that Boston’s parks, owing to their northern latitude, cannot boast,—splendid palms and a multitude of semi- tropical plants and flowers. But the park of parks, a public recreation-ground that cannot be matched in the whole world, is Santa Lucia. This, as I have said, is a tremendous isolated rock, rising some five hundred feet in the very heart of the city. There are no other elevations for miles around, and it seems as if this great pinnacle of stone had been dropped down out of heaven to relieve the monotony of this wide, flat plain. The scanty soil of Santa Lucia has been supplemented by the gardeners ; trees have been planted on it that have grown to great size ; brilliant creepers trail over the rocks, covering their gaunt sides, and bright flowers bloom in every crevice and cranny. Man has supplemented nature in making Santa Lucia the most beautiful city breathing- place in all the Americas. Strings of electric lights at night take the place of the flowers by day. Fountains and marble statues appear at every unexpected corner. Cool grottoes invite one to linger in their shade on the upward climb, and a gurgling brook that comes leaping down the hillside adds its music to the songs of the birds in the trees. And the view from the top ! Who can describe it 1 The great city with its nearly half-million of inhabitants stretches at our feet, the parks and tree-lined avenues plainly picked out in green. Beyond lies the great smil¬ ing, fertile plain that must have rejoiced the eyes of the THE JAMESTOWN OF SOUTH AMEKICA 177 conquering Spaniards 350 years ago, as well as all their descendants since. In the near distance are some shapely mountains per¬ haps seven or eight thousand feet high, on one of which the University of California has an observatory for photographing the stars. Farther off on the horizon are the great snow-clad giants of the Andes, rising twenty thousand feet and more above the level of the sea, and seeming to hem in the city on all sides. Beautiful for situation, if not the joy of the whole earth, is this city of St. James. If we linger too long on Santa Lucia, we shall not have time for the other beauties of Santiago, one of which is the great cemetery, the Westminster Abbey of Chile. There is a Boman Catholic and also a Protestant cemetery, but what may be called the civic cemetery is the most ornate. Never in my life have I seen such a multitude of splendid monuments in one cemetery. The celebrated Campo Santo of Genoa, with its lugubrious weeping statues, is a small, poor burying-ground when compared to the great home of the dead in Santiago. Here many of the most prominent families of Chile have found their last home. Presidents, distinguished educators, statesmen, millionaires, and soldiers, some of them bitter enemies in life, have found a common resting-place here. Many graves are marked by great structures, almost palaces, for the dead, while others are marked by beauti¬ ful marble statues chiselled in Italy by the best sculptors. I was much interested in the splendid tomb of the Irish liberator, O’Higgins (liberator of Chile, not Ireland), the raw Irish lad who developed such military and executive genius, and who left a name in Chile as splendid as his tomb. The private life of “Oeegins,” as the Chileans call him, would not bear very close investigation ; but in ac- 178 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY cordance with the old proverb, no hint of this is found in the eulogy carved on his magnificent mausoleum. Am id all this obituary splendour I could not feel many emotions of tenderness or solemnity, and should wish my grave on a little quiet country hillside rather than in a gilded, sculptured tomb of Santiago. Our journey took us to Santiago in Holy Week, when the city was given over, as at no other time, to religious observances. On Thursday of Passion Week it was in¬ deed a strange and funereal sight that we gazed upon. Business was going on, but in a quiet, subdued way, while all the city seemed to be in mourning. This effect was produced largely by the women, all of whom seemed to be on the street arrayed in black dresses with black 1 ‘mantas” over their heads. Not a woman in Santiago able to leave her house who did not go to church on Thursday and Friday of Holy Week, and not one who was not in funeral garb. Tens of thousands of women ; every street and square filled with them, and every one in mourning! The very occasional picture hat of an American or English woman looked as out of place as a wedding wreath at a burial. Even most foreign women wore the black manta over their heads so as not to be too conspicuous, and to gain admission to the churches ; for this is the universal church head-gear in Catholic South America, and on the west coast a woman wearing a hat is likely to be mobbed if she ventures into a church. The great Jesuit church was the centre of attraction on Good Friday. All stores were closed, all business sus¬ pended ; and the people flocked by the tens of thousands to see the images brought out for their annual procession. A dozen great floats representing our Lord in Gethsem- ane, our Lord betrayed, scourged, and finally on the cross, were borne, each one, on the backs of scores of THE JAMESTOWN OF SOUTH AMEEIOA 179 groaning, perspiring men, who could carry them only a few feet before they set them down to rest. Thus they were borne through the streets while the assembled thousands that lined the sidewalks stood with uncovered heads in reverent silence as they looked upon these crude representations of our Lord’s last sufferings. I must say that the scene was impressive in a way, and seemed to solemnize and, for a moment at least, hush the crowd. An American young lady in our party was made faint for a moment by the stifling crowd and smells, and had to retire to the shelter of a neighbouring door¬ way. “ A judgment on the heretic,” some women in the crowd were heard to say: “she could not endure the presence of the Lord.” The superstition and idolatry mixed up with such a celebration are hard for a North American to under¬ stand. They are hinted at by an inscription which I copied from the pedestal of a statue of Christ on the cross in the city of Santiago, which, translated, read as follows : 11 By 'permission of the Archbishop of Santiago an indulgence of eighty days , which may be applied to the dead , will be granted to any one who will say an Ave Maria or the creed before this statue of the crucified Christ .” Who will say that Protestant schools and churches are not needed in such a country, where the highest ecclesi¬ astical authority grants indulgences to any dead scoundrel whose friends will say a “Hail Mary” before a stone image of Mary’s Son, whose authoritative word concern¬ ing salvation was, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” It is good to turn from such travesties of religion as these must seem to every Protestant to the spiritual faith represented by the Presbyterian and Methodist missions. The “Institute Ingles,” founded by the Presbyterians, is a splendid school under the care of Dr. W. E. Brown- 180 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY ing, where nearly three hundred boys from the best families of Chile, Peru, and Bolivia are trained for large usefulness in their respective countries. It will do for these west coast countries what Robert College is doing for Turkey and the Balkan states. The Presbyterians, too, have two good Spanish churches and several preach¬ ing stations in Santiago. The Methodists also are doing a large work, and their Santiago college for girls is a noted institution in Chile. One more incident of my stay in Santiago I may here relate, and that was an interview with His Excellency, Pedro Montt, president of the republic. He is an able and upright man, the son of one of Chile’s greatest presidents. He looks not unlike President Diaz of Mexico, and his swarthy face, like that of Mexico’s president, declares his partial Indian descent. He is most affable and courteous, and expressed his great interest in temperance measures, and his desire to keep strong drink away from the uncivilized races in his domain, a matter in which I was much interested. Our genial and popular American minister, Mr. John Hicks, of Wisconsin, accompanied me to the palace, and told President Montt about Christian Endeavour and its nearly four millions of members. “Ah,” said His Excellency, “more people in this society than in all Chile.” “Yes, Mr. President,” I replied, “and some of them are in Chile.” May a still larger proportion of one “million” soon be found in Chile, this free and beautiful republic of the Pacific slope. xxn THE FAMOUS JOURNEY ACROSS THE ANDES The Only Practicable Route Across South America—The First Hundred and Fifty Miles—A Night in Los Andes—An Early Start—A Delicious Climate—The Soldier’s Leap—Starting on the Coach Journey—The Andean Coach—Views on the Way—The Numberless Zigzags— A Wonderful Statue—On Argentine Soil—A Perilous Descent—A Journey to be Remembered. T HEBE is as yet but one practicable route across South America, and that is in about south latitude 35°, where the continent narrows to a width of some 900 miles, and where it is divided between the two rival powers of Chile and Argentina. Of course there are other passes, if one wishes to risk the dangers and hardships of a journey of many weeks on mule-back, over the difficult mountain trails, and down the interminable miasmatic stretches of the Amazon or the La Plata to the sea, but, speaking in general terms, the only way for the ordinary traveller to cross South America is to journey down the dreary desert of the west coast by steamer for three thousand miles from Panama, until he reaches Valparaiso, and then by rail and coach, or on the back of the patient mule, cross from the Pacific over the rocky backbone of the continent to Buenos Ayres on the Atlantic coast. Even this route is difficult and hazardous enough to satisfy any one whose bump of adventure is not ab¬ normally developed. The first hundred and fifty miles of the journey from Valparaiso presents no difficulties and little excitement. 181 182 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY A comfortable Chilean train, built on the American plan and drawn by a German engine, hurries one away from the dilapidation and ruin of earthquake-shaken Valpa¬ raiso, over the foot-hills of the Andes, and through the dusty valleys of Chile, where (in March) it has not rained for at least seven months. One can make himself comfortable in a Pullman draw¬ ing room car if his inclination is for luxury, and eat his dinner in a well-equipped dining car. The heat and dust and other discomforts of travel are further relieved by clusters of delicious Muscatel and Black Hamburg grapes (or varieties very much like them), by baskets of fine purple figs, and good looking, but poor tasting, peaches, pears and apples, which can be bought for a few cents at almost any station. This (March) is the fall of the year, it must be remembered, and all kinds of fruits are in their glory. At Llai Llai (which, being interpreted, means Windy Windy) is the junction for Santiago, where passengers from the beautiful capital of Chile join our train which keeps on, headed for the high mountains, until it reaches Los Andes, where we must stop for the night. If the traveller has tears let him prepare to shed them now, for his serious troubles begin at this point. In the first place, he is bundled out of the train here in the dead of night, and must find a carriage of some sort, more or less dilapidated, which will rattle his bones over the stones of Los Andes at a tremendous pace for about a mile, until he reaches a very poor inn with a very big name,—the “ Grand Hotel Central.” Here he will be shown a not over-clean bed in a dirty room, perhaps occupied (the room, not the bed) by three or four other fellow beings. But he is so dead tired that he would be thankful for a rug on the floor. At mid¬ night he turns in, and at 3:30 A. M. the landlord sticks FAMOUS JOURNEY ACROSS THE ANDES 183 his head through a hole in the curtain which divides his sleeping apartment from the family bedroom, and tells him that it is time to get up, as the coach goes to the train in half an hour. The traveller rubs open his sleepy eyes which he feels have only just closed, dresses hastily, drinks a cup of execrable coffee and eats a crust of hard bread cut from the loaf the day before, pays eight dollars in Chilean money for this accommodation, and is again rattled over the stones, through the black darkness that comes before dawn, to the railway station. Here he finds a comfort¬ able little narrow gauge train of the rack and pinion mountain road awaiting him, and while it is yet pitch dark the train moves off up the mountains to Juncal, the present terminus of the railway on the Chilean side of the Andes. An hour after the train starts the stars fade out, and the early dawn breaks over the eastern hills. First they grow gray and cold, the gray turns to steel-blue, the blue to a rosy pink, and, at last, the highest peaks are lit by the earliest rays of the sun, and another glorious day has begun in the high Andes. Indeed, all the days are glori¬ ous in this region at this time of year. Never is there a rain-storm, almost never a cloud in the sky. Few countries have such a delicious climate as Chile. It is seldom too hot and rarely too cold. The Antarctic current cools the air along the shore, and the mountain breezes temper the air in the interior. Nothing could be more charming than this railway ride. On the Chilean side of the lower mountains, there is a little vegetation in spite of the long rainless season, and around the poor lit¬ tle mud huts, which one sometimes sees, climb creepers and flowering vines, as though nature was doing her best to cover up their squalor. Everywhere the mountains grow from grand to grander. 184 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Great white peaks that seem to leap 20,000 feet into the air, occasionally burst upon the view. In one place the train rushes through a narrow gorge over a shelf cut out of the solid mountainside, with a brawling stream a thousand feet below. This is called “The Soldier’s Leap,” because of the impossible tradition that a soldier of the Republic, when hard pressed, once took this broad jump. As he probably was not endowed with wings, the story is hard to believe, but the name is a good one, and the tradition adds spice to the journey. We are sorry when Juncal is reached, and we should be sorrier still if we knew what was ahead of us. Before the train fairly comes to a stop, there is a grand rush, helter-skelter, “catch as catch can,” for the coaches which are drawn up in line, waiting for the eighty pas¬ sengers who are to cross the mountains. The theory is that the first coach that gets its load will be the first to start, and so will avoid some of the dust of the other twenty that will race on behind. This theory, like some others, does not always work in practice, and the first are often last, and the last first, in getting started, according to the will and word of the conductor, who accompanies the whole party. The theory however has the advantage of making everybody hurry, and, in a surprisingly short space of time, crack goes the whip of the driver, and the four horses, driven abreast, start off at a breakneck pace over one of the roughest of roads, swinging down a steep incline at the rate of twelve miles an hour, and then up an equally steep pitch at full gallop, until our breathless horses, thoroughly winded, stop to rest as do all the train of four times twenty panting horses, making a long line halting on the mountainside. Before we go any farther, I ought to describe one of these mountain coaches. Let not my readers conjure up FAMOUS JOURNEY ACROSS THE ANDES 185 pictures of swinging Concord coaches, balanced on great leather springs, or even of Swiss diligences with their comfortable and comparatively roomy seats. The Andean “ coach” is peculiar to the country, and, let us hope it will never be copied, but will quietly disappear when the railway tunnels the mountains and renders it obsolete. It is a very small cramped affair, holding four people when crowded. The seats run sideways, and the top and sides are covered with white canvas like a butcher’s wagon. The canvas is buttoned down tight except at the back, to keep out the intolerable dust. The springs are very inadequate, if indeed there are any at all, and one feels to the centre of his being every bump and stone and water-bar in the long six hours’ journey. There are two rival companies that convey passengers, but the coaches are equally bad ; in fact they seem to be just alike except that those of one line are painted black, and the other yellow. These companies are deadly rivals, however, and their drivers frequently indulge in races in the most inopportune places, as we found to our cost; for our driver being outdistanced by his rival, at¬ tempted to take a short cut over a little rise of ground, which was never meant for a coach. The coach tipped, the horses floundered among the rocks, and we saved ourselves from a serious smash-up by all jumping out and righting the coach, and walking up the hill until it got into the road once more. Another coach in our pro¬ cession tipped entirely over, but no one was hurt, and fatal accidents, I am told, are remarkably rare, consider¬ ing the fact that three times a week nearly a hundred people take this journey. By interminable zigzags the coach road mounts the mountain. Starting at about 5,000 feet above the sea, it climbs more than 7,000 feet in some fifteen miles to the summit of the pass, 12,796 feet above the sea. The 186 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY top of Mt. Blanc is but a little higher than this pass, and Mt. Washington and Mt. Jefferson would dwindle into foothills as seen from this gigantic Andean range. Many of the views are sublime and such as can be seen nowhere else in the world. Rough, rugged, barren in the extreme in the higher ranges, Nature has done her best here to pile Ossa on Pelion, and to enable man to mount on them to the stars. In early April we found the pass warm at midday, and almost entirely free from snow, though sometimes it is absolutely closed to travel after the middle of April, and even in February tunnels occa¬ sionally have to be dug through snow banks, and mules have to be substituted for the coaches. The pass is usually open, however, for travellers from November until the end of April, and sometimes into May, but is closed during the winter months of June, July, August and Sep¬ tember. As we approach the top on the Chilean side, the zig¬ zags grow more numerous and arduous, until, in looking back, one can count as many as twenty curves over which he has come. The scenery, at the same time, becomes bolder, grander, more sublime. Mountain peaks, twice ten thousand feet high, tower about us, and we are over¬ whelmed by their overpowering vastness and sterility. Nowhere, except in Montenegro and the Canadian Rock¬ ies, have I seen such massive natural monuments, and the latter are relieved by vegetation up to the tree line. There seems to be no tree line in the Andes. On the top of the pass is one of the most remarkable statues in the world ; an heroic figure of the Christ, upholding a cross. On the base of the pedestal are the emblematic figures of Chile and Argentina clasping hands as a symbol of their settlement of the boundary dispute, which at one time seriously threatened war; a war happily averted by arbitration, which assigned the THE CHRIST OF THE ANDES. FAMOUS JOURNEY ACROSS THE ANDES 187 summit of the Andes as the boundary between the nations. Under the pedestal is the inscription 11 He is Our Peace Who Hath Made Both One.” The magnificence of the surrounding scenery, the isolated loftiness of the natural pedestal and the character, the appropriateness, and the beauty of the statue itself all combine to make “The Christ of the Andes” perhaps the most impressive monument in the world. Immediately after passing the monument we are on Argentine soil, and then commences a descent of some 2,000 feet to the town of Las Cuevas. In some respects this is the most hair-raising part of the journey. The descent is very rapid, the zigzags very numerous, the curves very sharp. The driver whips up his horses, who also scent the oats in the distant town which we can see almost from the top. At breakneck speed we dash along. There is no wall and no stone posts, as on the Swiss roads, to guard the side, and every side is either a precipitous mountain or a fathomless precipice. Around every curve the coach slews with only two or three wheels on the ground, and the precipice only four inches from the outside wheel, but a special Providence protects the travellers, and we reach Las Cuevas safe and sound, to be sure, but covered with such a coating of fine yellow dust that our own mothers would hardly know us. The rest of the journey to Buenos Ayres is comparatively easy. A narrow gauge rack and pinion road takes us to Mendoza, some four hours away. Grand Andean scenery charms us on every side, with Mount Aconcagua (23,393 feet), the highest mountain in the western hemisphere, occasionally visible, while other mountains scarcely less mighty, loom on every side. 188 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY At Mendoza, which is among the foot-hills of the Ar¬ gentine Andes, we change again to a broad gauge road, where comfortable sleeping cars wait to carry us to Buenos Ayres, 650 miles away, a journey that takes some twenty-three hours. Except for one range of hills, the whole distance is over an absolutely flat plain, but a plain of marvellous fertility, covered with innumerable flocks and herds, and pro¬ ducing bumper crops of corn and wheat. A vast world’s granary six hundred miles wide and hundreds of miles from north to south, are the prairies of Argentina. But this article has to do with the mountain journey, and, before it is ended, I may well answer the question which has already been often put to me, whether it is practicable and worth while for the average traveller to take it. It certainly is, if the said average traveller is willing to put up with a few discomforts. It depends largely upon one’s previous point of view. Was it Mark Twain who said to the unskillful barber who asked him if the razor was easy : “It depends upon what you call it; if you call it shaving it is pretty hard,—if you call it skinning it isn’t so bad.” So if you are think¬ ing of a pleasure journey, a charming ride over the Andes such as you would have in Switzerland or the Pyrenees, it is pretty hard; if you call it getting across the Andes over a new, rough, undeveloped desert country, it isn’t so bad. If you can stand dirt, heat and cold ; if you do not wince too much at the abuse of horses and mules; if you can endure considerable extortion without grum¬ bling ; if you can see your trunks and other baggage pitched about and thrown over by the worst baggage smashers in the world ; if you do not wholly lose your equanimity when your trunks are opened on the road and the contents stolen, as mine were ; if you can “ eat your peck of dirt” in a few hours instead of a lifetime, FAMOUS JOURNEY ACROSS THE ANDES 189 and enjoy the dirt j if your nerves are strong enough to stand a ten mile gallop on the edge of a precipice ; if you want to see the most magnificent scenery in the world ; if you enjoy a spice of adventure; if you would have memories and mental pictures that will remain fresh and vivid for a lifetime; if you would see the most magnifi¬ cent works of God and some of the most daring engineer¬ ing feats of man ; you will take this journey when you have the opportunity, and be thankful all your life that you have done so. At any rate, this route is far shorter than the alternative route through the straits of Magellan, taking only two days instead of ten, and it costs only half as much. In five years (or more likely ten) the tunnel through the Andes will be completed, and the whole journey will be made by rail. Then the route will be robbed of all its terrors—and more than half of its joys. xxm ARGENTINA, THE LAND OF THE LIMITLESS PAMPAS One Hundred and Seventy Miles of Rail Without a Curve—A Vast Plain —The Mesopotamia—Buenos Ayres, the Beautiful—The Early Years of Argentina—Strangling the Trade of the River Plate— Buenos Ayres a Democratic City—The Brief British Occupation—The 25th of May, 1810—Separating from Spain—Revolutions and Counter- Revolutions—The U. S. Grant of Argentina, San Martin’s Great Campaign—More Recent History—Future Prospects. I N crossing Argentina from the Chilean boundary to the sea, one receives an impression of boundlessness, of limitless extent, that he gets in no other land. Other countries have their hills and valleys ; Argentina is one vast plain. One almost feels that he is at sea as he looks out of the car window, hour after hour, and sees the same flat prairies, as smooth and level as the ocean on a calm day. Even so much variation as would be caused in the surface by an ocean swell is imperceptible on the pampas. For one hundred and seventy-five miles the railway track runs without a curve, and, for more than half a day, one can watch the absolutely straight converging tracks, until they are lost to view by the curvature of the earth. To be sure there are forests in the north and mountains \ on the Chilean border, but the part of Argentina that counts politically and industrially, and from an agricul¬ tural and business standpoint, is these limitless fields of grain in the east and pasture land in the west; prairies that have already made the people, in proportion to their population, the richest in the world, and that seem 190 AN ARGENTINE FARMHOUSE. ARGENTINE INDIANS, ARGENTINA 191 destined in the future to fill the granaries of all the western nations. South of Bolivia and Paraguay and east of Chile, Argentina occupies all the lower end of the South American continent, save little Uruguay, an extent of territory nearly half as large as continental United States, and within its borders, is probably less waste land than in any other large nation. There is a small section of Argentina between the Uruguay and the Parana Rivers on the western side of the republic, a country covered with rich grasses, well watered by numerous rivers, called the Mesopotamia. This smallest natural geographical division of the country contains 81,000 square miles, and is larger than England and “ more uniformly fertile.” Besides this there are 350,000 square miles of pampas suitable for grain growing, and twice as many square miles in the Andean provinces and in Patagonia where the flocks and herds of the world may find pasture. But Argentina is not solely a country of wheat farms and cattle ranges. More than a quarter part of its peo¬ ple live in cities, and one of these, Buenos Ayres, the capital of the republic, ranks among the first class cities of the world, being surpassed in size only by London, New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Philadelphia. It is the first city in South America, the fourth city in all America, and the second largest Latin city in the world. It is not only great in numbers, but beautiful in its architecture, and one of the world’s great centres of commerce and business life. The development of such a country, with such a capital city, from its position in the seventeenth century as the Cinderella of the South American provinces, is well worth tracing. The early years of Argentina were marked by the neglect, almost by the contempt, 192 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY of the mother country, Spain. She had no gold and Bilver, and therefore was not worth considering. Her magnificent agricultural possibilities and her splendid navigable rivers did not recommend her to the Spanish grandees, whose only idea of America was that of a great strong box filled with gold and silver that belonged to the Spanish crown, and this strong box must be broken into and its contents looted at the first possible moment. In the level alluvial plains east of the Andes there was evidently no coin and so they were not worth having. But they did give Spain a lot of trouble nevertheless, for through them ran a great river, and near its mouth in spite of all the authorities at home could do, a city called Buenos Ayres persisted in growing up. How this city was a natural outlet for the gold and silver of Peru, as well as for the hides and grains of her own plains, but the merchants of Cadiz, to whom the monopoly of trade was granted, were so afraid that other nations would share their trade if Buenos Ayres were not strangled at the birth, that they made it a crime for any one to trade with that city, and decreed that all European exports and imports should be unloaded on the north shore of the Isthmus of Panama, at Nombre de Dios, toilsomely carried across the Isthmus, reloaded, and shipped in coasters to Callao, again disembarked, and carried by mules over the almost inaccessible Andean passes, over the great Bolivian plain and down the Andes to Argentina. Goods sent by such a route could be sold only at prohibitive prices, and the bulky exports of Argentina could not be sent abroad at all, by reason of the cost of transportation up and down the mountains and across the Isthmus. It was in fact a deliberate and century-long attempt to strangle the trade of the River Plate, and to kill the city which, in spite of Cadiz, in¬ sisted upon growing up on its banks. ARGENTINA 193 The Spanish crown to which America belonged (for America was never in the true sense a colony of Spain but a mere appendage of the crown) supported the monopoly because a fifth part of all America’s gold and silver accrued to the crown, and if free trade were allowed or anything approaching it, some of this gold and silver it was feared might be smuggled in the bales of hides and wool. Such a deliberate destruction of trade, and forcing of it into unnatural and impossible channels, seems incon¬ ceivable in these days, yet for nearly a century it went on, and strange to say it was not resented or resisted by the colonists who never denied the right of the mother country to destroy their trade, but only sought to evade it by becoming the most expert smugglers in the world. So Buenos Ayres became a huge cave of Adullam, a smuggler’s paradise. She can hardly be blamed for en¬ tering the only door of expansion or even of existence, open to her. At last, after years and years of these repressive laws, their uselessness, if not their iniquity, became apparent, and Buenos Ayres and the country of which it was the port, were allowed to develop in their own way, though without any fostering care on the part of the home gov¬ ernment, all of whose interests were still concentrated on the mines of Peru, while Lima was still the capital of all South America. The seventeenth century records but little of interest in the country now called Argentina. It was a century of slow growth, of repression by the home government, of irregular development by smugglers and law-breakers$ but in spite of all, of some progress. The eighteenth century showed but little improvement over the seventeenth, until it was well on towards its last quarter. Then the Spanish government, seeing the 194 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY futility of its efforts to strangle the trade of a great natural seaport, and, alarmed at the aggressions of the Portuguese, who were pushing ^southward from Brazil, reversed their old policy and created a new Viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres. This was in 1776, and the new Viceroyalty included all the enormous territory east of the Andes and south of Brazil, embracing the present republics of Bolivia, Para¬ guay, Uruguay and Argentina. Buenos Ayres, the cap¬ ital of this vast province, contained then only 20,000 in¬ habitants, but it already gave promise of its future greatness. It is interesting to note that Buenos Ayres was always a democratic city and from this centre spread the demo¬ cratic spirit over all southern South America. Dawson puts the facts of the case well when he says: “ Lima and Mexico were centres of aristocracy and bureaucracy, while the social organization of Buenos Ayres and its sur¬ rounding territory was always democratic. All were equal in fact; neither nobles nor serfs existed; the Vice¬ roy was little more than a new official imposed by exter¬ nal authority, and having no real support in the country itself. It is not a mere coincidence that the three centres—Caracas, Buenos Ayres and Pernambuco— whence the revolutionary spirit spread over South America, should all have been democratic in social or¬ ganization and far distant from the old Colonial capitals. “In Buenos Ayres the Viceroy himself could not find a white coachman. An Argentine Creole would no more serve in a menial capacity than a North American pioneer; and a Creole hated a Spaniard very much as his contemporary, the Scotch-Irish settler of the Appa¬ lachian, hated an Englishman. 77 It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth cen¬ tury that this democratic yeast began to work, and to ARGENTINA 195 produce visible and startling effects throughout all South America. Argentina first of all grew restive under the Spanish yoke, and alone has the distinction of being the only country that never again admitted the Spaniard, after once having expelled him. But before this deliverance came, an episode occurred in Argentine history which came near altering her fate and that of all South America in a startling way. This was none other than the brief occupation of Buenos Ayres by the British in 1806. This occupation, to be sure, lasted only from June 27th to August 12th of the same year when the British troops under General Beres- ford were beaten and forced to surrender to an overwhelm¬ ing force. In the following year the British again at¬ tempted to capture the city, but the women and children, as well as the men, took part in their discomfiture; pelted them with stones and firebrands from the flat roofs of the city, while their husbands and fathers shot them down from every open doorway. After two days of fighting in the streets of the city, the British general asked for terms, and was obliged to evacuate not only Buenos Ayres, but to withdraw his troops from Montevideo as well. But though the British were defeated in battle, they soon won commercial su¬ premacy, for English merchant ships followed the war¬ ships, and free exchange of goods with all the world was at last established. Soon after this fiasco of British arms in Buenos Ayres, perhaps inspired to further deeds of prowess by their victory over the English, the Argentines resolved to throw off the Spanish yoke, and the 25th of May, 1810, is celebrated by the Argentines as their independence day. Statues in the chief cities commemorate the event; a leading street of Buenos Ayres is named u The 25th of May ” and when the anniversary arrives the air is rent 196 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY with the exploding fire crackers and torpedo, as in our country on the 4th of July. At first, however, there was little thought of separat¬ ing from Spain, but the Junta of Buenos Ayres resented the accession of Joseph Buonaparte to the throne of Spain, and proclaimed their allegiance to the claimant, Ferdinand VII. But the spirit of rebellion was in the air, the power of Spain, distracted by internal troubles and under the heel of Napoleon, was broken, and soon the revolution was full fledged and the armies of Buenos Ayres were marching into the other provinces of Argen¬ tina to arouse the spirit of resistance to Spanish rule. At first they were uniformly successful and were checked only when their armies reached the high table¬ lands of Bolivia, where the altitude as well as the Spanish troops from Peru, fought against them. The next fifty years of the history of Argentina is a welter of bloodshed and turmoil, but, through it all if one can only keep the clue in his hands, ran a great idea and a great purpose, often hidden perhaps from the actors themselves. This purpose was to establish the balance of power between the different powerful states of which Argentina was composed, and the federal government at Buenos Ayres. It was the same conflict which has divided the parties of the United States of North America, and which in large measure brought on the bloody civil war of >61. The states’ rights party was strong, but the exigencies of the situation and the threats of foreign foes, worked in favour of the federal party. At last in 1853 a constitu¬ tion based on that of the United States was adopted, and this, with a few unimportant amendments remains the law of the land, and seems to be thoroughly established for all the future. We cannot follow the revolutions and counter revolu- ARGENTINA 197 tions, the battles and the bloodshed that stain the pages of Argentine history for more than half a century. But we should not fail to record the name of her greatest hero, General San Martin,—the George Washington of South America, who, in the darkest and most critical day of the revolutionary movement, took command, and for seven years led the armies of the creole revolutionists to victory. It would be more appropriate, perhaps, to call General San Martin the Ulysses S. Grant of South America, for he was as quiet, unassuming and taciturn as the hero of Vicksburg and Appomattox. He was never known to make but one speech in his life, but he spoke by deeds not words, and was as persistent and unyielding as u Un¬ conditional Surrender Grant” himself. In 1812 San Martin landed in Buenos Ayres fresh from the Spanish campaign against Napoleon, in which he had distinguished himself. At that moment the fortunes of the revolutionists throughout all of South America were at their lowest ebb. The Spanish arms were suc¬ cessful everywhere except in Argentina and that country was distracted by civil war. In Bolivia, Peru and Chile the Spaniards had largely regained their lost power, and two expeditions of the Argentines into Bolivia had sig¬ nally and disastrously failed. Then San Martin began operations at that darkest hour for South America which preceded the dawn. Patiently, skillfully, he picked and drilled an army of 4,000 men, choosing only genuine soldiers who were drilled and hardened until they became well-nigh invincible. In the meantime, that 11 fighting demon” of an Irish admiral, William Brown, with the few poor ships of Ar¬ gentina, had destroyed the Spanish fleet at Montevideo, leaving San Martin free to push his victorious armies to the Pacific Coast. Outgeneralling and outmaneuvring 198 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY the Spanish troops who guarded the mountain passes, San Martin led his troops over the Andes at a height far above Napoleon’s famous conquest of the Alps, surprised and captured the city of Santiago, forever broke the Spanish power in Chile, built a fleet at Valparaiso, wrested Peru from the Spaniards, and virtually freed South America from their rule. Then, after seven years of drilling and fighting, finding that he could not countenance the ambitious personal schemes of BolivaY, as has before been explained, he retired into voluntary exile, and was almost forgotten even by his own countrymen, who have only lately awakened to his greatness as a general and a patriot. Now streets and towns and many statues in public squares do honour to San Martin, the greatest Argentinian, per¬ haps the greatest South American of recorded history. The period from 1812 to 1862 is the half century of civil war in Argentina, when bloody revolution succeeded bloody revolution. Since then political disturbances have been comparatively few and of slight moment. The u Unitarians” who in some respects resemble a states’ rights party have yielded many of their contentions, and Buenos Ayres is established firmly as the federal capital, being separated from the state of Buenos Ayres and set apart as a federal district, like the District of Columbia. During the last quarter of a century wealth has flowed into Argentina, and immigration has recruited the cities and ranches. It has been the “ boom ” country of South America, and in growth of wealth and population rivals any state of North America, keeping pace for instance with such commonwealths as Illinois or Ohio, each of which states it equals in population and far surpasses in territory. Of the resources of the country and of the present great¬ ness of Buenos Ayres, other chapters will treat, and it ARGENTINA 199 only remains to be said that great as is the recent growth of the republic, and marvellous as her prosperity has been, there seem to be but few clouds on her horizon and her future promises even greater material glories than her past XXIV A PROSPEROUS REPUBLIC Argentina and Brazil—The Inexhaustible Wealth of Argentina—Her * Vast Wheat Lands—The Occasional Estancia—The Comparative Size of Argentina—The Delta of Great Rivers—The Estuary of the La Plata—Nature’s Great Excavator—The City of Buenos Ayres —Ten Years Ago and Now—The Millionaires of Buenos Ayres. T HE most prosperous country in South America to-day in some respects is the Argentine Be- public. Brazil, to be sure, is pressing Argen¬ tina hard, and on account of her far larger territory, population and greater resources, may distance her in the race, but the other countries are scarcely in the run¬ ning. Chile, the ancient rival of Argentina, until re¬ cently has been considered her equal in resources and military power, but, while Argentina is forging ahead, Chile, of late years, has been losing ground, and the great earthquake, followed by her recent financial diffi¬ culties, and the depreciation of her currency, is widen¬ ing the gap between the resources of these two repub¬ lics ; though half a dozen years of peace and financial prosperity for Chile, and a revolution or a few “ locust years” for Argentina wheat-fields, might reverse the balance. The latter contingencies are not likely, however, for the federal government of Argentina is growing more and more stable, and every year her limitless wheat-fields and pasture lands are being extended north and south and west. Moreover, Argentina is on the right side of the At* 200 A PROSPEROUS REPUBLIC 201 lantic. She is opposite Europe, with which she has al¬ most daily communication by steamer. She can reach the capital of Brazil in four days; New York in three weeks, while the shabby steamers that crawl up the west coast of South America take twenty-six days to reach Panama, and nearly twice as long to reach San Fran¬ cisco. The traveller gets a tremendous impression of the mighty resources of Argentina in crossing from the Andes to the coast. The journey from Mendoza to Buenos Ayres is about seven hundred miles in length, and takes a night and a day on a fast train. Except for one low range of mountains near the western side, one rides over an absolutely flat plain. Not a hillock as big as a good-sized ant-hill is in sight j not a mile of rolling prairie ; not a barn, scarcely a house besides an occasional mud hut with a straw roof. A very few villages break the monotony of the view for hundreds of miles. Great haystacks for miles and miles, and herds of countless cattle are the only outstanding objects on the horizon. And yet this is one of the richest countries of the world. Here lies the exhaustless wealth of Argen¬ tina, for these prairies sustain millions of cattle and hundreds of millions of sheep, and out of this mellow and prolific soil will grow wheat and com enough to feed half the world. What one can see from the transcontinental railway is only a little ribbon of land, a few miles wide, on either side of the track, while for hundreds of miles, north and south and east and west, extend these vast fertile plains without a mile of desert to mar the scene. The available wheat land of Argentina is estimated at 240,000,000 of acres, though not ten per cent, of this is yet under cul¬ tivation. 202 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY With all its actual wealth, Argentina is still largely a country of possibilities. As compared with our own prairie states of Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, its develop¬ ment has but just begun. There you see not only vast fields of corn and wheat, but thousands of comfortable farmhouses, tree shaded villas, thriving towns with churches, schools and court-houses. Here you strain your aching, dust-filled eyes to get a glimpse of anything besides herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. Away off in the distance, after gazing through the window of the flying train for half an hour, perhaps, you see a single house that is worthy of the name, sur¬ rounded by trees and gardens. In the same distance you would see a hundred such homes in Iowa and Kansas. This solitary house is on an estancia or gigantic farm, occupied for a few weeks of the year by the wealthy owner who lives for the rest of the twelve months in some palace of Buenos Ayres. Scattered here and there over the prairie are some wretched mud huts where the actual tillers of the soil live. These are usually Italian peasants, who earn $30 or $35 a month in addition to all the meat (mutton) they want to eat, and who often, between harvests, go back to sunny Italy to spend what they have earned, and then to return again before the next harvest time. Many of these estancias contain 10,000, 20,000, even 50,000 acres, and not a few proprietors have estates that run up into the hundreds of thousands. Probably there is no country in the world where wealth is accumulated in the hands of a few as in Argentina. Considering the whole wealth of the country, our multi-millionaires are poor men proportionally, compared with the magnates of Argentina. One cannot regard this as a healthy state of affairs, but, doubtless, as the population increases, wealth and land will be more evenly distributed, and the A PROSPEROUS REPUBLIC 203 cultivators of the soil will own it instead of slaving for the lords of the land. In comparing the size of Argentina with other coun¬ tries, Mr. F. G. Carpenter says : “If we could lift it up at the corners, turn it around and spread it upon the United States from east to west, placing the edge of Patagonia at Yew York, the borders of Brazil and Bolivia, which bound Argentina on the north, would be some distance beyond Salt Lake City. If we could cut Argentina up into patchwork pieces and fit them upon our territory, every inch of land east of the Mississippi would be covered, and the remnants would be larger than the area of several states west of that river. The Argentine Republic is twelve times as large as Great Britian. It is five times the size of France, and it is greater in area than the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Yew Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Colorado and Kansas combined.” But the real size of a country cannot be measured by the number of square miles over which its flag flies, but rather by the amount of its productive territory and the population it can sustain. Measured by this test, too, Argentina is a great country, for the proportion of its unproductive territory is very small. To be sure, there are vast, bleak, wind-swept areas in southern Patagonia, but even there some of the best sheep in the world can be raised. In the west, Argentina’s territory sweeps up to the crest of the Andes, but the slope is steep, and we soon get down from the “ cumbra,” the summit, to the fertile plains of Mendoza, where the best grapes and the most delicious fruits grow. Then, as we have seen, from there to the sea, stretch the vast reaches of productive soil that only need the water which almost everywhere underlies the plains, and a little tickling with the hoe, to produce the broad smile of an abundant harvest. 204 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY All this land is really the vast delta of a series of great rivers which have brought the silt down from the Andes in the countless ages of the past, and have been pushing the rich soil farther and farther out into the Atlantic ocean and forming the pastures on which the flocks and herds of the world can graze. This process is still going on, and for miles and miles the ocean beyond the wide mouth of the Biver Plate is stained a deep coffee colour by the soil brought down by the great rivers, the Uru¬ guay, the Paraguay, and Parana. These rivers unite one hundred and eighty miles from the sea to form the Eio de la Plata, or the Eiver Plate, as it is uneuphoni- ously called in English. What the Eiver Plate lacks in length (though the trib¬ utaries that form it make it one of the longest in the world) it makes up in width, for it is one hundred and twenty miles wide at the mouth. We boarded the steamer which was to ferry us across the mouth of this river, at six o’clock in the evening, and it was early the next morning before we reached Montevideo, on the other side. So wide indeed is this vast estuary that one might to all appearances be on the broad ocean, for from the middle no land is visible on either side, and frequently rough weather with its accompanying seasickness leads one to think that he is a thousand miles at sea, instead of in a fresh water river. To quote from Carpenter again : u The La Plata is so full of silt that it drops 10,000 tons of mud every hour. This is a mass so great that were it loaded upon two-horse wagons it would take a line of teams sixty miles long to carry it; it would require a solid line of such teams reaching from New Y ork to Omaha to carry the dropping of one day. ’ ’ Such is one of nature’s greatest excavators and builders. If our government could turn such an excavator upon the Isthmus of Panama how quickly the canal would be dug, A PROSPEROUS REPUBLIC 205 provided only it had to deal with the soft and friable material of which the seacoast of Argentina is built! But such an excavator has its disadvantages, for it dumps its material in very inconvenient places, at the entrance to the harbour of Montevideo, for instance, and in the channel of the river, so that constant dredging is required, and a jetty system like that at the mouth of the Mississippi is contemplated. To speak of Argentina without mentioning Buenos Ayres is to describe France without alluding to Paris. In fact, Buenos Ayres is far more to Argentina than Paris is to France, or Berlin to Prussia, or New York City to New York State. It not only contains more than a fifth of the population, but far more than a fifth of the wealth and culture. Indeed, representatives of nearly all the leading families of the country settle here to spend their money, wherever they may make it. Except the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria, no countries contain so large a proportion of urban population as Argentina. Buenos Ayres is indeed a surprising city, when one thinks of the time it has had to grow. Though founded centuries ago, the modern Buenos Ayres is younger than Chicago. It is the boom town of the southern continent, quite as emphatically as the metropolis on Lake Michigan stands for the record growth of a North American city. One expects much before he reaches Buenos Ayres, for he has read of its marvels, and travellers’ twice-told tales have prepared him for a great, prosperous, busy city. But when he gets there, he is inclined to exclaim with the Queen of Sheba, “the half has not been told.” Yet very largely this modern Buenos Ayres has been built up within the last fifteen years. Ten years ago horse cars plodded through the streets and the drivers blew their cow horns at every cross street to warn passers- 206 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY by that they were coming. Now swift electric cars clang their bells as they go rushing through the narrow streets at a rate which one would think would make them twice as fatal as the Juggernauts of Serampore. Fifteen years ago most of the streets were paved with cobble stones, and horribly paved at that. Now all the principal streets are paved with asphalt and the automobiles and rubber- tired carriages, drawn by splendid horses, roll as smoothly over them as over the boulevards of Paris. Huge buildings are going up everywhere; great busi¬ ness blocks of six or eight stories, and covering an im¬ mense ground space (for sky-scrapers are not yet allowed). It is said that 30,000 houses will be built this year (1907), yet it is almost impossible to secure a house, and then only at a tremendous rental. Beauty has not been ignored in the architecture of the city, though it must be confessed that the old Spanish style which still prevails, of a low building of one or two stories, built around an inner court-yard, or patio, does not lend itself to imposing structures, however pleasant the interior of the house with its flower-decked patio, may be. In many cases, however, in the leading streets, the architects have broken away from the old traditions, and most of the modern buildings would do credit to any city of the world. The Plaza de Mayo, for instance, would be hard to match for the beauty of its surrounding buildings in any city of the North American continent, and the avenue of the same name, which leads out of it, is finer than the famous Unter den Linden of Berlin. More millionaires live in Buenos Ayres than in any other city of the world of its size, if that is an enviable distinction, and from the prices charged for everything, from a house lot to a shoestring, one would seem to need to be a millionaire to live there for any length of time. A PROSPEROUS REPUBLIC 207 The leading English daily of Buenos Ayres, for this cosmopolitan city supports daily newspapers in all the great modern languages, thus summarized the condition of the Republic at the beginning of 1907 : “ The new year begins under the happiest auspices for the Argentine Republic. It is at peace with all nations and complete order prevails throughout the whole extent of its vast territory. The harvest bids fair to be the most abundant ever known ; the seasons were propitious for the pasture lands for cattle and sheep, and the high prices which are being realized for wool makes the hearts of ‘ estancieros ’ rejoice. A spontaneous current of im¬ migration supplies the labour needed by the development of agriculture (the result of the rapidly increasing di¬ vision of large landed estates), for the construction of rail¬ ways, tramways, ports, and other public works, which are in course of construction, and for the exploitation of forests and rivers. . . . The idea of making great additions to the navy appears to have been abandoned for the present and it may be hoped that an understand¬ ing with Brazil will render unnecessary a rivalry with that power in the acquisition of armaments. . . . The balance of trade has again turned in favour of this country, and consequently the stock of gold in the Con¬ version Office is constantly increasing.” This brief review of a recent year’s history fairly sum¬ marizes the present political, industrial and commercial condition of this Republic of the far South. To be sure, a little revolution in the province of San Juan has since broken out, but it is a local affair, and in no way affects the stability of the federal government of Buenos Ayres. For years to come, so far as human foresight can forecast the future, the prosperity of Ar¬ gentina seems assured. XXV PECULIARITIES OF BUENOS AYRES The Largest City in South America—The Many Nationalities—Few Americans—An Air of Prosperity—High Prices, Enormous Rents— The Conventilla—Beautiful Patios—“ La Prensa ”—Around the Plaza de Mayo—President Aleorta. T the first glance you would think that Buenos Ayres had no peculiarities. It looks very much JL like any other fine and large city with its busy streets, its clanging street-cars, its tree-shaded avenues, its bustling stores and beautiful churches and public build¬ ings. But, if these were all there was to write about, it would scarcely be worth a chapter. If Paris were just like London, and London like New York, and New York like Buenos Ayres, one description would fit them all. It is the peculiarities of each that make them interesting, and, however much big cities look alike at first glance, it is not difficult to find beneath the surface their distinct characteristics. Bueuos Ayres, then, “the city of good air” may rightly claim several superlatives, and is worthy of more special description than could be accorded to it in the last chapter. It is the largest city in South America, the largest but three in all America, and second largest Roman Catholic city in the world, the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world, the largest city but one of the Latin races. It may be added that it is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, though in this respect New York and Chicago would press it hard. Walk along Calle Florida 208 PECULIARITIES OF BUENOS AYRES 209 or tlie Avenue de Mayo, and count the languages you hear in half an hour ! Spanish would predominate, to be sure; but you would hear almost as much Italian spoken, and English (probably cockney English) you would be quite sure to hear. That deep, strong guttural you recognize, as you draw near, as German. That man looking into the shop window and speaking about the high prices marked on the goods is a Swede, and that black-eyed couple talking so fast and so musically are Portuguese. A man, whose decidedly Scotch burr you hear as we pass him, is surely from u Glaskie,” and the next man, who talks with his fingers and his shoulders as well as his mouth, is from la belle France. Almost the only man you will not be likely to see in a short walk is the American, and even he is becoming every year more numerous. A better class of Americans is coming into the country ; and the u American church / 1 three-fourths of whose members are English or Scotch, is doing its full share as a religious and social organization to rehabilitate the good name of America, which suf¬ fered so much before the days of the extradition treaty. Another characteristic of Buenos Ayres is its air of prosperity. This perhaps is the good air that its name signifies. You are tempted to think it is a city of millionaires at first. Magnificent turn-outs dash past you on the principal streets. Blooded horses are hitched to luxurious carriages or sixty-horse power automobiles even more luxurious than the carriages sound their fog-horns at every corner. Men and women and lap-dogs, all dressed in the height of fashion, loll in the carriages. As stated in a previous chapter, more multi-millionaires abound in Buenos Ayres than in any city of the world, I suppose, for every one who has made any money in any part of the Argentine Republic comes to Buenos Ayres to spend it. The vast 210 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOBTUNITY u estancias” or farms of from ten to one hundred thou¬ sand acres, owned largely by Buenos Ayres nabobs, pour the wealth of their wheat-fields and cattle-ranches and sheepfolds into Buenos Ayres from all the territory within a thousand miles. As the passer-by gazes in at the shop-windows, he often wonders how any one but a millionaire can live here. An ordinary derby hat (you could buy it at home for two dollars and a half) costs twelve dollars here, while nine¬ teen or twenty dollars is not an unusual price. Collars are two dollars and a half for half a dozen. A lawn necktie, such as I should buy for ten cents at home, or perhaps five, the dealer unblushingly said was seventy- five cents, and kindly told me I could have three for two dollars. Three-dollar-and-a-half boots cost nineteen dollars, and a good suit of clothes two hundred dollars. To be sure Argentine money is worth less than half of ours, and so these prices must be divided by two to find the cost in gold ; but even then they are beyond all rea¬ son, even making allowances for high duties, cost of trans¬ portation, etc. It is in the matter of rent that the prices bear the hardest on people in moderate circumstances. Cheap single rooms are advertised in the papers for rent at two and three dollars a day, and suites of six rooms in an un¬ fashionable part of the city cost $150 to $200 a month, while small homes in fashionable quarters are hard to get at a thousand dollars a month. In the large hotels twelve dollars a day is the minimum rate, and from that the prices mount to fifty dollars a day. How then do poor people live, for it can hardly be supposed that all Buenos Ayreans are millionaires? Come with me to a u conventilla ” and I will show you how the poor people exist. We enter a door which opens directly upon the sidewalk, a door which may be thf PECULIARITIES OF BUENOS AYRES 211 very next neighbour to a millionaire’s magnificent palace. Inside this door you see a court-yard, and around the court a multitude of smaller doors. Perhaps there are two stories, and in the second story the doors open into a balcony over the court-yard. Each of these doors leads to a single room, and in this room lives a whole family, father, mother, children, and perhaps sons-in-law and grandchildren. Five or six sleep in the same bed, and the cooking is done over a charcoal brazier in the court¬ yard. Several hundred people may live and move and have their being in a single two-story u conventilla ” and this solves the problem of existence (it is hard to call it liv¬ ing) for the very poor ; for provisions are not abnormally high, and old clothes do not cost much in any country. The severest pinch comes to those with a fixed salary, and not an extravagant one, who wish to live in decent seclusion with a room, we will suppose, for each member, or at least for every two members, of the family. If one can afford it, however, there are few more de¬ lightful places in the world to live in than Buenos Ayres. In spite of a rather high death rate, in spring and autumn the weather is delightful. I have seldom seen two such glorious weeks of perfect weather as the two I have just spent there. The homes of the well-to-do have a beautiful “patio” or miniature garden in the middle, into which all the rooms open, so that they can enjoy fresh air and privacy at the same time. Churches, clubs, newspapers in all languages, and a cosmopolitan society where birds of a feather flock to¬ gether according to their tastes and proclivities, give each one the social and intellectual and spiritual life which he desires. The prevailing style of architecture, where so many of the houses are of only one story, is apt to be flat and 212 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY rather monotonous, but there are enough large and fine buildings to relieve the monotony. The reservoir, for instance, in the heart of the city is a magnificent build¬ ing costing millions, and covered with beautiful glazed tiles of various colours and designs. Some of the school- houses would do credit to Boston or Chicago, while La Prensa , the leading daily paper, has the finest newspaper office in the world. From the top of the magnificent edifice a winged Mercury seems about to run with the news of the day to every house in the city. When news of any special importance is received, a siren from the top of this building gives a frightful shriek. If a cablegram of great good news arrives at night, a big white light flashes out over the great city. If it is bad news, like the San Francisco earthquake, for instance, an ominous lurid red flash that can be seen for miles an¬ nounces it. Within the palatial building are reception rooms that surpass in splendour the audience-rooms in many a king’s palace. Free medical advice is given daily to all who apply for it at the doors of La Prensa , and free legal advice also, and scores avail themselves of this boon every day. By far the greatest Spanish newspaper in the world, this must be ranked among the most influential in any language. Around the great square called the Plaza de Mayo, which celebrates the independence of Argentina, May 25, 1810 (Argentina’s Fourth of July) are several notable buildings,—a great cathedral modelled after the church of the Madeleine in Paris, one of the largest banks in the world, the stock exchange where speculation runs riot even more than in Wall Street, and the Palace of the President, which also contains the government offices. Buenos Ayres has many points of interest which the limits of this volume do not allow me to point out. It is PECULIARITIES OF BUENOS AYRES 213 safe to say that however much one has travelled if he has not seen the great city on the Plate he has missed one of the most beautiful and fascinating cities in all the world. XXVI URUGUAY AND URUGUAYANS “ I See a Mountain ”—Tragedy and Comedy in Montevideo—Rapid Re¬ cuperation—A Revolution Every Two Years—“ The Landing of the Thirty-Three ”—The Blancos and the Colorados—“ Insulting ” the President—A Substantial City—The Liebig Extract Company—A Brighter Future. S one sails down the great muddy estuary called the River Plate, he sees, near the place where it debouches into the Atlantic Ocean, a small rise of ground which almost anywhere else would escape ob¬ servation. Here, however, with perfectly flat shores all about and prairies extending back for hundreds of miles, the one solitary hill assumes an impressiveness out of all proportion to its size. The eye has been so long accus¬ tomed to monotonous levels that it hails Cerrito as an Alpine wonder. Some old prints represent it as a veri¬ table Mont Blanc, dominating the little city that nestles at its base. It evidently appealed to the imagination of Ferdinand Magellan, as he sailed by this coast on his great and momentous voyage around the world, for he cried out: “I see a mountain,’ 7 —Montevideo. This was on the 15th of January, 1520, and since then every one who has pronounced the name of the capital of Uruguay has said the same, “ I see a mountain,” for that of course is what the name means. Abound this famous hill history has been busy ever since, for Montevideo is Uruguay in a more emphatic way than Paris is France or Buenos Ayres is the Argentine. In reading the story of Uruguayan history one is in 2U URUGUAY AND URUGUAYANS 215 doubt whether it savours more of comedy or tragedy, the questions at issue often seem so trivial, the results of the conflict so bloody and the stage so small as compared with the world’s larger conflicts. The tragic element prevails, however, for the causes of the innumerable wars were very real and very im¬ portant to the people who took part in them, since men do not bleed and die for what they regard as of no con¬ sequence. Another wonderful thing that strikes the student of Uruguayan history is the rapid recuperation of the coun¬ try after the most disastrous foreign and civil wars. One year we read of the country pillaged, the city of Mon¬ tevideo bombarded and sacked, thousands of the able bodied men killed in war, and other thousands self- exiled because of the defeat of their party. The next year we read of a great increase in population, wealth and governmental revenues, and of unlimited borrowing for internal improvements. The fact is that Uruguay, in spite of her limited terri¬ tory and population, is so rich in available resources, chiefly cattle and sheep, and has such a commanding and strategic situation on the Atlantic coast that she cannot be kept down either by her own foolish fights or by for¬ eign foes. She is said to have averaged a revolution every two years for three-quarters of a century, and yet, though each revolution sets her back a twelvemonth or so, in the remaining peaceful twelvemonth she regains the population and wealth she lost and distinctly forges ahead. For a long time her history was wrapped up with that of her powerful neighbours, Brazil on the north and Ar¬ gentina on the south. She was embroiled in all their wars, as well as her own, and was alternately ruled by one or the other. 216 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY General Don Jos6 Gervasio Artigas is considered tlie founder of the Uruguayan nation, though he was never chosen to office by the people and was disastrously de¬ feated and driven into exile by the Brazilians ; an exile in which he spent the last thirty years of his life. He was little more than a guerilla chief, u who for twenty- five years kept the soil of Uruguay and of the Argentine Mesopotamia soaked in blood.” But he awakened na¬ tional aspirations in the hearts of the people, and for this reason he has been canonized as a national hero, and his body buried in state in Montevideo. It was my fortune to be in Montevideo on the 19th of April, an anniversary day familiar to a Massachusetts man, when I found the banks and shops closed, and the city wearing a general holiday air. It could not be, I thought, that six thousand miles away they were cele¬ brating the Concord fight and the battle of Lexington, and I was soon informed that it was the anniversary of the “ Landing of the Thirty-three ” ; a day as religiously observed in Uruguay as the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims in New England. %And who were the famous Thirty-three? Merely a band of adventurers who, on the 19th of April, 1825, landed on the shores of a river in the southwestern cor¬ ner of the country. Uruguay was then under the domina¬ tion of Brazil, and the people in town and country were restive under her sway. The famous Thirty-three soon rallied to their standard practically all the people. Even the soldiers who were in the pay of the Brazilian govern¬ ment refused to fight their compatriots, their officers de¬ serted to the enemy, and soon, in spite of desperate efforts on the part of Brazil, Uruguay was free and independent. Argentina favoured her cause; the intrepid Irish ad¬ miral, William Brown, battered the Brazilian fleet at sea, and in 1828 Brazil as well as Argentina, gave up their UETJGUAY AND URUGUAYANS 217 claims to Uruguay and guaranteed her independence for five years. But the distracted little country was not to enjoy a pro¬ longed peace, for in 1832 a civil war broke out, which with certain periodic breathing spells, may be considered to have lasted ever since. At least the revolutions have been so numerous that they cannot be individually re¬ corded in a short chapter of history, and few of these revolutions have been altogether bloodless. During the later years of the nineteenth century, how¬ ever, they lost much of their ferocious character, and were little more than political overturnings, when the outs struggled to get in, and the ins fought to stay in. The “ Blancos,” the aristocratic conservative party, was always opposed by the u Colorados,” the democratic liberal party recruited largely from the common people and the cowboys of the plains, and in the end the Blancos were defeated and liberal ideas prevailed. In spite of these disturbances, political, martial and commercial, the country grew in wealth and population, and improved every breathing spell from war to take an advance step in prosperity. By 1890 the immigration to Uruguay had run up to 20,000 a year, and the popula¬ tion had increased to 700,000, a gain of more than 100 per cent, in twelve years. In 1897 President Borda was assassinated in the streets of Montevideo, while marching at the head of a religious procession. A grocer’s clerk was seen to walk deliberately up to him, press a pistol against his white shirt-front and fire point blank. Of course the president fell, and he was buried without a post mortem examination. When the grocer’s clerk, who was arrested red-handed, came to be tried for his life, his lawyer pleaded that, according to Uruguayan law, a post mortem examination was necessary to prove whether the president died from fright, heart disease or a pistol shot, 218 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY so his client could not be convicted. The jury, strange to say, took the lawyer’s view of the case, and condemned the assassin to two years’ imprisonment for u insulting the president ” ;—an insult with a vengeance, indeed ! A Philadelphia lawyer could not have made a more ingeni¬ ous plea, or one of our own Tammany juries executed a worse travesty on Justice. Montevideo strikes the tourist, fresh from the stir and bustle of mighty Buenos Ayres, as rather a sleepy old town and as somewhat commonplace if he comes from the north, with the glories of beautiful Rio in his eyes. But its inhabitants are never tired of praising it for its situa¬ tion, its climate and its sedate business ways, which, I have been assured more than once, are far superior to the greed for the almighty dollar evinced in Buenos Ayres and Rio, and preeminently in the United States. The city has a substantial, old-world appearance, and when the new electric street cars supplant all the old mule cars, as they very likely will do before this book is printed, one great want of easy communication will be supplied. There are some fine residences in the outskirts of the city, with beautiful gardens in which every sub¬ tropical plant will grow, and the sea which surrounds the city on every side but one, brings salubrious breezes and bathing privileges to all; a boon which the Buenos Ayreans appreciate, for they flock hither in large num¬ bers every summer for their health. Large steamers, compared by one over-partial writer to the Fall River boats between Boston and New York, join the two cities with a nightly service, and the connection between these great cities of the south both socially and commercially is very close. The great wealth of Uruguay, outside of Montevideo, as a business and distributing centre, is found in her flocks and herds which dot her fertile plains. Here is a country UEUGUAY AND URUGUAYANS 219 which, though it is the smallest in South America, is yet as large as England, and is practically one vast pasture. Every part of it is easily accessible. There are no lofty mountains and few impassable jungles, but it is a country of rich, luscious grasses, where fat cattle and sheep thrive by the million. One company alone, the famous Liebig Extract Company, which manufactures beef tea for the world, owns 1,200,000 acres in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay, but largely in the former country. On its enormous ranches are 200,000 horned cattle and 60,000 sheep, and over six million head of cattle have passed through its hands in the fifty years of its existence. Twenty-five hundred workmen are employed in this business, and $17,500,000 have been distributed in divi¬ dends. These enormous figures show on what a large scale business is sometimes conducted even in a little re¬ public. The future of Uruguay will doubtless be less stormy than the past,—it could hardly be more so. Those who are best informed assure me that there are signs of polit¬ ical stability that have never been seen before, and though there may be periodic revolutions in the years to come, they are not likely to be accompanied by bloody civil wars, or greatly to upset the course of business and social life. The currency of Uruguay is on a more stable basis than that of most of her South American sisters, and a paper dollar is worth a dollar in gold, the only republic south of the Mexican line of which this is true. Prices of living, especially of rents, is high as in all the coun¬ tries of the Atlantic coast of South America, and second rate hotels charge first-class New York prices. But if money goes easily, it comes easily, too, and foreign mer¬ chants have no reason to complain of the state of trade. Indeed, among those I met in Montevideo, some seemed 220 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUEITY to develop an unusual love for their adopted laud, and a tendency to depreciate every other in comparison with it. One sign of a country with a future is this faculty of inspiring the patriotism of adopted citizens, a trait in which our own country so preeminently excels. Little Uruguay has certainly had her baptism of blood, and if she is not absorbed by her stronger neigh¬ bours on either side, she will doubtless have an increas¬ ingly prosperous career, and Montevideo will always di¬ vide with her great rival, Buenos Ayres, the tremendous commerce of the Plate. 4 XXVII PARAGUAY, THE ISOLATED The Little Benjamin—An Ancient Country—The Jesuits in Paraguay— The Strange Reign of Dr. Francia—“ El Supremo ” and ‘ El De- funto ”—Lopez, the Unscrupulous Tyrant—A Terrible War—Yerba Mate—The Future of Paraguay. P ARAGUAY is the little Benjamin among the re¬ publics of South America, and, aside from Panama, there are few tinier nations which main¬ tain the paraphernalia of government. About the size of the state of Illinois in area, Paraguay has a population less than greater Boston and about the same as Glasgow, two-thirds of whom are women and nine- tenths of whom are Indians or people with a large ad¬ mixture of Indian blood. It is one of the most isolated of nations, occupying its unique position in the very heart of the continent as a buf¬ fer state between Brazil and Argentina, and removed from the seacoast by a week’s journey on a small steamer up a tortuous river. Yet, in spite of her small size and her isolation, her history is most interesting, and gives an example of more experiments in government than many a larger and more important state. It is an ancient country, too, and the first families can boast of having 11 come over ’ 7 before the Mayflower. Its capital and chief city, Ascuncion, was founded just a hundred years before the capital of Massachusetts, but circumstances and devastating wars have prevented its growth, and it is still a large country village, great in the eyes of the Paraguayans, but overtopped in popula- 221 222 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY tion by a thousand inconspicuous towns in Europe and America. In fertility and natural agricultural wealth, few coun¬ tries, however, can outrank Paraguay, and the fact that she has maintained her independence during all these years when surrounded by greater and richer neighbours, certainly speaks well for the patriotism and prowess of her people. The earliest history of Paraguay is uneventful. She seems to have felt but lightly the Spanish yoke, which perhaps was hardly thought worth imposing. To be sure, there was in the early days a nominal Spanish gov¬ ernor at Ascuncion, but the larger part of Paraguay was under the control of the Jesuit priests who protected while they half enslaved the Indians, rendering them entirely obedient to their commands. It must be said for the Jesuits, however, that they treated the Indians far better than any of the other white settlers. They had some regard for their evangelization ; they introduced some of the arts of civilization ; they im¬ proved the agriculture of the Indians, and increased their wealth, and at great personal sacrifice and risk on their own part, pushed their discoveries far up into the interior of South America, where, even to-day, white men hesitate to go. They seem, too, to have ingrained into the Guarany character habits of implicit and unquestion¬ ing obedience, which served well the later tyrants and despots of Paraguay, who were able in the bloody wars that have marked the early part of the last half century to lead their troops to death or victory. But the Brazilians on the north and the Creoles of Ascuncion alike hated the Jesuits, and feared their in¬ creasing control over the docile Indians, and, between the two, the Jesuits fared badly, first being driven out of their hard-won possessions in the north and then, a PARAGUAY, THE ISOLATED 223 century later, being expelled from the fertile lands in the south, to which they had fled from the Paulistas, the warlike settlers of the Sao Paulo province of Brazil. The interesting period of Paraguay’s history began with the eighteenth century when they shared to some extent the intellectual and political ferment of the rest of South America. In Paraguay, however, there was little desire for real republican institutions. The people had been trained too long and too well in obedience to priests and the powers that be, to care for even the semblance of power, that was demanded in other countries, and they only waited for a strong and determined man to take control and guide the affairs of their little state. The man and the opportunity met, and the man was Dr. Francia, one of the strangest, strongest characters who ever wrote his name on the page of history. Carlyle has numbered him among his heroes, and if a hero is simply a man who breaks away all opposition and rides over and tramples down all his opponents, Francia was certainly a hero. The Beatitudes, however, were far from his ideals, and the peace he imposed on his countrymen was the peace of death, fear and stagnation. Francia, however, had his good points. As a lawyer he had un¬ dertaken the cause of the poor against the rich. He al¬ ways seemed to try to execute justice in his own high handed, tyrannical way, and, though he imprisoned and killed friend and foe alike when it suited his purpose, he never lost the confidence and goodwill of the Indians with whom he invariably sided against the Spaniards and Creoles. In 1815 this remarkable man was chosen one of the two consuls of Paraguay. The other consul, an ignorant soldier, he soon pushed out of his ambitious way, and from that day until the hour of his death in 1848 at the age of eighty-three, he reigned alone and unchallenged, 224 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY a more absolute monarch in his small domain than ever sat upon the throne of Russia. He had himself formally- declared “ Supreme and Perpetual Dictator,” and as¬ sumed the title of “El Supremo.” His strange power has thus been graphically described : “As he grew older he became more solitary and fero¬ cious. . . . His severities against the educated classes increased. He suffered from frequent attacks of hypochondria. He ordered wholesale executions, and when he died 700 political prisoners filled the jails. His moroseness increased year by year. He feared assassina¬ tion and occupied several houses, letting no one know where he was going to sleep from one night to another, and when walking the streets kept his guards at a dis¬ tance before and behind. Woe to the enemy or suspect that attracted his attention ! Such was the terror in¬ spired by the dreadful old man that the news that he was out would clear the streets. A white Paraguayan dared not utter his name. During his lifetime he was 1L El Supremo,” and after he was dead for generations he was referred to simply as “El Defunto.” For years when men spoke of him they looked behind them and crossed themselves as if dreading that the mighty old man could send devils to spy upon them,—at least this is the story of Francia’s enemies, who have made it their business to hand his name down to execration.” 1 During the twenty-six years of Francia’s dictatorship he absolutely forbade all external commerce. Not a ship could sail up or down the great Paraguay River without his permission, a permission rarely granted. Paraguay became a self-sufficing state, raising its own food, carding its own wool, building its own houses, neither sending nor receiving ministers or consuls ; it was more isolated Dawson’s “South American Republics.” PAEAGUAY, THE ISOLATED 225 than China or Corea when their barriers against the out¬ side world were the highest. Though of course there was little progress under such conditions, there was doubtless little physical suffering. Oranges, bananas and other fruits of the earth grow spontaneously in that mild climate and fruitful soil; and though there was little money in circulation there was little need of it. A fat bullock it is said, could be bought for a dollar, and most men did not need even the dollar, for they raised their own bullock. But such a state of affairs must come to an end. It was foreign to the spirit of the nineteenth century, and when stern old Erancia died he was succeeded by a tyrant, to be sure, but by a more moderate tyrant, the elder Lopez, who reversed the policy of his predecessor, opened his ports to commerce, and even encouraged the coming of foreigners until he found that he could not welcome other foreigners and exclude Brazilians whom he regarded as his mortal foes. At first Americans were in high favour and received some concessions, but soon they fell into disrepute with Lopez, who drove them and all other foreigners from his domains. Lopez was succeeded in the dictatorship by his son, Francisco Lopez, as corrupt and unscrupulous a tyrant as ever seized the reins of power. He managed to em¬ broil himself with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay at the same time, and one of the bloodiest and most protracted wars of modern history ensued. It seems strange that these adjectives can be applied to a war waged by a little country with the population of a moderate modern city scattered over the wilds of South America; but when we remember that this war was waged relentlessly from 1864 to 1870, and that in this time 11 no less than two hundred and twenty-five thousand 226 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Paraguayan men—the fathers and breadwinners, the farmers and labourers,—had perished in battle, by dis¬ ease or exposure or starvation, and that one hundred thousand adult women had died of hardships and hunger,” we see that this description of the war is not overdrawn. The proportion of the dead to the living at the close of the war, was appalling, for, we are told, that out of two hundred and fifty thousand able-bodied men who were living in 1864, less than twenty-five thousand survived in 1870. Had twenty millions of men perished on both sides in the American civil war, the proportion of slain would not have been greater than of the Paraguayans who gave up their lives at the behest of a miserable tyrant in that awful half decade which followed our own civil war. At the end of the Paraguayan war, the women out¬ numbered the men five to one, and there were only 90,000 children left in the country. The allies of Brazil, Argen¬ tina and Uruguay suffered great losses in men and treas¬ ure, but compared with their resources, their losses were slight. Since 1870, happily, the history of Paraguay has been uneventful, and she has beeu gradually recuperating her resources and growing a new crop of men and women. Regular weekly communication is kept up with Buenos Ayres by two lines of fairly comfortable steamers, and the commerce of the country is already considerable, consisting of hides, wool, precious woods, and yerba mate. Mate (pronounced in two syllables) is a unique product confined largely to Paraguay and is worth a paragraph of description. It is seldom heard of in the northern hemisphere, but is the favourite and universal drink of twenty millions of people of the southern hemi¬ sphere. What tea is to the Englishman and Australian, what coffee is to the American and the Turk, mate is to PARAGUAY, THE ISOLATED 227 the Argentinian, Paraguayan, Urguayan, and many Brazilians. It is also largely drunk in Chile and Peru. Make a dozen calls in an afternoon in some circles of Buenos Ayres, and you will be treated to a dozen cups of mate. The trees grow wild in large sections of Paraguay, and the leaves are carefully dried and packed in bales, cov¬ ered with raw hides, and thence transported to all parts of South America. When it reaches its destination, in the kitchen of the good housewife, it is reduced to pow¬ der, and placed in curious shaped gourds in which a lib¬ eral supply of sugar has previously been burned with live coals. Then hot water is poured on the powdered leaves, and the concoction is sucked through a silver or wooden tube, whose end is protected by a strainer to pre¬ vent the grounds from getting in. A genuine love for mate must be acquired, but that it is not difficult of acquisition is proved by the twenty millions whose constant beverage it is. It is one of the most harmless of stimulants, soothing rather than irritat¬ ing to the nerves, and it would be well if our tea and coffee topers would turn their attention to mate, and if it could be introduced to the frayed American nervous sys¬ tem by some enterprising and philanthropic firm of pur¬ veyors of new drinks. To turn once more from Paraguay tea to Paraguay re¬ public :—there is little doubt that if this tiny nation keeps on in her present course of peaceful development, she has an honourable and comfortable, if not a great future, before her. She has sufficient territory, a most fertile soil, a good variety of agricultural products, and a brave and patriotic people. They have proved their valour as soldiers, it now remains for them to prove their worth in paths of peace. This they will doubtless do, and those who have 228 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY watched the troubled and war-shattered past of Paraguay will watch with new interest the rejuvenescence and progress of this isolated Indian Republic of the new world. BRAZIL, THE BOUNDLESS Tke Vast Size of Brazil—The Sailing Orders of Yasco de Gama—The Sd of May, 1500—What Cabral Found—Brazil’s Many Sources of Wealth —Agassiz’s Opinion—Brazil Wood—The Paulistas—What Portugal Did for Brazil—The Coming of the Jesuits—The French Huguenots —The Dutch Occupation—The Discovery of Diamonds—Brazil as an Empire—Dom Pedro’s Good Eeign—Brazil as a Kepublic. T HE title of this chapter is not so much of an ex. aggeration as it might seem at first glance, for Brazil is not only a country of enormous size, but on the west and north her boundaries are still in dis¬ pute and unsettled, as they have been for many years. Compared, too, with the tiny republics to the south, Uruguay and Paraguay, Brazil seems a boundless empire, embracing as she does one-half the territory and more than half the population of the continent. Her domains are as large as the island continent of Australia, and ex¬ ceed the area of the continental United States, leaving out Alaska. “Sail directly south after leaving the Cape Yerde Islands in 14° north, as long as the wind is favourable. If forced to change your course keep on the starboard tack until you reach the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, 34° south, then bear away to the east.” Such were the sailing orders which resulted in the discovery of Brazil. They were given by the celebrated navigator Yasco de Gama to his lieutenant Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese nobleman, who was about to sail for the East Indies. On the 9th of March, 1500, Cabral set sail 229 230 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY from Lisbon, and on the 3d of May (new style) he sighted the shores of Brazil where it bulges out into the Atlantic, as though about to shake hands with Africa on the op¬ posite hemisphere. The landfall that Cabral made was south of Bahia in the present state of the same name, and Brazil still keeps green the memory of her discovery, by an annual holiday. Being in the city of Sao Paulo on the 3d of May, four hundred and seven years after the discovery, I found everybody keeping holiday, while on the day before even the kindergarten children, in anticipation of the holiday, were cutting out Cabrals picture and pasting it on a paper ship of their own make to show their loyalty to his memory. Cabral found the country inhabited by peaceful Indians of a low grade of intelligence, except the Arawaks who were said to have cultivated the soil, woven cloth and made rude pottery. No such civilization was found, however, as the Spaniards discovered on the other side of South America among the Incas of the Andes, and the early settlers of Brazil had comparatively little trouble in subduing and even enslaving many of the Indians. The aborigines were not sufficiently strong physically or mentally, or sufficiently reproductive, to long withstand the incursions of the white men, and they have never formed an important factor in the life of Brazil, as have the Indians of Chile, Peru and Bolivia in the countries west of the Andes. Brazil owes its predominant importance among the South American States to the productiveness of its soil and the variety of its resources, quite as much as to its vast size. It is not too much to say that every product that makes for the comfort and wealth of mankind is found in Brazil. Coffee, sugar, cotton, rubber, corn, wheat, dia¬ monds, gold, are only a few of her products, and the un- BRAZIL, THE BOUNDLESS 231 developed and even unexplored wealth of the country is infinitely greater than that which can be catalogued. The country rises abruptly but not inaccessibly from the shore for hundreds of miles, and the table-lands that lie back from the coast at a height of two or three thou¬ sand feet enjoy all the blessings of a temperate climate even when they lie within the tropics. Moreover, the rainfall throughout almost the entire length and breadth of Brazil is sufficient to produce the most luxuriant vege¬ tation in the world, a luxuriance which led Amerigo Yespucci, the navigator who gave his name to both con¬ tinents, to say that “if Paradise did exist on this planet, it could not be far from the Brazilian coast,” while Agassiz believed that “the future centre of the civ¬ ilization of the world would be in the Amazon valley.” The contrast in respect to verdure and vegetation be¬ tween the east and west coasts of South America is as the difference between the garden of Eden and the desert of Sahara. On the west coast for twenty-five hun¬ dred miles one scarcely sees a tree or a blade of grass, only sand-swept mountains, grand and impressive, to be sure, but forbidding in the extreme. Throughout the vast coast line of Brazil one can hardly conceive how another blade of grass could grow or another tree could stand in the crowded, luxuriant vegetation that now occupies the soil. Here, too, the largest river in the world pours its flood of waters into the Atlantic, and on its waters one can penetrate not only into the heart of the continent, but far over to the other side, by the tributaries of the Amazon, one can reach the rich mines of Bolivia and Peru. Such was the country of almost inconceivable potential wealth that was discovered by the Portuguese navigator on that memorable 3d of May in the first year of the sixteenth century. For a long time, however, Cabral’s 232 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY discovery was put to little practical account, for neither gold nor silver were discovered for many years, and a country that did not produce either of the precious metals was considered of no value by the gold-dazzled Portuguese and Spaniards who then controlled the des¬ tinies of the new world. But Brazil did produce in great quantities a dye wood much esteemed in Europe and named “Brazil wood” long before the country took the same name. It means “wood the colour of fire,” and the traveller in Rio Janeiro to-day sees in the centre of the Avenida Central, unquali¬ fiedly the most beautiful street in all the world, a long row of these trees from which Brazil took its name. Hunters for Brazil wood brought many ships to her shores, and little by little it was suspected that other valuable products might grow in the “land of Brazil wood.” Solitary colonists began to push into the interior, marry Indian wives, and form the nucleus of future colonies. One of the most enterprising of these adventurers was John Ramalho, who settled near the present great city of Sao Paulo. Others followed him, and then the “Paulistas,” as they are called, became a distinct factor in the development of Brazil as they have remained ever since. The Paulistas spread over the open plains of the interior, overran the country to the south and west, even descended into Paraguay, and drove the Jesuits out of their hard-earned settlements. “They were the pioneers of Brazil,” says Dawson, “ correspond¬ ing in character and habits, in the virtues of daring, hospitality and self-confidence, and in the vices of cruelty, rudeness and ignorance, with the pioneers of the Mississippi valley.” To this day the Paulistas are the most enterprising and progressive citizens of Brazil, and Sao Paulo the most advanced of all the states. Another distinguishing characteristic of Brazil that BRAZIL, THE BOUNDLESS 233 differentiated it from all the other countries of South America is that it was settled by the Portuguese. To the superficial observer it would seem to make very little difference whether one nation or the other of the Iberian Peninsula furnished the first settlers for a country, but, as a matter of fact, there are very decided differences between Spanish and Portuguese America ; differences of language, differences of architecture, differences of tra¬ dition and ideals. Every old house in Brazil, and many modern ones, will testify that the first settlers were Por¬ tuguese and not Spaniards, for we find none of the open patios or inside gardens which make Spanish houses so attractive, but high, closely-built brick walls, with scant and small windows,—an architecture not at all suited to the tropics. Fortunately for Brazil the early settlers came from Portugal in the brief golden age of that little kingdom, and brought with them ideals of personal and political liberty which never died out of their descendants. Through these valiant men that little strip of country on the coast of Spain has set her impress indelibly on the richest half of South America, and to-day four times as many people speak the Portuguese language in the new and greater Portugal across the seas as in the mother land. One of the most interesting episodes in the history of Brazil is the coming of the Jesuits, who under Father Jose de Anchieta, poet, hero and saint, and his con¬ temporaries, penetrated into the wilds of Brazil, count¬ ing not their lives dear unto them, and converting the Indians, at least nominally, by the tens of thousands. Father Anchieta was a contemporary of Francis Xavier, the founder of the order, and exhibited all the intrepid zeal and unlimited capacity for self-sacrifice which char¬ acterized the Jesuits in earlier and better days. One cannot help sympathizing with these heroic mis- 234 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY sionaries, however one may deprecate their politics and their casuistry, for they were the only real friends the Indians had, in the early days of South America. They protected the aborigines, instructed them in the arts of agriculture, brought them together for their safety in fortified towns, which seemed as harbours of refuge for runaway slaves, escaping the intolerable cruelties of their taskmasters. For this reason the Jesuits were hated by the settlers, especially by the Paulistas, who pursued them relentlessly and at last broke their power, and largely drove them out of large sections of Brazil, but not before they had left a mark on the country that will never be effaced. More than once during the early centuries of Brazilian history, the ownership and future colonization of the country hung in the balance, and it looked as though a Calvinistic rather than a Catholic civilization would pre¬ vail. About the middle of the sixteenth century a strong expedition of French Huguenots, under Nicolas Ville- gagnon, was sent against Rio. It effected a landing on an island in the harbour which to this day is called Villegagnon’s Island, and gave promise of dominating the city and perhaps all Brazil. But at the critical mo¬ ment the traitor Yillegagnon sold out his own people, went over to the Catholic party, and returned to France, and the hopes of Admiral Coligny and the Huguenots of establishing a great Protestant colony in South America, were frustrated forever. More seriously still was the Portuguese power in Brazil threatened by the Dutch. In fact, for some years, the Hollanders ruled the greater part of Brazil, holding Pernambuco, Bahia and all the northern part of the country in an apparently secure grasp. But the Dutch East India Company which had undertaken the conquest of Brazil, was not heartily backed up by the home gov- BRAZIL, THE BOUNDLESS 235 eminent, and after twenty-five years of desultory warfare and varied successes and defeats, the Dutch commander of Pernambuco surrendered on the 26th of January, 1655, and with this surrender “four provinces, three cities, eight towns, fourteen fortified places, and nine hundred miles of coast were restored to the Portuguese crown.” It was in large measure a religious war, for the devout Portuguese Catholic detested the Calvinistic Hollanders with all the rancour of theological hatred, and were de¬ termined to drive the heretical foreigners from their shores. The discovery of gold in 1690, and of diamonds in 1729, gave a tremendous impetus to immigration, and whole sections of Portugal seemed in danger of depopulation in consequence. The discovery of diamonds was as romantic as in the Kimberly district of South Africa. Some miners who were washing gold in the camp at Tijuca found some shining pebbles in the bottom of their pans, which they used as counters in their games for a long time. At last a wandering friar who had been in India declared them to be diamonds, and during the next forty years five million carats of these little shining stones went to deck the necks and fingers of European beauties. Even to-day these diamond mines, next to those in Kimberly, are the richest in the world. We must hasten over the uneventful years of the eighteenth century in Brazilian history, and come down to the year 1807, when Napoleon’s power and prestige were at their zenith, and he had all Europe except Great Britain at his feet. Portugal was one of these countries, and when he learned that the cowardly John IV, the Prince Regent of Portugal, was playing fast and loose with him, and at the same time courting England’s favour, he sent Junot to capture Lisbon. Just as Junot entered the city, Prince John with fifteen 236 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY thousand of the nobility and fifty millions of treasure sailed out of the harbour, under convoy of the British fleet, bound for Brazil,—the greater Portugal across the seas. Six weeks later he reached Brazil and was received with open arms and great enthusiasm by the Brazilians, who were now to have a ruler of their own on their own soil. John was a wretchedly weak prince, and when the liberal spirit awoke in Portugal, and spread to Brazil, much against his will he agreed to give his people a liberal constitution, which indeed had already been promised by his son, Prince Pedro. Mr. Dawson gives the following graphic account of the event: “On the 26th of February (1821) a great crowd as¬ sembled in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, and while the cowardly king skulked in his suburban palace, the Prince Pedro addressed the people, swearing in his father’s name and his own to accept unreservedly the expected con¬ stitution. The multitude insisted on marching out to the king’s palace to show their enthusiastic gratitude. Trembling with fear John, who did not know why they had come, was forced to get into his carriage, and the miserable man was frightened out of his wits when the crowd took the horses out to drag him with their own hands. He fainted away and when he recovered his senses sat snivelling and protesting between his sobs his willingness to agree to anything, fearing that he was going to suffer the fate of Louis XYI. Thereafter, Dom Pedro, though only twenty-two years old, was the principal figure in Brazil.” Soon after this the pusillanimous Prince Regent de¬ parted for Portugal, and his son who became Dom Pe¬ dro I reigned in his stead. Brazil shortly afterwards be¬ came independent of Portugal with Dom Pedro as the first emperor. 237 BRAZIL, THE BOUNDLESS He was brave, ambitions, unscrupulous and thoroughly depraved in his private life, and he soon lost his hold on the affections and loyalty of his people, and in 1831 ab¬ dicated in favour of his young son and took refuge on a British warship. A few years of regency followed, and then as the people could agree on no other ruler, they called the boy of fifteen to the throne who was known throughout all his long and good reign of fifty years, as Dorn Pedro H. A simple, good-natured, democratic, scholarly man, he grew up to be, caring more for his books than for state¬ craft, and mingling on the most familiar and friendly terms with his people. He would go about irr shabby clothes and with a slouchy gait, and yet he was so genuine and kindly, and so virtuous in his private life, that his people thoroughly loved him, and his influence was alto¬ gether for good. He spent much of his time in Petropo- lis, a lovely mountain resort twenty-five miles from Rio, where all of the diplomats live to this day, and I was told by old residents that his favourite daily amusement was to go to the railway station on the arrival of the one train from the capital, and there to embrace his friends in the Brazilian style, and shake hands with all the foreign passengers. To this day the arrival and departure of the afternoon train is an event in Petropolis, and in their best clothes the inhabitants flock to the station to wel¬ come the coming and speed the parting guest. In 1876 Dom Pedro visited the United States, and was greatly interested in the Centennial Exhibition at Phil¬ adelphia, where he spent much time. It is said that the sudden impetus which Brazil received in industrial and commercial affairs dates from that memorable visit. However, in spite of Dom Pedro’s popularity and goodness of heart and republican simplicity, he was not destined to finish his life as Emperor of Brazil. For 238 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY fifty years he reigned and reigned well, but he frequently said that he was preparing the way for a republic. And so it proved, for one November night in 1889 the emperor was quietly informed by the provisional government that he was deposed and that henceforth Brazil was a federal republic. During the night the emperor and his family were put on shipboard and sent off to Lisbon, and the new repub¬ lic was born. The good emperor acquiesced in his de¬ position with excellent grace, and preferred perpetual exile from his beloved Brazil, rather than that a drop of Brazilian blood should be unnecessarily spilled. While I was in Brazil in May, 1907, the grandson of the good emperor came to Rio, but for prudential reasons he was not allowed to land, and no monarchical excitement was created by the event. The republic has had one or two stormy periods, especially when the navy under Admiral Mello, revolted in 1893, and held the harbour of Rio Janeiro and some of the outlying ports for nearly six months. But an Amer¬ ican admiral refused to allow the revolutionists to block¬ ade the port to foreign commerce, and President Floriano controlled the army and the government, so that the revolution which was for the purpose of restoring the monarchy, could make but little headway, and was soon crushed out. Since then Brazil’s troubles have been chiefly financial ones, and even these have not been overwhelming. The republic which was perhaps at first premature, born of the ambition of army officers, is apparently thoroughly established in the affections of the great majority of the people. Since its advent Brazil has awakened to a new life. Commercially and intellectually she was never so prosperous as to-day. Whether her spiritual growth has kept pace with her commercial expansion is perhaps a BRAZIL, THE BOUNDLESS 239 question, but even in the higher realms mighty forces are at work in evangelical churches and schools for the mak¬ ing of the new Brazil. Other chapters will tell of these forces as well as of the new spirit of improvement which has made of Rio, the capital, the most beautiful of cities, and has infused a fresh life into the remotest districts of the great republic. XXIX RIO DE JANEIRO, THE CITY BEAUTIFUL The Harbour of Rio—Compared with Sydney and Cape Town—The Awakening of Rio de Janeiro—Making a City Over—The Avenida Central—What was Accomplished in Two Years—The Avenida by Night—Gloria Hill to Botofogo—How the City Made Money—The Great Port Works—The Monroe Palace. FTER seeing most of the principal cities of the world, I had settled down to the opinion that JL Jm. Buda Pesth and Stockholm were, on the whole, in my estimation, the most beautiful of modern capitals, but I had not then seen Bio de Janeiro, the federal capital of Brazil. Of course every one has heard of the harbour of Bio, and it is admitted to be unrivalled. The harbour of Sydney is the only one that is ever compared with it by those familiar with the world’s harbours, and Sydney, though it has its own special and unrivalled beauties, is inferior in many respects. Sydney’s port stretches out in every direction, running for fifty miles inland like a gigantic cuttlefish, sending its tentacles far up into the country, and affording innumerable lovely bays and charming vistas, where the land and water meet. But so does the harbour of Bio, though it is not quite so ex¬ tensive. Yet so large is this great tidal inlet, that the first explorers thought it was a river, and, as it was the 26th day of January (some say the 1st), called it the Biver of January, Bio de Janeiro. Sydney has its “Heads,” the great flat-topped hills that stand guard at the entrance of the harbour, but the bay is so huge that Sydney Heads are scarcely visible 240 RIO HARBOR AND CITY AS SEEN FROM CORCOYADO. THE “SUGAR LOAF ” IS THE CONICAL PEAK AT THE RIGHT. EIO DE JAYEIEO 241 from Sydney City. But Eio de Janeiro has its Corco- vado, almost overhanging the city, looking as though it would topple over upon the housetops, though the mighty mountain has stood for hundreds of years without a tremour,.and seems likely to stand for hundreds of years to come. Eio, too, has its “ Sugar Loaf,” a sugar loaf more than a thousand feet high rising out of the sea, and weighing billions of tons. The “Hay Stack” would be perhaps a more appropriate name, for it is rounded on its top and sides, and does not taper to a point. Always in the sight of the people of Eio, who look for them, too, is Cavea and the Organ Mountains, like the pipes of some gigantic organ, and the “Finger of God,” all washed, as it were, by the salt sea that flows in and out around them, laving them with its life-giving tides and singing to them the ceaseless music of the sea. Cape Town, with its Table Mountain and its Lion’s Head dominating the city, is the only seaport that compares in respect of mountain views, with Eio, and Cape Town has not the splendid land-locked harbour in which the i 1 navies of the world can ride,” as has Eio. But for all these wonders of nature, the traveller is prepared. He has heard of them, he has read of them, he has, perhaps, dreamed of them, but, for the wonders of the city itself, he is not prepared, unless he is very much up-to-date, for they have largely been created within the last two years. Suddenly Eio de Janeiro seemed to arouse herself from the sleep of centuries, and say : “I will be beautiful, as well as great, and I will make my streets and the build¬ ings which line them, worthy of the unrivalled situation wdiieh nature has given me.” But this was no easy un¬ dertaking. It would have staggered a Boss Shepherd, or a Yankee magnate with tens of millions at his dis- 242 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY posal. In an old world city it would have been thought absolutely impossible, but these South American cities have a way of laughing at impossibilities (vide Buenos Ayres, as well as Rio Janeiro). They may seem com¬ paratively dormant for decades and then suddenly emerge from their chrysalis, like one of their own brilliant butterflies that dazzle the fields in their blue and gold glory. As I have said, Rio had unusual obstacles to overcome. Her streets were for the most part narrow, unwholesome thoroughfares that held the heat and excluded the air. There was no great avenue to serve as a channel for the lifegiving winds from the sea, for the streets ran in such a way as to shut out the prevailing breezes. These streets, too, were wretchedly paved, and slow mule cars crawled haltingly and stumblingly along, stopping to pick up a passenger wherever one offered himself. Most of the houses were mediaeval structures in the Portuguese style, and there was little to boast of in the way of architecture three short years ago. Worse than all else, yellow fever ravaged the city over and over again, until it got the name of being one of the worst pest holes in the world. Tourists avoided it, merchants were afraid to live in it. The ambassadors and other diplomats foregathered in Petropolis, a beautiful resort on the hills 3,000 feet above the sea, and nearly two miles from Rio. The emperor himself lived there for a large part of the year, and Petropolis (Peter’s City) be¬ came the real capital of the country, rather than Rio. This state of affairs continued down to and into this new twentieth century. In fact, until something like three years ago, when the giant city yawned, turned over, shook herself and determined to become “Rio the Beautiful,” the finest city in the continent,—perhaps in the world. THE “FINGER OF GOD” NEAR RIO DE JANEIRO. EIO DE JANEIRO 243 I am prepared for disclaimers of the statement and for scoffing remarks about the too vigorous imagination of an impressionable traveller. One who has not visited Eio since the beginning of 1906 will scarcely credit what I relate. Had I seen the old Eio and not the new, I could not myself have believed that such changes were possible in so short a time. Photographs can do little justice to the new city, any more than to the magnificent harbour by which it sits. The task undertaken and largely carried out is not the building of a city where no city existed before. That were a comparatively easy task, but the new Eio necessitated the pulling down of the old Eio, and clearing off the ruins, before another could be built. The old city was compactly built, the streets were narrow and cheerless. Where the great 11 Avenida Central” runs, there was no street at all, just solid blocks of brick and stone houses, every one of which had to be demolished and cleared away before the street which I will not hesitate to pronounce the finest in the world, could be built. The Mayor of the City was a man of vision and of faith. He was not a young man but he had a young man’s ideals and courage. He was backed up by councillors and citizens who shared his views,—the work was begun and under his successors it has been continued, and, wonder of wonders! in less than three years largely accomplished, or at least so far completed that one can catch the projector’s vision of u the city Beautiful.” Think for a moment of the stupendous character of the task ! In the way of the one Central Avenue alone, which the city determined to construct, were five hun¬ dred and ninety houses and stores of all descriptions. These must be bought (disappropriated),condemned and 244 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY demolished. Seven million five hundred thousand dollars in gold were paid,for these houses. They were taken by the city at their assessed valuation, which in some cases proved to be much less than the rental value. But the tax dodgers were taken at their word by the city fathers, and the public wasted no sympathy on them, when they only got half the value of their property. At once the destruction of the old rookeries began. On the 8th day of March, 1904, the first house was de¬ molished. One year, eight months and seven days later, on the 15th of November, 1905, the Brazilian Independ¬ ence Day, the Avenida was opened to the public. As I write, but one year and a half has elapsed since this street was made passable, and yet it can already claim, as I have said, to be the most beautiful street in the whole world, and in the view of an unprejudiced traveller it will, I think, justify its claim. It is a mile and an eighth long, over a hundred feet wide, and lined on either side with artistic, and often truly imposing and even magnificent buildings.. To be sure, some of these buildings are rather florid and ornate to suit the severest taste, but they are all fresh, bright, and, most of them, architecturally beautiful. “Each structure,” we are told, “must conform to a plan in which the details of architecture and rules of hygiene are preserved.” The roadway is paved with asphalt, and down its centre are fifty-five little ovals of flowers and foliage plants with one Brazil tree springing from the middle of the oval. (The Brazil tree is a typical and beautiful shade tree, from which the country received its name.) “From each oval, too, springs an ornamental pillar, bearing three arc lights ; at the edge of the walks in spaces alternating with the electric lights, are one hun¬ dred and four pillars with gas jets of the highest illu¬ minating power, gas being used with electricity, both to RIO DE JANEIRO 245 increase the brilliancy and to avoid any danger from the sndden breaking down of the electric lights.” The sight of the Avenida by night is as beautiful as by day, and it is almost as bright, for the thousands of pow¬ erful lights illumine not only the roadway, but light up the palatial stores and office buildings that line this great street from one end to the other. The broad sidewalks on which ten people can walk abreast are mosaics made of black and white flints brought from Portugal for the purpose and laid after the Lisbon style by Portuguese workmen. Up and down the smooth roadway automo¬ biles of the latest pattern tear, undeterred by a speed limit, tooting unmelodious horns and emitting just as noisome smells as if they were in London or New York. But not even the omnipresent automobile can cloud for more than a moment the fair scene, or defile for long the pure air that sweeps through the beautiful Avenida, which is open at both ends to the sea and the sea breezes. At the north it opens on the inner harbour, with Petrop- olis and Nictheroy on the further side, while at the south it strikes the outer harbour with the picturesque islands and gigantic towering mountains of rock which have long made Rio famous. Through this great central avenue blow the winds of heaven by day and by night, and into it from above pours the sunlight from brilliant and often unclouded skies, and this mighty artery has had much to do with purifying the city, reducing the death-rate, abolishing fever and plague and making it one of the healthiest cities in the world. But the Avenida Central is only, as it were, the con¬ necting link between equally beautiful boulevards. On the north side, an avenue used more for business than for pleasure, connects the Avenida with the new harbour works, but on the other side it stretches around Gloria 246 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Hill to Botofogo, a wonderful crescent shaped bay, and then, on and on, to the open Atlantic under the head of mighty Corcovado itself, which seems to look down un¬ moved on all these marvellous improvements in the city over which it has so long kept guard. Along this drive for much of the way the surf dashes up against the fine stone battlements and on the other side are narrow parks filled with rare and brilliant flowers and trees now in their infancy, but which will make the whole fifteen miles of the drive a bower of loveliness. This drive for natural beauty and for skillful adornment is not equalled, I believe, in all the world. The Avenida Central and its boulevard extensions on either side do not by any means make the sum total of the new Rio. Seven and three-fourth miles of streets have been or are being widened and transformed from narrow dirty lanes into handsome business avenues, and the city has ventured upon a loan of twenty millions of dollars to accomplish it. Eleven hundred houses will be demolished and in some cases the streets will not only be widened but run through the old blocks, as was the Central Avenue. Strange to say, out of all this destruction and recon¬ struction, the city has made money, for the land on the new streets is worth far more than the old buildings which were condemned and demolished, and it has been eagerly bought by merchants who desire to have their es¬ tablishments on the best streets. But of course the sale of the land which the city disappropriated has not paid all the enormous bills contracted in building, in three short years, the City Beautiful, and the government has gone into debt to the extent of fifty millions of dollars for the new city. It is worth it all, the traveller will declare, and so far the city seems to have had no trouble in interesting the THE MOST BEAUTIFUL STREET IN THE WORLD. EIO DE JANEIRO 247 Rothschilds and other capitalists in her plans and bor¬ rowing money at reasonable rates. The “port works ” is another of the gigantic and vastly important improvements which is being carried on at the same time with the building of the new streets of Rio. At this writing (June, 1907), one has to get ashore as best he can from the great liners. It is an unseemly scramble with extortionate charges by the boatmen, and exasperating delays, and an extraordinary thoroughness of search on the part of the custom-house officers. In a few months the “port works” will be completed, and a solid stone wall front, with piers, quays, warehouses, and all modern electrical appliances for handling freight, will extend a distance of two and one-fifth miles up the inner harbour. Then the travellers’ tribulations on landing at Rio will be largely things of the past, and he will step from the gangplank on to terra firma and obtain with his first step on shore an impression of substantial utility, as well as of the great natural beauty of the harbour. I have written with ardour, I am aware, of this noble city, and have not spared the superlatives because they are all deserved. I can hardly expect those who have not visited Rio within three years to share my en¬ thusiasm, scarcely to believe my story, for much of the city is so new, so fresh, so unstained by the hand of time, that even the inhabitants themselves are scarcely able to realize what has been accomplished. The “Monroe Palace,” so called, which stands at one end of the Avenida, is as bright and sparkling as when it stood in the World’s Fair at St. Louis, for there is no smoke or grimy fog to disfigure and besmirch the purity of the buildings. Here the Pan American Congress held its meetings during Secretary Root’s important visit, and it is a typical building, typical of the beauty and strength of new Brazil, typical, too, when we consider its name 248 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY and the use to which it was put, of the new and brotherly aspirations which are stirring in the hearts of Brazilians towards their great neighbour in the north, for nowhere else in South America are North Americans more popu¬ lar and welcome. This chapter, to be fully rounded out, seems to suggest a question. If Rio de Janeiro can accomplish such won¬ derful things in two short years, why cannot New York, Chicago, London and Glasgow, with their greater wealth, beautify and ennoble their municipalities in like manner ? Who will rub Aladdin’s lamp for them, and evolve other Cities Beautiful ? XXX THE WORLD’S COFFEE CUP AND HOW IT IS FILLED Brazil, One-fifteenth of Habitable Globe—The Brazilian Tonic—Too Large Doses of the Stimulant—Controlling the Price of Coffee—Jahu in the Coffee District—A Brazilian Troly—A Great Fazenda—How a Coffee Tree Looks—Preparing the Berries for Market—How Many Cups Have the Brazilian Plantations Filled ?—Beckoned in Trillions— Breakfast on the Fazenda—How the Coffee is Made. “They have in Turkey a drink called coffee. . . . The drink comforteth the brain and heart and helpeth digestion.”— Bacon. T HE world’s coffee cup is filled by Brazil. There is no doubt about it. Three-fourths of all the coffee that the world and his wife complacently sip at the breakfast table, Mocha, Java, Rio, whichever you prefer, is grown on the red soil of the uplands of Brazil. It is a well known fact that Brazil can and does pro¬ duce every kind of coffee grown in the world. Xo pains or money have been spared to import seed from Arabia, Java and Bourbon, of the best varieties known there. It is further stated that 11 the conditions of soil and climate and the vast extent of country, the rich lands peculiarly adapted to coffee, the immunity from disease, and the abundance of labour, make it almost certain that she will practically monopolize the coffee production of the world so long as these conditions continue.” 1 When we remember the further facts that Brazil is one- fifteenth of the habitable globe, one-fifth of both A mericas and three-sevenths of South America, we see what a huge 1 The Brazilian Bulletin. 249 250 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY coffee plantation there is from which the world’s coffee cup can be filled. To be sure, the whole of Brazil is not adapted to the production of coffee, but millions and tens of millions of her acres are suited to the redolent berry, and the great problem which confronts Brazil is not how to augment but how to reduce or at least keep stationary the coffee crop so that the price may not fall to a ruinously low figure. Whether or not coffee is a health-giving tonic to the individual as most people claim, in spite of the assevera¬ tions of the enterprising people of Battle Creek and the counter-claims of Postum, it is certain that it has proved a powerful tonic to the prosperity of Brazil, for, owing to her wealth in coffee, she has rebuilt her cities, im¬ proved their drainage, banished yellow fever, and taken on within the last dozen years a new lease of national and industrial life. Santos, for instance, the great coffee port from which nearly three-fourths of the coffee of the world is shipped, is no longer a pest-hole dreaded of all navigators, but a clean, healthy town, with splendid stone docks that put to shame the flimsier structures of New York and Boston. The only question about coffee as a national tonic is whether like all stimulants it may not be overdone, and a reaction set in which may for a time disorder the na¬ tional heart. Indeed, this reaction from an overstimu¬ lant has already set in, and Brazil is feeling serious ef¬ fects from it. The state of Sao Paulo has forbidden the planting of any more coffee trees for five years, under penalty of a serious fine. The first five years of this pro¬ hibition are nearly spent, and the legislature will un¬ doubtedly renew the prohibition for another half decade. But Sa5 Paulo, though the chief coffee producing state, is only one of several where the berry can be grown, and THE WORLD’S COFFEE CUP 251 it is expected that the next congress will apply the same law to all Brazil. In the meantime the government has developed a plan for buying up all the surplus coffee and holding it so long as is necessary to prevent a drop in the price. Al¬ ready it is said that there are five million bags on hand, and the end is not in sight. Indeed, the attempt to cor¬ ner the coffee market of the world may produce serious demoralization of the national finances. These facts are sufficient to show the importance of the coffee cup in the economics of Brazil, and add interest to a visit to a coffee plantation in the heart of Sao Paulo, the most progressive state in the Brazilian union. My friend, Colonel Feraz, of Jahu, had invited me and a dozen mutual friends to visit his fazenda or coffee farm, a few miles from the town. Jahu, you must know, is in the heart of the. great state of Sao Paulo and in the heart of the coffee district as well. The soil is the colour of brick dust, and the roads and sidewalks and the houses, where the water in the frequent rains has splashed up on them, are all red. Even one’s linen, his face and his hair, take on a reddish hue after a short ride or walk on a dusty day. The town itself is a compact, well built place of some fourteen thousand inhabitants, whose sole business is coffee. They not only drink coffee several times a day, but sell coffee, raise coffee, talk coffee, and, for what I know, dream coffee. All about the town the open country slopes upward, and is covered with coffee trees, to the right, to the left, to the north, to the south, everywhere is coffee. Our friend’s fazenda is some five miles out of town, and bright and early one May morning half a dozen trolys drew up at the door of the little hotel, to take us all out to the fazenda. Now a Brazilian troly is not an American trolley, but is nothing more or less than a 252 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY buckboard drawn by mules,—a vehicle that answers ad¬ mirably for the rough country roads of Brazil. The Brazilian mule, too, is an animal to be admired, as well as respected, for the strength of his heels. He is a sleek, clean, handsome, strongly built fellow, and when attached to one of the handsome equipages of Eio, with silver-mounted harness, he surpasses his prouder ancestor, the horse. In the country the mules, though not so finely accoutred, are just as handsome and willing, and they took us out over the hills and valleys to the fazenda of their master in very creditable time. When within about a mile of the house, as we were driving through an avenue of coffee trees, our host mod¬ estly remarked, “ These are my trees,” and we found that as far as the eye could see up hill and down dale his trees extended. “ How many trees have you ! ” we asked. And he almost took our breath away by replying, “Four hundred and thirty thousand.” He went on to explain that these trees were in the original estate of his father, which had been inherited by three or four broth¬ ers, but that they worked the estate in common, though his individual share would be only a hundred thousand odd trees. The full grown tree is about twelve feet high, of bushy and rather dense growth. The leaves are a beautiful, glossy dark green, in shape like those of our edible chest¬ nut, and the coffee berries grow on the twigs and small branches and close to the wood. First they are green, then turn to a deep red or yellow, and, finally, when fully ripe, become almost black. In May they are at their handsomest, for the red berries contrast beautifully with the glossy green leaves, and glow like rubies in their dark setting. The red berries look for all the world like Cape Cod cranberries, but taste very unlike DRYING COFFEE. THE WOELD’S COFFEE CEP 253 them, for a sweetish pnlp under the outer husk envelops the hard berry of commerce. When the berries are ripe they are stripped off by hand and fall to the ground beneath the tree, where they are gathered up by another set of workmen and carried to the factory, where they are washed and thoroughly dried, and then put through a machine which breaks off the hull. This being lighter is blown out by a strong current of air to the back of the factory, while the heavier kernel falls into its appropriate bin. From this it is again lifted and by ingenious machinery passed over an iron sieve with holes of various sizes, and thus automatically sorts itself; the small round berries, which are the most valuable, dropping by themselves into their appropriate receptacle. Then the winnowed, hulled and sorted coffee is put into bags each of which weighs sixty kilos, or 132 pounds, and is ready for storage or for export as the case may be. Up to a certain point coffee improves with age, so that when the crop is particularly heavy, as it is every four or five years, the berries can be stored to advantage, to await the leaner years which are sure to follow a bumper crop. After we had been introduced to the family at the fazenda, our host took us over his plantation, only a fraction of it, of course, for days would not have sufficed to drive through the miles and miles of rows of trees that belonged to him and his brothers. All the rows were straight, clean, well-cultivated and flourishing. Scarcely a dead tree could be seen or a dead branch on any tree. When a tree dies out for any reason, another is planted (the law allows old plantations to be thus renewed) and for a year or two is protected from summer’s sun and the winter’s frost by a slight covering. At four years of age 254 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY the trees begin to bear, and continue in bearing for fifty years and in many instances even longer. While we were driving through the plantation, our host gave us some facts about the coffee industry, which were startling in their size. In the state of Sao Paulo seven hundred million coffee trees are found, and twenty- five million in the Jahu district alone. In the year 1906, which was an exceptionally good year, the trees of Sao Paulo averaged nearly four pounds of coffee to the tree. In 1907, however, fortunately for the price of coffee, the average yield was not half as great. In all Brazil the production of coffee in 1906 was esti¬ mated at twenty millions of bags of 132 pounds each, or two hundred and sixty four billion pounds. Reckoning fifty cups of coffee to the pound, if my arithmetic is not at fault in such enormous figures, the Brazilian crop of a single year would fill the world’s coffee cup thirteen trillion, two hundred billion times. Of course the small after dinner cups, which are usually used in Brazil, could be filled three times as often, but these figures involved stagger computation, and I will leave it to my reader to work out the larger problem of the smaller cup. To return to the fazenda, after visiting different parts of the plantation, and seeing his orange groves and the houses of his labourers, our kind host brought us back for breakfast to the chief residence on the fazenda, where his brothers and his wife lived. This substantial meal in Brazil usually comes at eleven or twelve o’clock, and on Colonel Feraz’ fazenda it was certainly an elaborate function. Beginning with soup, roast chicken, roast beef, and roast mutton, followed in quick succession, while the piece de resistance was a whole sucking pig without which no such state breakfast would be deemed complete. Fruits and sweets followed; the sweets ex¬ ceedingly sweet. One variety called in Portuguese, THE WORLD’S COFFEE CUP 255 “maiden’s kisses” being so very sweet as to be cloying to the taste. The cynical bachelor would doubtless say that this was why it received its name. Of course the feast wound up with coffee, and such coffee! One must visit a fazenda in Brazil to find a per¬ fect cup of coffee From the tree to the mill, to the coffee-pot, to the table, with no chance for the admixture of chicory or acorns, with a Brazilian housewife to make it,—then one gets the aromatic berry in its perfection. In a Brazilian home the coffee is roasted and ground fresh each time it is made. It is not boiled, but is re¬ duced to a powder and packed in a conical woollen bag. Hot water is then poured through it twice, so that it is a percolation, not a decoction, that is served. The host and hostess waited on the guests assiduously and never sat down to share the viands with them, for this is Brazilian hospitality. A coffee fazenda is not usually a place of great luxury or style. These things are reserved for the town houses, and, except in the large cities, living is on a simple and unostentatious style. At Colonel Feraz’ fazenda, the piano, on which the Brazilian young ladies play ex¬ cellently, was the chief article of furniture in the living- room, shared by a comfortable hammock and a number of chairs, which were taken into the dining-room when breakfast was served. All day long the sturdy mules, three abreast, kept bringing great cart-loads of coffee berries to the mill, and other carts were equally busy carrying away the bags of hulled and sorted berries. Many thousands of cups of coffee would be made from that day’s work at this one mill, and practically the mill is kept busy the year around. After the breakfast, our generous hosts brought out a 256 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY great two-bushel bag of delicious orauges, from which every one was invited to eat all he desired and then fill his pockets. The westering sun at last reminded us that it was time to return to Jahu. The day had been so full of pleasure and instruction and we felt that no one’s education was complete if he had not spent at least one day on a Brazilian fazenda. XXXI A THOUSAND MILES IN BRAZIL 1 Some Early Morning Starts—Seen From the Car Window—Maine and Brazil—The Fine City of Sao Paulo—The Beginnings of Christian Endeavour in Brazil—A Wet Picnic—The Brazilian Hug—A Coven- tion in the Coffee District—Hospitality of the Daily Papers—The Generosity of Brazilian Officials—“ Until a Little While.” T HIS chapter might just as truthfully be headed three thousand miles iu Brazil, for adding the two thousand miles of coast line, from the edge of Uruguay to Pernambuco, to the thousand miles we have travelled overland from and to the capital by rail, a good three thousand has been covered. However, since we have gone ashore at but two or three ports on the coast, I will confine myself to our travel by land, in order to reach the four Christian Endeavour conventions at Sao Paulo, Jahu, Eio Claro and Campinas. These were in addition to the national and South American conventions held at Eio de Janeiro, which were meetings of remarkable power and influence. These busy days of travel and convention-going fre¬ quently began long before daylight and often ended at about midnight. I do not suppose that all the trains in 1 Though this whole journey to South America was in the interests of the Christian Endeavour movement, the author has not included in this volume details of the many Christian Endeavour meetings held. An account of the rapid progress of this cause in South America will be found in other publications. He has given in this connection, how¬ ever, the story of one Christian Endeavour trip, since it describes certain phases of South American life, which should not be omitted from such a volume. 257 258 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY Brazil start at 5:30 in the morning, but it seemed to me that all I needed to take were scheduled for that hour, which often involved getting up and routing up our patient hosts at 4 A. M., two hours before daylight in this southern clime. After the inevitable coffee with which every Brazilian, from the loftiest to the lowliest, begins the day, we would start on our pilgrimage, which sometimes did not end until sundown. Travelling in the settled parts of the United States of Brazil, is very much like travelling in the United States of America. The cars are on the North American pat¬ tern and some of them were built at Wilmington, Dela¬ ware. Many of the engines are from the Baldwin loco¬ motive works in Philadelphia, and the assiduous con¬ ductor punches the tickets in the same way but a little oftener and a trifle more politely than our own knights of the railway. As I looked out of the car window, too, I could often imagine myself on my native North American heath. Some parts of the country look like Maine in the neigh¬ bourhood of Moosehead Lake ; great reaches of forest with blue mountains in the dim distance. But when we came nearer to the forests I could see that we were in sunny Brazil, where it is summer nine months of the year and early autumn the other three. Here were palm trees and breadfruit trees with their great glossy leaves, and cotton trees bursting into bloom, while other trees were a perfect mass of bright red blossoms without a leaf showing. I was often reminded of Moses’ burning bush as the train flashed by the flaming forest, every blossom a tongue of fire. And the coffee trees,—you see nothing like them in Maine or California or Florida, for the world’s coffee comes from Brazil. Mocha and Java coffee as well as Bio, the A THOUSAND MILES IN BEAZIL 259 seed having been imported from these countries. Acres and acres, miles and miles, leagues and leagues of coffee. But these things are all by the way, literally, and the way led to the four Christian Endeavour conventions of which I have spoken. The first one was at Sao Paulo, the capital of the state of the same name, and some three hundred miles from Rio de Janeiro. Sao Paulo is con¬ sidered the most progressive and modern state in Brazil, and the city of Sao Paulo is a worthy capital of such a state. It is about as large as its namesake, St. Paul, Minnesota, has well-paved streets, lined with substantial buildings, and a splendid electric street-car service of American installation. To many of my readers the city is interesting because it has long been the chief centre of Christian Endeavour in South America. Here Dr. and Mrs. Fenn laboured when the former was professor in McKenzie College, and from them the society gained its first great impetus, though a so¬ ciety had previously been formed in Botucatei by Miss E. C. Hough. In Sao Paulo lived the indefatigable secretary, Dr. Eleizer dos Sanctos Saraiva, and the first president of the Brazilian Union, Rev. Erasmo Braga, and other leaders of the movement. Though the national head¬ quarters has now been removed to Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo will long maintain its prominence in Christian En¬ deavour circles. The meetings here were large and helpful. The attend¬ ance certainly was all that could be desired, and u stand¬ ing room only, and not much of that’ 7 might have been the sign at all the evening meetings. The picnic afternoon spent in a pleasant park near Sao Paulo was somewhat interfered with by the rain, but Brazilian Endeavourers are not to be daunted by a few showers, and they turned out in large numbers and seemed to enjoy a wetting as well as an outing. 260 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Long before daylight on the morning after the last late meeting at Sao Paulo, we started for Jahu, three hundred miles away in the interior, in the richest coffee region of the world. This, too, was an all-day’s journey, but it was far from monotonous, for the scenery was fine, and the new trees and fruits and flowers that we saw by the way added considerably to our botanical lore. Some¬ times brilliant birds would flash through the dark trees, and, occasionally, a flock of wild ostriches would lift their wings and scud from the approaching railway train. At many stations companies of Endeavourers would be waiting to give us the Brazilian hug and pat on the back, and to wish us all manner of blessings in their soft, melodious Portuguese. Some of these Endeavourers went on with us to Jahu, so that when we arrived there towards evening, the convention was at once organized and was soon in full swing. I was much surprised to see over the door of the Presbyterian church the familiar Christian Endeavour monogram in electric lights, red and white, and for a moment had to rub my eyes to see whether I was in North America or South America. Here is a land where half a century ago Protestantism was unknown, and where a quarter of a century ago its missionaries were persecuted almost unto death ; a point far back from the centres of population, where now a Christian Endeavour convention could be carried on with as much enthusiasm and dignity as in New York or York¬ shire. Here was a district convention in the heart of Brazil which attracted as much attention, perhaps more, than any similar gathering would do in Great Britain or the United States. The two daily papers gave large space to it:—one of them occupied almost all of its front page with the programme. The leading political leaders of both A THOUSAND MILES IN BEAZIL 261 parties, though Eoman Catholics, attended nearly all the services, and the mayor of the city called upon us and expressed his great interest in the meetings. It was a genuine Christian Endeavour convention too. None of our principles or leading features were ignored or forgotten. The prayer-meeting, the committees, the pledge, the interdenominational fellowship, were all made prominent, and our friends in Jahii evidently knew the spirit as well as the forms of Christian Endeavour. One day after the convention was over was spent on a u Fazenda,” or coffee farm, where our host was the owner of 430,000 coffee trees all in bearing, but that day was so rich in new experiences that it needs a whole chapter to do it justice. The meetings at Eio Claro and at Campinas were for only one evening each, but large audiences and earnest Endeavourers characterized them both, and they were graced by the presence of the officials of the city who thus showed not only their tolerance but their apprecia¬ tion of Protestantism,—a remarkable thing in a strongly Catholic country like Brazil. All the way along, from the first moment of our arrival until the hour of embarkation, the officials have been most kind. A special car the government provided free of charge to take us and some forty Endeavourers to Sao Paulo, and special launches met our steamer, pro¬ vided without expense to our friends by the custom¬ house authorities. The same courtesy was extended on our return to the steamer, and all the Endeavourers who wished to go, accompanied us to the ship that was to carry us homeward. On our return to Eio we found that the Oravia would be four days late in sailing, and our friends took advantage of it by arranging four extra meetings in the city and suburbs, and in Nictheroy across the bay,—the 262 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro. A farewell meet¬ ing in The Central Mission Hall on the evening before we sailed completed the series of meetings which to me will be memorable as long as I live, and which my friends assure me have done much for the cause of Chris¬ tian Endeavour in Brazil. The only fault I can find with them is that they had too much of the President of the World’s Union in them, for when I came to reckon it up I find that he had spoken no less than forty-four times in twenty-four days, and he was quite exhausted when he sailed for home. I think it was Nero to whom the atrocious sentiment is attributed, that he wished all Rome had one neck that he might chop it off with one blow. I could wish that all Brazilian friends for a moment at least had one hand that I might take it in a fraternal grasp and tell them how much I appreciate their hearty greetings, their oft- expressed good wishes, their unwearied attentions, their affectionate farewells. To my interpreters I owe an especial debt of gratitude, especially to Mr. Myron Clark, secretary of the flourishing Y. M. C. A. in Rio de Janeiro who interpreted for me at more than thirty meetings. The Brazilians have an expression which I heard a thousand times, which being literally translated means: “ Until a little while.’ 7 It may be many years before I return to Brazil, if ever, but in the years of eternity it will be only “ until a little while 77 that we meet again. Then “Ate Loga, 77 dear friends, “ate loga 77 —“until a little while. 77 XXXII VENEZUELA, THE TURBULENT REPUBLIC OF THE NORTH An Accessible Frontier—Large Resources—Terrible Misrule—The Dis¬ covery of Venezuela—Little Venice—Early Years of Oppression— Venezuela’s Declaration of Independence—The Career of the Greatest Venezuelan—Blanco and Castro—Caracas, the Capital—The Outlook for Venezuela. V ENEZUELA, of all countries in South America, is the country for which God has done the most and man the least. In fact it is the country in which man seems to have done his best to thwart the good designs of Providence. Almost any other country, subjected to the systematic pillage by which Venezuela has been plundered, would long ago have been reduced to a primeval wilderness or succumbed to its enemies from without. That Venezuela survives at all as an inde¬ pendent republic is proof of her inherent resources and recuperative powers. Unlike the republics of the west coast she has an easily accessible frontier. In Peru and Chile, for thousands of miles, barren, inhospitable mountains forbid the traveller and merchant to penetrate the interior. Along the Venezuelan coast the mountain ramparts are low, and a smiling and abundant vegetation invites the explorer to penetrate beyond them. Instead of having to scale passes three miles high in order to reach the promised land beyond, as on the west coast, the passes of the Venezuelan coast mountains are scarcely half a mile high. 263 264 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY In Amazonian Brazil the impenetrable jungle and the malarial swamps are as great an obstacle to the explorer as the barren mountains of Peru, but along the Venezuelan shore there is little of this difficulty, and the traveller’s way is made comparatively easy by nature. When one gets beyond the low barriers, he finds great healthy up¬ land prairies of rich soil, furnishing splendid pasturage for tens of millions of cattle and sheep. Every tropical plant can be grown here, and coffee and cacapmalone, had they been cultivated to their limit, might long ago have made Venezuela one of the rich nations of the world. But in spite of these natural advantages, what do we see ? A country ravaged by tyrants from without, and wracked by internal dissensions, a country taxed to death; a country of rankly and frankly dishonest officials, who have systematically laid up millions for themselves while they have robbed the people; a country which in all its long list of rulers can scarcely boast of one honest administration. In many things Venezuela was the first of South Amer¬ ican countries,—the first to be discovered, the first to de¬ clare itself an independent republic, the first to win victories on any considerable scale against Spain. On his third voyage, in 1498, Columbus discovered the coast of Venezuela south of the Windward Islands. A year later Alonso de Ojeda followed the coast along for four hundred miles, without finding any spot where he could penetrate the mountain chain which follows the shore, though it really presents few difficulties compared with the mountains of the Pacific coast. But when he got into the great Gulf of Maracaibo, he saw signs of habitation and found that the Indians lived in villages where the houses were built on piles driven into the shal¬ low water near the shore. This naturally suggested to VENEZUELA 265 him the Italian city of the Lagoons, and he named the place Venezuela, or Little Venice, a name that afterwards was given to the whole shore for hundreds of miles, and that attached itself to that great republic (great terri¬ torially) that occupies the northeastern corner of South America. No settlements were made in Venezuela for thirty years after Columbus first saw the shore, and it was nearly twenty years more before the interior was pene¬ trated, and any permament settlement was made beyond the barrier of the mountains. Then followed nearly two hundred years of cruel exploitation by the Spaniards, who tried to squeeze dry the poor Venezuelan orange and then throw it aside as worthless. All that they wanted was gold and silver, and when the placer mines were exhausted, they had little further use for the great province, larger and richer though it was than Spain itself. Commerce was forbidden, as it was indeed by this short-sighted government on all the South American coast, and “the only goods legally im¬ ported had to be procured from the Cadiz monopoly, and were sent to the Isthmus and there transhipped into coasting vessels, paying enormous freight charges, profits and duties. Tobacco and salt were monopolized by gov¬ ernment concessionaires, and not a chicken could be sold in the markets without paying an exorbitant tax. 11 Education was completely neglected. It was not until 1696 that a priests’ school was established in Caracas, and when the City of Merida asked a similar boon it was denied, because 1 His Catholic Majesty did not deem it wise that education should become general in America.’ So the Creoles (the native people of Spanish blood) grew up nearly as ignorant as the Indians around them, al¬ though retaining all the fierce pride of their Spanish descent, acknowledging no man as superior, and retain- 266 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY ing very dim sentiments of loyalty to the mother coun¬ try.” 1 The first movement for liberty in Venezuela began in 1806 and was an abortive one, though it was destined to have large results. It is interesting to North Americans because its leader, Francisco Miranda, a native of Caracas, had fought under Washington, and his expedition was made up of American filibusters who sailed from New York in three ships and attempted to land on Venezuelan shores. They were beaten, however, and ten “Yankee” mem¬ bers of the expedition were condemned and shot in Puerto Cabello where a monument has recently been erected in their honour ; a scarcely deserved honour, since it is not plain that they were actuated by any high motives or de¬ sires to promote human rights. Their leader, Miranda, escaped to Jamaica and lived to play an important part in the future history of Venezuela. He afterwards ap¬ pears as a leader of the patriot forces when the real revo¬ lution that freed Venezuela actually began. This was in 1811, when, on the 5th of July, almost ex¬ actly the thirty-fifth anniversary of American inde¬ pendence, Venezuela adopted a similar declaration of independence, proclaiming its seven provinces free and independent states. This independence was not destined to be achieved without a bloody struggle, however. Over and over again the patriot forces were defeated, and it looked as though the Spanish power had finally tri¬ umphed. Twelve years later, on the 8th of November, 1823, the last Spanish stronghold was taken, and Vene¬ zuela’s long fight for freedom was secured. Though Miranda himself did not accomplish great things for the independence of Venezuela, one of his young lieutenants was destined to imprint his name in- 1 Dawson’s “South Araerioan Republics.” I VENEZUELA 261 delibly on the history of South America. This was nc other than Simon Bolivar, all in all, in spite of his moral defects, the greatest character that South America has produced, unless it be San Martin, the hero of Argen¬ tina, who so far surpassed Bolivar in self-effacing patriotism. The story of Bolivar’s triumphs has already been told in other chapters, for though he was a native of Vene¬ zuela, the scene of his victories was more in Colombia and even in Peru and Bolivia than in his native land. In fact, he met with his worst defeats in Venezuela, not only from the Spanish enemy but from the jealousy and distrust of his own countrymen, and he died, discouraged and heart-broken, at the early age of forty-seven. His hopeless wail upon his resignation of the presidency and afterwards upon his death-bed, seems a prophecy of the evil years which have come to Venezuela since his death. “Independence is the only benefit we have achieved and that has been at the cost of all others,” he wrote. “Our constitutions are books, our laws paper, our elections combats, and life itself a torment. We shall arrive at such a state that no foreign nation will condescend to conquer us, and we shall be governed by petty tyrants.” If Bolivar had known of the administration of Blanco and Castro he could not have prophesied more accurately. Since the achievement of freedom from Spain, revolution has followed revolution, the contest often being between the states for supreme power and a weak central govern¬ ment. As in other South American states the so-called “Unitarians” and the “Federalists” have nominally fought for power, though often the fight has degenerated into a mere personal squabble for the spoils of office, without a shred of principle to justify the contest, while the poor, patient peasantry have been slaughtered like 268 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY sheep on either side, not knowing or caring for what they fought. The only strong man who emerged from the welter of the conflict for many years was Guzman Blanco. He was as bad as he was strong, was constantly feathering his own nest and plucking the feathers from the breasts of his people, but he at least gave Venezuela a compara¬ tively stable government for nearly twenty years, in the ’70’s and 7 80 ? s ; reformed the currency, rebuilt and greatly beautified Caracas, the capital, and secured to Venezuela the only long period for peaceful recuperation she has ever enjoyed. Another strong man of like character came to the front in 1899 in the person of the present President Castro, whose administration has aroused the execration of the civilized world, and yet who seems to be the only man in Venezuela who can control the turbulent forces sufficiently to carry on even the semblance of a govern¬ ment. Castro first came into notice by starting an in¬ surrection in the western state of Los Andes. His army grew as he marched to Caracas, until at last he was able to capture the capital and establish himself in supreme power. The comparatively recent blockade of Venezuelan ports in 1902, and the destruction of the puny Venezuelan navy by the joint fleets of England, Germany and Italy, will be remembered by my readers. This was to insure the long delayed payment of the just claims of citizens of these powers. Serious international complications were likely to arise, and the United States persuaded Venezuela and the Powers to submit these claims to arbitration, a matter which was one of the first to occupy the attention of the Hague Tribunal. President Castro was elected by congress (it may be more truthful to say, by the bayonets of his soldiers) to VENEZUELA 269 serve for six years from 1902, and what may still happen before his term of office expires, or afterwards, no prophet would be bold enough to predict. It would seem, however, that nothing worse for poor Venezuela than what she has endured, could be in store for her. In many respects Venezuela shares the characteristics of other South American countries. Her people are even more cosmopolitan than in most of the other coun¬ tries of the southern continent, and every shade of colour is seen, and every language is heard in the streets of Caracas, though of course Spanish is the dominant tongue. The city of Caracas, as seen from a distance, is a beautiful one, and certainly occupies a unique situation. Built on the old bed of a prehistoric lake, it is surrounded by mountains nine thousand feet high, while the approach to it is by a wonderful mountain railway over a pass nearly a mile above the sea level. On nearer approach the city does not make good the anticipation of the dis¬ tant view, for one sees that the houses and public build¬ ings are, many of them, shabby in appearance, and the streets are poorly paved, and full of pitfalls for horses and foot-passengers. The city contains a fine cathedral, a university and a Pantheon of national heroes, while the great statue of Venezuela’s chief hero, Bolivar, which stands in the principal plaza, is indeed a work of art. Some of the houses, too, though looking shabby outside, are beautiful within, with lovely patios where flowers bloom and birds sing, and cool water from artistic fountains tinkles down upon tesselated pavements. The common people of course have no such luxuries, and live usually in very squalid style, with dirt floors tinder their feet and dirt on everything that their hands touch. The liquor saloons which abound everywhere sport 270 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY such signs as “The Fountain of Hope,” “God’s Good Grace,” and, judging from the number of shrines and crosses and pictures of the saints and the Virgin that are displayed, the people would seem to be very religious. But it is an exceedingly superficial religion, which seems to have little influence on life and conduct, and nowhere are Protestant churches, schools and other institutions more needed than in Venezuela. It is gratifying to know that, though missionary work is yet in its infancy in this republic, a good beginning has been made. The outlook for Venezuela is not of the brightest by any means, but we can only hope that she is in one of the earlier and darker stages of the struggle for liberty and a stable government, through which all of the South American republics have passed and out of which some of them have already emerged into the sunlight of pros¬ perity and an assured and well-defined freedom. May this be the happy fate of Venezuela and may her future be as peaceful as her past has been turbulent! XXXIII THE THREE GUIANAS The Only Monarchical Section of South America—The Republican Idea— Extent and Population of the Guianas—A Checkered History—Co¬ lumbus and Sir "Walter Raleigh—The British and the Dutch—A Disastrous Exchange for Holland—Brave Moravian Missionaries— French Guiana—Sugar-cane Behind the Dikes—Uneventful Peace. T HE only territory in South America which does not belong to one of the eleven self-governing republics, is the comparatively small strip on the northeastern coast, which is divided between Great Britain, Holland and France, and is known as British, Dutch and French Guiana, and the bleak, wind-swept Falkland islands off the coast of Argentina. While nearly one-half of Xorth America is under the dominion of a European crown, South America is almost entirely republican in its government,—the only conti¬ nent of which this can be said. It is to be feared that many parts of South America have not commended the republican form of government to the rest of the world, and several of the republics have doubtless served as “ dreadful examples 17 of popular misrule, which have joyfully been pointed to by monarchists in all parts of the world. But if South America has not added much lustre to the republican idea, this idea has certainly taken deep root on her soil, and there is almost no likelihood that a monarchy will ever gain a further foothold in the con¬ tinent. Even without the Monroe Doctrine in force this would be impossible since the people seem thoroughly 271 272 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY wedded to the republican principles, faulty as they are in practice in many of the states. Instead of three Guianas, we might properly speak of five, for the territory to which an old Indian tribe gave this name really embraces part of Venezuela and part of Brazil as well as the country that belongs to the English, Dutch and French. It is really a vast island, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Amazon, Rio Negro, Cassi- quiare and Orinoco Rivers. Though the water boun¬ daries are narrow in some places, yet the similitude of an island is carried out on a great scale, when we remember that this mass of high plateaus is separated from the other mountainous portions of South America by vast river valleys, which practically cut it off and isolate it more completely than would the waters of the ocean. The Guianas in this more extended sense, embrace eight hundred thousand square miles, equal to more than a quarter part of the continental territory of the United States, and the rivers which wash their shores, like the Amazon and the Orinoco, are among the largest in the world. The population of the Guianas, on account of the hot and unhealthful climate near the shore and along the river valleys, is comparatively small. But a little over half a million people inhabit this vast territory. Every man, woman and child could possess nearly two square miles, if the country was evenly parcelled out among all the people. As a matter of fact, however, more than half of the half million are gathered in a small part of British Guiana, which is by far the most important of them all. The population is largely com¬ posed of black people, and formerly great colonies of negroes who had fled from their masters settled in the interior of the Guianas and became a terror to all other settlers. The history of this strip of South American co^st is THE THEEE GUIAHAS 273 not without an interest of its own. It was one of the very first parts of the Hew World seen by a white man. Only seven years after his first memorable voyage, Columbus sighted the coast of Guiana, but he apparently did noth¬ ing more than look upon it from the ship’s deck, and in this he showed his wisdom, for thousands of future and more rash explorers paid for their temerity with their lives, and found their graves in Guiana. In 1595 Sir Walter Ealeigh tried to penetrate into the interior, thinking that the new El Dorado was there. But he found nothing but malaria and disease, and rightly concluded that it was the last place in which to look for an El Dorado. The Dutch were the first actual settlers, and in 1581 they formed a feeble colony upon the part of the coast which is now British Guiana. It is a singular fact that the Dutch first settled British Guiana, and the British first settled Dutch Guiana. All these little colonies have had their ups and downs, and have been under more than one flag. In 1596 the Dutch were driven out by the Spaniards; exactly two hundred years later the colonies were taken by the British. They were given up in 1802, retaken by the British in 1803, and held by them ever since. This, as I have said, is by far the best part of Guiana. Its population is probably over 300,000, of whom over 100,- 000 are East Indians, who make their way wherever the British flag flies, and seem to thrive as well in South Africa or South America, as they do in their own land. Another 100,000 of the people or more are negroes, and there are many of mixed breeds. That suffrage is not enjoyed to any great extent by the people is proved by the fact that a few years ago there were only two thousand voters among the three hundred thousand people. The capital of British Guiana is Georgetown, and is a 274 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY coinparately modern and thriving city, with a very con¬ siderable trade. The fact that two million dollars’ worth of gold are mined in British Guiana make it a settlement of no little importance, while its trade in sugar-cane, coffee, cocoa, etc., is very considerable. We all remember the war-cloud that suddenly arose on the American horizon a few years ago when President Cleveland’s peremptory note demanded that the British claims to Venezuelan territory in the Guianas be at once adjusted on a reasonable basis. Probably no act of Cleveland’s administration or of any recent president has been more loudly condemned or more warmly applauded both at home and abroad than this. It is perhaps as yet too soon to decide upon its wisdom, but it is certain that Great Britain preferred arbitration to the risk of war over a comparatively worthless and inaccessible bit of territory, and she yielded gracefully to President Cleve¬ land’s demands. Venezuela has since proved to be so untrustworthy in her negotiations with other countries and the bombastic president, Castro, has so thoroughly acted out the part of the naughty boy among the South American presidents, that many people of the United States would have been glad if President Cleveland had let Great Britain have her own way unhampered by any threats of enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine, feeling that the Venezuelan Guianas would be much better off under the Union Jack than under the unstable banner of Venezuela. Dutch Guiana, as I have said, was first settled by the English, and received the name of Surrey-ham. This was afterwards corrupted into Surinam, by which name it is often known. The most interesting item in its his¬ tory, to North Americans, is the fact that in 1667 by the Peace of Breda, it was given to the British in exchange for the New Netherlands, otherwise New York. It could THE THEEE GUIANAS 275 hardly be said in the light of subsequent events that this was the fair exchange which is no robbery. The New Netherlands now has a population of nearly eight mil¬ lions ; poor old Dutch Guiana has less than a hundred thousand people. The New Netherlands contain the second city of the world. Paramaribo, the capital of British Guiana, has hardly as many thousands as New York has millions. The New Netherlands has become the empire state of the New World. The territory for which it was exchanged has hardly shared to any extent the prosperity of modern nations. But though Holland obtained this part of Guiana in 1667, at such an enormous price, as it afterwards proved, she was not allowed to hold it in peace and quiet. For it was captured by the British in 1779, given back to the Dutch in 1802, held by the British once more for twelve years, from 1804 to 1816, and finally restored to the Dutch by the Peace of Paris in the latter year. Here the Moravian missionaries established one of their early missions. Long before modern missions became popular in the other Protestant churches, the brave Moravians sought out the most difficult and disease- wasted corners of the world. This was one of them, and here in 1739 they established themselves and sought to bring the natives to a knowledge of God. In the previous year they began their work in British Guiana, and to-day they number more than eight thousand communicants, and as many more adherents in these colonies, with thou¬ sands of pupils in their schools. In fact, at the beginning of this century, there were twice as many communicants in the Moravian church as in any one missionary society in South America. French Guiana is the poorest and most hopeless foreign possession in South America. It is frequently called Cayenne from the name of its capital, and the name sug- 276 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY gests the hot country which seems to fully live up to its title. Among the few thousands of inhabitants there were, a short time ago, nearly five thousand ticket-of-leave con¬ victs, since, for a long time, France sent her criminals to these shores. But the climate was so bad for white col¬ onists that a generation ago she began to send them else¬ where $ and the inhabitants of French Guiana are now al¬ most entirely Indians or negroes. Like the other Guianas, the French colony has suffered much from war as well as disease. It has been ravaged and abandoned by the Eng¬ lish and Dutch alike, and was not finally restored to France by the British until a century ago. In 1763 France made a desperate effort to colonize this country, in order that she might gain a foothold in South America. In that year she sent out no less than fifteen thousand colonists, but in two years thirteen thousand of them had found graves in the new land, and only two thousand dis¬ couraged and hopeless men and women were left. In some respects the three Guianas have an important place to fill among the minor colonies of the world. No land is better adapted to the cultivation of the sugar-cane than that along the shores of these countries, and the Dutch, with characteristic courage and determination, having learned how to do it in their own low-land, built dikes and walls, and recovered large sections of land from the sea, land which is of apparently inexhaustible fertility in the production of sugar-cane. These colonies may well congratulate themselves that for a hundred years, at least, they have lived in peace. While the countries all around them have been distracted by foreign wars and drenched in the blood of their own citizens, the Guianas have had little to break the serene monotony of their existence. If they have not progressed very rapidly, they certainly have not retrograded ; if they have not made any startling progress, they at least de- THE THREE GUIAXAS 277 serve the encomium of the happy nations that have made no history. Doubtless as other and more attractive por¬ tions of the world are filled with adventurous settlers, these colonies will attract their quota, and will have a more prosperous, though perhaps a less exciting history, than in the early years of their settlement by European powers. XXXIV WITH THE PRESIDENTS OF FOUR REPUBLICS Doctor Amador—His Appearance and His Family—The Senate Chamber of Peru—An Ingenious Way of Balloting—President Pardo—The Palace in Lima—Section 4 of the Constitution—The Constitution and the Temper of the People of Peru—President Montt of Chile—A Democratic Executive—President Alcorta of Argentina—Favourable Impressions. I T is always interesting to meet the rulers of a people ; for they are very sure, whatever their character or abilities, to be typical men, typical of their times and country, typical at least of the party which brought them into power. On this account I have taken pains in some of the republics I have visited, to have an interview with their chief executives, a courtesy which has been readily granted. The president of the Eepublic of Panama is His Excel¬ lency, Doctor Amador. He is a physician by profession and a politician only by accident, as it were; for the recent coup d'etat of Panama, in shaking off her entang¬ ling alliance with Colombia in order that the canal might be dug, resulted in Dr. Amador’s election to be the first president of the republic, an honour of which he probably never dreamed five years ago. He was not a young man, and very likely he would have preferred to remain in his chosen profession ; but he responded to the call of his country and has made a safe and patriotic, though not a brilliant, president. He lives in a modest house near the centre of the city of Panama, a house whose hallway is bright with the plants and flowers which he loves. A new palace is being built, which will quite eclipse his present residence. 278 THE PRESIDENTS OF FOUR REPUBLICS 279 He received me most graciously, chatted in excellent English about his own country and mine, and the great canal, in which he has the utmost faith, as well he may have. He has a piercing black eye, an eager, almost ap¬ pealing look, and came to the door to meet me with out¬ stretched hand in a cordial and democratic manner. He belongs to one of the oldest and best families of Panama, and in his hands, so far as he can guide its des¬ tinies, I believe the interests of the small but important republic of the Isthmus are safe, Peru is a republic of a different type, larger, richer, more populous in the proportion of ten to one, perhaps ; a country with a great and troubled history, but let us hope with a greater and more peaceful future, A call on her chief magistrate was most interesting. To see the successor of Atahuallpa, Huascar, and Pizarro, and a long line of rulers, Incas, and Spaniards and creoles ; rulers worthy and unworthy ; rulers progressive, reactionary, mercenary, and patriotic, is of itself inter¬ esting ; and to find one of the best of the long line in the chair of state to-day is still more gratifying. Before going to the palace I had the pleasure of visit¬ ing the Senate chamber of Peru, where the upper house of the republic holds its deliberations. It is a beautiful room iu the old Hall of the Inquisition, where, in the bloody days of old, edicts went forth condemning to death and torture Jews, Protestants, and all other heretics who did not accept the Catholic faith. An attempt has been made to change the name of this great building and the plaza on which it faces, but the unsavory old name still sticks to it The Senate chamber itself is a beautiful room with a remarkable ceiling of wood, elaborately carved, that also dates back to the Inquisition. A most ingenious way for balloting is provided in the Peruvian Senate, and one which I never saw in any other 280 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY deliberative assembly. Behind the speaker’s chair are fifty-six round glass disks about as large as the palm of one’s hand, each one corresponding to some senator’s chair. When a vote is to be taken, each senator presses one of two buttons under his desk, and an electric light is switched on to one of the disks. A white light indi¬ cates a yea vote; a red light, a nay vote. In a moment the vote is taken ; in another moment it can be counted and recorded. As it is difficult to find out or to remember which disks correspond to the respective seats, the ballot is practically a secret one and no senator need be intimidated by hav¬ ing his vote known by his constituents. Such a method has its advantages, and its very obvious disadvantages, for it is difficult to put a slippery senator on record with such a method of voting. The only large picture in the Senate chamber that I re¬ member is that of Don Manuel Pardo, Peru’s first civilian president, who came into power in the early seventies. His predecessors had been military dictators, many of them bent on personal aggrandizement and autocratic power. President Pardo was constitutionally elected, but his administration fell on troublous times. 1 1 His four years, ’ 7 says the historian, “ were one continual struggle against impending bankruptcy. Though he brought some order into public accounts, it was only by all sorts of expedients that he managed to keep up interest payments. . . . His intellectual and moral force united about him the educated and property-holding classes in a party which survives to this day, and he left the reputation of having been the best president who ever ruled Peru.” 1 The son of this able and upright statesman is the 1 T. C. Dawson in “ The South American Republics.” THE PRESIDENTS OF FOUR REPUBLICS 281 present president of the republic, and he it was whom I went to see immediately after visiting the Senate house where his honoured father’s portrait ornaments the wall. The president lives in a beautiful private residence of his own on one of the chief streets of Lima, but he received me at the “ Palace,” his official residence, which fronts on the fine plaza of Lima, on another side of which is the great Cathedral where Pizarro’s bones lie. The palace is an enormous building erected by Pizarro on this very spot, though doubtless much altered since his day. It is long and low, and is guarded at every en¬ trance by a formidable array of soldiers. The interview was arranged for me by Hon. Richard R. Neill, the charge d’affaires, who was the acting minister of the United States in the absence of the new minister who had not then arrived. It would be difficult to find one better suited to the position he holds than is Mr. Neill; genial, popular with all classes, unwearying in his kindness to friends and visitors. While ministers have come and ministers have gone, Mr. Neill has remained in Lima for a score of years or more, the one indispensable man in the legation. First, Mr. Neill took me to see the secretary of foreign affairs, Dr. Y. Polo, a youngish man of much ability, who speaks excellent English, and converses with great intelligence about things Peruvian and American. After a few minutes’ conversation with him we were turned over to the president’s aide-de-camp, a gorgeously dressed individual of huge proportions, who conducted us through one handsome and richly upholstered salon after another until we came to the president’s reception- room. On the wall of this room, as also in one or two other rooms of the palace, I noticed an oil painting of President Castilla, that rugged old military president of Peru, who kept his hands on the reins of power for nearly 282 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY twenty years, and who, by rough and ready means suited to the times, brought order out of chaos, an order which unfortunately relapsed into chaos again ere long. After we had waited in this room a very few minutes, a young man with a pleasant face, and modestly dressed in civilian’s clothes, came into the room, and greeted us all quietly but cordially. This was His Excellency, D. Jose Pardo, President of the Eepublic of Peru. His voice is low and melodious and his face expressive, and, though he speaks no English, and I no Spanish, we got on very well through my kind interpreters, Hon. E. E. Neill and Eev. J. S. Watson. After Mr. Watson had explained the object and extent of the Christian Endeavour movement, President Pardo asked whether it was a Catholic movement. “No,” answered Mr. Neill diplomatically, “it is just Christian.” “Then,” said the president to me with a twinkle in his eye, “we shall have to apply Section 4 of the Constitu¬ tion to you,” at which the others smiled audibly ; for they understood, as I did not, that Section 4 was the article of the Constitution which forbids the propaganda of any re¬ ligion except the Eoman Catholic. However, we all saw that the president was not very serious, and he went on to say to me, “The spirit of the people of Peru is very tolerant, though the Constitution is very intolerant.” This expresses the truth, I am told, about Peru, very happily. The Constitution promulgated in 1860 is still in force, and this forbids Peruvians to embrace any re¬ ligion but the Eoman Catholic. But, while the Constitu¬ tion remains the same, the spirit of the people and the spirit of the times have changed, and Protestant workers meet with little opposition in the centres of population. THE PRESIDENTS OF FOUR REPUBLICS 283 Theoretically they still meet in private houses, and not in public churchesj but practically they have much liberty, as the Protestant work that is carried on in Peru, both educational and evangelistic, distinctly testifies. After a little further conversation with the president on general subjects, a conversation in which he expressed his high regard for the American people and our own honoured president, the interview came to an end, and I left the palace feeling that all I had heard to the credit of the president of Peru from foreigners and natives, mis¬ sionaries and merchants alike, was true, and that the ex¬ ecutive of the nation was an efficient, forceful, modest, unassuming gentleman ; and that is no small thing to say of any man, be he in high position or low. The president of the rival republic of Chile is a very different man in appearance from the President of Peru ; an older man, a man with deeper furrows in his brows, and of a more anxious, care-worn expression ; and well he may be, for his administration has not been an un¬ troubled one. His foes have been largely those of his own household, and he has found it a difficult task to make the different departments of the Chilian national government pull together in a way which in his opinion insures the welfare of the people. Still his face is one of force and native dignity, and on all hands I heard only good things concerning his per¬ sonal integrity, and his genuine patriotism. It takes a man of remarkable strength and popularity to carry the governmental ship of Chile through the breakers safely just at this time. Perhaps no one could do it better than President Montt, and after seeing him, I could not but congratulate the country on having a man of such serious¬ ness of purpose and devoted earnestness at the head of affairs just now. He is the son of one of Chile’s greatest 284 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOBTUNITY presidents, and looks not unlike President Diaz of Mexico. His swarthy face, like that of Mexico’s president, declares his partial Indian descent. His official residence is the palace of Santiago, which though a large and stately edi¬ fice, has about it a certain republican simplicity of style appropriate to the century and the country where the chief magistrate lives. There were few guards, and little pomp or circumstance about the president’s reception of us. He came into the room entirely unattended, and greeted my companions and myself in a most friendly and democratic manner. He told me of his interest in the undeveloped races of his own land, and his desire that the great curse of the aboriginal races, the strong fire water of the whites, might be kept away from them. President Montt is cartooned outrageously in the Chilean papers of the yellow type, and during my visit one of them appeared with a blas¬ phemous cartoon of the Kepublic of Chile, being crucified between two thieves,—the present president and his predecessor. But all good men must expect such treat¬ ment at the hands of ribald yellow journals like this, and it is an undoubted fact that the honest men of Chile speak well of their honest president, even when they do not agree with his politics. The President of Argentina is a younger man than President Montt; somewhat dapper, though not dandified, he has the reputation of appreciating and maintaining the dignity which doth hedge a president. His cabinet and councillors, some of whom I met, are more easy in their manners than the president, who, how¬ ever, does not lack in dignity, and a pleasant address. Sefior Alcorta came into power as did President Boose- velt at first, on the decease of the former president, who died early in his term of office, and with whom he had THE PRESIDENTS OF FOUR REPUBLICS 285 been serving as vice-president of the republic. I was ac¬ companied by Hon. A. M. Beaupre, our American min¬ ister, and by Dr. Drees, the Presiding Elder of the Meth¬ odist church, who has the reputation of being the best in¬ terpreter in Argentina. He translated what I had to say to the president, who speaks no English, and he put my questions and remarks into such elegant and courtly Spanish, that however much of a stickler for etiquette the president may be (thanks to Dr. Drees), he could find no fault with the interview. He too assured me that he was especially interested in civilizing and Christianizing the Indians in the remote parts of Argentina, and that for this provision was made even in the constitution of the country. The palace which contains the government offices of Argentina is an imposing building fronting on the beautiful Plaza de Mayo, and all the surroundings of the Govern¬ ment House, are worthy of the prosperous Republic of which it is the governmental heart and head. These visits to the presidents of these four republics, and other high dignitaries whom I met at various times and in these and other countries, made upon me the im¬ pression that however much the subordinate officials of the South American republics may deserve their reputation for graft and dishonesty, this rottenness does not reach to the higher places in the government any more than in our own country, that those who rule the affairs of the leading republics of South America at least, are honest men and true patriots, and that their example will make for a higher grade of citizenship than these republics have known in their troublous past. XXXV HOW WE JOURNEYED A Pullman Train or an Oxcart—Travelling in Colombia and Ecuador— Peruvian Railways—Improvements in Chile and Argentina—The American Style Adopted—High Fares—Street-Car Travel—An Elec¬ tric Car Lottery—Carriages in Santiago and Rio—Lifts for High Levels—Steamer Travel—Exorbitant Charges on Steamers—Over¬ crowding-Genial Officers—The Longest, Quickest Way Home. T HERE are few people who are not interested in the means of locomotion in a land they have not visited. Those who expect to travel there, wish to know how they will get from place to place, while stay-at-homes are interested to know how travellers fare. As an indication of advancement, too, there are few surer signs than the means of travel, for civilization is largely a matter of intercommunication. When we come to describe the means of travel in South America, however, it is something like describing the weather of the United States. There you can have sun¬ shine and storm, sweltering heat and an arctic blizzard on the same day. So in South America, you can go on foot, on mule back, in a Pullman palace train, on an ox¬ cart with fourteenth century wheels, or on a modern ten thousand ton steamer, according to the part of the coun¬ try you may wish to visit. But a few facts, gleaned largely from experience in the different South American countries, will perhaps be found of interest. In Colombia, railways are few and walking is not good, but mules are sturdy and the abundant water ways give some help to travellers in the interior. It takes, how- 286 HOW WE JOUKNEYED 287 ever, nearly a week to reach Bogota, the capital, from the coast, by the fastest means at the disposal of the trav¬ eller, which for the most of the way is the patient mnle. This mode of travel, much the same as in Abraham’s day, still prevails in many parts of South America. In Ecuador railways are being pushed more rapidly, and from Guayaquil, the seaport, one could get within seventy-five miles of Quito, the capital, by rail, and the rest of the way by automobile, early in 1907. Yery soon the whole distance can be covered by rail; but elsewhere in this republic travel is, and long will be, by river boat or on mule back. In Peru a number of short railways run from the sea- coast up the river valleys to bring down their rich products to the sea, two lines are built to the great cop¬ per mines of the interior. Of these, the Oroya road that runs from Lima to the Cerro de Pasco mines is one of the marvels of engineering, especially when we remember that it was built forty years ago. At the time, nothing so bold had been attempted, in the Alps or the Rockies, and to this day it is the highest railway in the world, crossing the Andes at a height of more than 16,000 feet, or con¬ siderably higher than the summit of Mt. Blanc. From Mollendo on the coast south of Lima, another Peruvian railway runs some 300 miles to Lake Titicaca, and crosses the Andes at a height of over 14,000 feet. The engineering difficulties are not so great on this line, but still they are sufficient to stagger any but the most bold and courageous railway builders. The road-bed on both of these lines is fairly good, but the rails are light and the equipment poor. On the line from Mollendo, in fact, the cars are so shaky, especially on the part beyond Arequipa, that it seems as if they would hardly hold together to the journey’s end, and in,a heavy shower they leak at every crack in the roof. 288 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY In Chile the cars are much better, and on the line from Valparaiso to Santiago and thence to Concepcion, and the one to Los Andes in the mountains, compare favour¬ ably with the rolling stock on our best American roads. In Argentina, too, they are of the same substantial character, and the great transcontinental line across the pampas is quite equal to the average railway of the United States in construction and equipment. The sleep¬ ing cars, however, could be much improved, for though the berths are wide and roomy, the cars are not well constructed, and the single windows let in the fine dust of the pampas so that the cars become intolerably dirty before the twenty-four hours’ journey is over. In Uruguay the railway equipment is much the same as in Argentina, and considering the size of the country it has a large railway mileage. In Brazil railway extension has advanced rapidly of late, and the iron horse is pushing his way far into the interior. Some of the railways are narrow guage, but most of them are of standard guage with cars and engines much like those we are accustomed to in the United States. In fact most of the equipment of South Amer¬ ican roads comes from “the States,” and the names of Philadelphia, Wilmington and Worcester makers one sees everywhere on the high Andes of the west coast, the great plateaus of Peru and Bolivia, and the vast alluvial plains of the south. The American as distinct from the European style of compartment coaches has been adopted in all these countries, and people crowd together democratically in the same car to the number of forty or fifty, as with us. Sometimes there is a division in the middle of the car, and occasionally a small section of the car at one end is partitioned off for the men smokers, but, in most coun¬ tries, every car and every part of every car is a smoking car. HOW WE JOURNEYED 289 The caste provocative system of first and second class prevails in most of the republics, though they do not descend to third- and fourth-class cars as in monarchical lands. The fares, except in Chile, are considerably higher than in the United States for first-class passengers—in fact about twice as high, while second-class passengers pay about the same as the ordinary first-class fares in the older section of the United States. The sleeping car rates are exceedingly high, being about six dollars in gold per night for a single berth in Brazil. They are not quite so high in Argentina, the only other country where sleeping cars are extensively used. In some of the republics no passenger trains run at night. Street car travel has received a great impetus of late by the general introduction of the electric trolley into the larger cities. A few years ago, every wheel in the streets of South America was turned by the horse or the sturdy mule. Even in such cities as Buenos Ayres and Santiago there was no other cheap means of transit except the primitive “foot and walkers” express which has always been in vogue. The slow and halting mule cars ambled through all the best streets, the driver blowing a cow horn at every street crossing, a needless warning, it would seem, since he could scarcely run over anything even if he tried. Whenever a passenger held up his hand, he would stop, and people would not move ten feet for the sake of saving a stop. Now in the larger cities, American electric cars go whizzing through the streets at what seems a most reck¬ less rate, stopping only at the white posts, as in our cities. Indeed, so fast and murderous are some of the cars in Rio, which are painted a lemon colour, that they are called the ‘ 4 yellow peril 7 7 by the humorous Fluminensians, 290 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY To be sure, the mule car lingers in many of the streets of Rio still, as well as in Montevideo, and in most of the smaller cities, but the mule is rapidly being displaced and soon the streets that knew him will know him no more. The Light and Power Company, composed of American capitalists, is one of the two concerns which has revolu¬ tionized the street traffic of South America. Another similar company is capitalized largely in Brazil while the former is incorporated in Toronto and employs both Canadian and United States capital. Both are exceed¬ ingly successful and greatly appreciated by the South Americans. The fares on the street cars are much the same as in North America, averaging about five cents in gold for an ordinary ride. In Valparaiso, however, the fare is but five cents in Chilean paper money or a cent and a quarter in gold, a ruinously low rate, one would think. In Lima and some other cities, as has been stated, the street car companies have organized a lottery to circum¬ vent dishonest conductors and every ticket is numbered and stands a remote chance of drawing a prize. The chance is not so remote, however, as to prevent the pas¬ sengers from taking and preserving their tickets in the hope of securing the prize and thus preventing the ticket puncher from selling it over again. In Rio de Janeiro the tickets are redeemed at one per cent, of their value. The ordinary fare on the electric cars is 200 reis (about six cents), though some tickets cost 300 and 400 reis, accord¬ ing to distance. When taken to the office of the company, they are redeemed for two, three or four reis, according to their face value. The cabs in South America are of almost as many varieties as the cities in which they ply, though the vic¬ toria, such as is used in Paris, Rome and other conti¬ nental cities, is the most usual type. HOW WE JOURNEYED 291 In Santiago a peculiar, lumbering, funereal type of car¬ riage is used, but it is strong and serviceable on the rough pavements which abound in the outskirts of the city. In Rio, besides the two-horse carriage, the one horse Tillbury (named after the English inventor) abounds. It is exactly like the old New England chaise, the deacon’s “one horse shay” which Oliver Wendell Holmes has immortalized. It seats only one person besides the driver, so that if a man and his wife wish to ride, they must take two Tillburys. The driver sits beside his passenger in democratic equality, but it is a very expensive mode of locomotion, and when it comes to taking a two-horse car¬ riage, most people prefer to walk, as it is a common say¬ ing that it is cheaper to buy the rig outright than to hire it. The Tillbury was probably introduced into Rio for the same reason that it was once used in New England, be¬ cause the heavy springs make the inevitable bumps and jounces of the poor roads less intolerable. Now, however, that Rio is being repaved with asphalt, in its principal streets, the Tillbury will doubtless soon go into limbo. There are as yet no elevated roads or subways in South American cities, though the congested streets of Buenos Ayres would make them most desirable in that city. In no other city are the streets sufficiently crowded to call for them as yet. Rio de Janeiro is nearly as large as Buenos Ayres, to be sure, but the city is so spread out around the beautiful bay that no one street is as crowded as the Avenue de Mayo or the streets of San Martin or 25th de Mayo in Buenos Ayres. Several South American cities rise steeply from the sea with but little building ground except on the upper bluffs. Valparaiso is notably one of these cities, and in order that the people may get from the lower city to the upper 292 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY without too much leg weariness, ten elevators or rack and pinion lifts have been built at various points, where for five cents one can mount to the upper levels. Bahia is another such city where the upper and lower towns are connected by two inclined plane railways, and one new American u lift” which is justly prized by the inhabitants. When one comes to steamer accommodations, both coastwise and over-sea steamers, much is left to be de¬ sired. On the west coast the steamers are slow, unre¬ liable, and often worn out, by much hard service. There are two principal passenger lines, the Pacific Steam Navi¬ gation Company and the Sud Americana, or Chilean line. These lines have pooled their issues, and tickets on either of them are interchangeable. They are equally poor and equally slow and equally expensive. The only good thing about them is the large and airy staterooms which all open on the quarter deck. They are well furnished and the berths are unusually large and comfortable. The chief officers, too, who are English or Scotch, on both lines, are gentlemanly and intelligent and know their business. When this has been admitted, all that is to the credit of the companies has been said. The table is poor and the food monotonous and ill-cooked. It is all in Spanish style, which perhaps is natural enough, since nine-tenths of the passengers speak the language of the Castilians. The stops seem innumerable. As a matter of fact there are some twenty-three ports between Panama and Valparaiso, at which the steamers stop from four hours to three days, so that it takes usually twenty-six days to cover a distance no longer than from New York to Liver¬ pool. The fares on these lines, too, are abnormally high, as I have remarked in another chapter. From Panama to Guayaquil, a distance of about 800 miles, the fare is HOW WE JOUBNEYED 293 over $90 in gold, while a ticket to Valparaiso, some 3,000 miles from Panama, costs $225 or three times what the same accommodations would cost across the North Atlantic. But the worst count against these steamers is the way they are crowded with passengers and the unsafe condi¬ tion of the ships. From Iquique to Valparaiso the steamer on which I was embarked, carried at least twice as many passengers as she should have been allowed to take. Passengers were sleeping in the companionway, the dining-room, the bath rooms, as well as on deck. If there had been a shipwreck there would have been a frightful loss of life, as there were not boats enough for a third of the passengers. As it was, an accident was barely averted, for the worn-out pumps refused to work, the boilers began to leak and the steering gear went wrong. For a large part of one day we could make but five miles an hour, and it seemed a special interposition of Providence that we got safely to port with our great crowd of passengers. Then the old ship was tinkered up in the dry dock, and soon sent off on another perilous voyage. A German line is doing a good business on this coast, but there is surely room for a first-class fleet of steamers that will make the 3,000 miles between Panama and Valparaiso in twelve or fourteen days. The opening of the Panama Canal will doubtless hasten this consum¬ mation, so devoutlv to be wished. On the Atlantic side of South America, conditions of travel are much better, for more lines are in competition, but even there they lag far behind the North American lines. The Boyal Mail and the Pacific Steam Navigation Company each have two or three good modern steamers of some 9,000 or 10,000 tons burden each, but the older steamers are decidedly second rate and in the popular season for travel are greatly over-crowded. The steerage 294 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY accommodations of some of these older ships are dis¬ graceful and filthy beyond description. On all the steamers, and I have travelled on seven or eight of them, I have found the officers gentlemanly as well as efficient, a decided contrast to some of their brother officers on the North Atlantic service. The per¬ sonnel of the officers alone makes travel on some of these steamers reasonably pleasant. Besides these two English lines there are two French lines, one Spanish, two German and one or two Italian lines, while the New Zealand service of the White Star Line touches at some South American ports. The only regular line that runs directly to North America is the Lamport and Holt, a British company, which sends a small but comfortable express steamer once a month from Rio to New York, and an intermediate boat also monthly, with very limited passenger accommo¬ dations. So that practically unless one is prepared to wait a month for his steamer in order to get from South America to North America he must cross to Southampton or Liverpool some 6,500 miles from Buenos Ayres, and then cross the North Atlantic 3,000 miles more, sailing some 10,000 miles north and east and then southwest, to make less’than 6,000 miles north, and visiting the eastern hemisphere in order to get from one point to another in the western hemisphere. If any argument can speak more loudly for any reason¬ able means of bringing the two halves of America closer together, the writer confesses that he does not know what it can be. XXX YI THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION South America Not a Unit—The Percentage of Illiteracy—Public Schools in Argentina—Skilled Head-masters Needed—Normal Schools of Brazil—The Kindergarten Department—Self-possessed Infants— The Influence of the United States—Woman’s Former Position— South American Universities—Public Libraries—Mission Schools— McKenzie College—Education Preceding Protestant Effort. I X one brief chapter on so large a subject as education in South America, one cannot go into particulars and quote statistics concerning the comparative lit¬ eracy of the many different republics, but merely try to give the general situation as a traveller learns it from governmental reports, conversations with educators, and visits to some important schools. It must always be borne in mind that South America is by no means a unit in education, politics or general ad¬ vancement. Massachusetts differs radically from Ar¬ kansas in these matters, but not nearly so much as Ven¬ ezuela differs from Argentina. In fact, Hayti and Con¬ necticut are scarcely farther apart in matters of education than some of the northern states of South America are from their southern neighbours. Speaking in a general way, the percentage of illiteracy is very high throughout South America, but the hopeful feature is that it is constantly growing smaller. In Bra¬ zil, for instance, a score of years ago more than eighty per cent, of the people could neither read nor write, now the percentage is reduced to less than seventy, and constant improvement is recorded. 295 296 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOETUNITY While in Colombia and Venezuela very little is done for education except by the Catholic priests and Protestant missionaries, in Argentina and Chile good government free schools are provided in most places, and the people of all classes are almost as keen for an education as in New York or Illinois. In Buenos Ayres, in Santiago, in Sao Paulo, you will find some of the finest school build¬ ings in the world, while many of the back districts are as innocent of schoolhouses as the desert of Sahara. On the whole, Argentina seems to have the best system of public schools, and one that is becoming the model of the other more progressive republics. Argentina in turn imported her school system from the United States, and in its earlier days brought many teachers from the States to introduce it. When her own teachers were educated and her normal schools were established, the American teachers were sent home, but not before they had set their seal indelibly upon the schools of the second greatest re¬ public of South America, and had influenced to a consid¬ erable degree the educational system of the whole con¬ tinent. In Brazil something of the same kind has been at¬ tempted, but not on so large a scale, and in Eio de Janeiro, though fine large public school buildings have been erected, it has been found difficult to obtain masters who could manage them, and many of the schools are still continued in small private homes where a few children gather under a single teacher, while the great schoolhouse has sometimes been devoted to other government uses. Skilled head-masters will doubtless be trained in good time, for in Sao Paulo the progressive capital of the most progressive state in Brazil, I found one of the finest nor¬ mal schools I have ever visited, and there are others of equally high grade in other cities. The building in which the Sao Paulo school is housed is truly palatial, without THE PROGRESS OP EDUCATION 297 and within. It is very large, built around a beautiful court adorned with flowers, and contains not only many rooms for the training of teachers, but kindergarten rooms, and model primary schools where the normal pupils may get practice as well as instruction. There are far more women than men in training for the future teachers of Brazil, as is apt to be the case in our own normal schools, and the girls are bright, attractive, and apparently very much in earnest in their classes. I was particularly interested in the kindergarten rooms of the normal school, in noticing the difference between young Latin America, and young Anglo-Saxon America. The Brazilian infants were as self-possessed as the Senors and Senoritas themselves. They not only went through their games and their calisthenics without any show of embarrassment at the strangers who were looking on, but gave their recitations and acted their little plays with all the assurance and sangfroid of experienced orators and actors. No sheepish looks, no fingers stuck in little mouths, no stage fright or embarrassed forgetfulness, but each one not only u remembered her manners,” but mod¬ ulated her voice, smiled or frowned, and gesticulated in the appropriate places, as though she had been all her life before the footlights. It is a racial characteristic,—this self-possession and lack of embarrassment. Indeed, among children as well as grown people, the Anglo-Saxon is the most bashful and self-conscious to be found in any part of the world. In his religion, too, the Anglo-Saxon assumes indiffer¬ ence and refuses to pray or read his Bible when any one is looking, while the Turk five times a day prostrates himself with his face towards Mecca, the Russian soldier prays before the whole regiment, and the Roman priest thumbs his prayer book in every railway train. The same self-possession and disregard of spectators is 298 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY seen in all lines of public effort, and is nowhere more no¬ ticeable than in the little men and women of the public schools that one sees in Latin America. The founder of the great Sao Paulo Normal school, Miss Brown, was an American, and her name is still held in fragrant remembrance in the State and in educational circles throughout Brazil. Other normal schools are being multiplied in different centres of Brazil, and will doubtless have a great effect in promoting the efficiency of the public schools of this great republic. When crossing Lake Titicaca one dark and stormy night, bound from Peru to Bolivia, I was interested to see among my fellow passengers half a dozen Chileno girls who were going to Bolivia to teach in the public schools. At their head was an intelligent German lady who told me that her charges though not ideal teachers, were the best she could get, and far better than any who had yet been educated in Bolivia. She said they were particularly lacking in physical stamina, took little ex¬ ercise, and were too much afraid of fresh air. This seems to be a characteristic of South American women gener¬ ally. They have not yet escaped the thraldom of indoor life which was their heritage from the old Spanish regime. In fact, in the older days, women were little more than prisoners in the home, and the careful father and husband when he went to business would turn the key on them we are told, that they might come to no harm and enter into no entangling alliances during his absence. Though women have now a large amount of freedom, the old ideas that prevailed in North America half a century ago are rife in some quarters, that it is more ladylike to have a sal¬ low complexion, flaccid muscles and general languor, than to run and row and play basket-ball and tennis. But doubt¬ less with larger social freedom and a more liberal educa- THE PEOGEESS OF EDUCATION 299 tion will come more wholesome views of physical exercise and development. Every South American country that I have visited has its university under the patronage of the state, but it does not often seem to play a large part in the life of the country, or to give its students a very profound educa¬ tion. The strong points of the university are the classics and literature, their weak points science and engineering and allied practical subjects. As a matter of fact, the thoroughly educated men in all branches of professional life expect to finish their education in Europe or the United States. This is a good thing in its way, as it induces travel, and brings far more educated South Americans in touch with foreign ideas than would other¬ wise imbibe them. I was not surprised that these uni¬ versities were not more important factors in the national life, but rather that they existed at all in some countries, like Uruguay for instance, where revolution has suc¬ ceeded revolution in such quick succession that one would suppose the people would have no time left from their strenuous politics to devote to science or belle lettres. Yet the most conspicuous building one sees on landing at Montevideo is the university near the shore. Every large city, too, has its library, usually not very extensive as compared with the great modern libraries of North America, and Europe, but containing very credit¬ able collections of Spanish and foreign authors. The National Peruvian library contains fifty thousand volumes, and is rich in the records of early Spanish times. It suffered greatly, in the late Peruvian-Chilean war, when it was sacked by the Chileans, and many of the most precious volumes were stolen, while others were tom up or thrown out of the windows by the vandals. This piece of wanton pillage and destruction still rankles 300 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY most hotly in the veins of the patriotic Peruvians, who are awaiting their chance for a bloody reprisal. In Rio de Janeiro is a famous Portuguese library, one of the best in the world, beautiful in its exterior, over which carved statues of the greatest Portuguese stand guard, while within the works of all the important Portu¬ guese authors fill the shelves. Brazil is indeed the home of the best Portuguese literature of the day, and the greatest poets who have written in that mellifluous lan¬ guage for a hundred years have been and are Brazilian citizens. No account of the educated or educational life of Brazil, however brief, is complete without some notice of the distinctively American schools founded by American missionaries of the Presbyterian and Methodist boards. Their educational work has been as great as their evan¬ gelistic, and it has been pursued diligently from the beginning of the missions more than forty years ago. Some of the schools, like the Methodist college of Lima, the Institute Ingles in Santiago, and the American col¬ lege for girls in the same city, the Methodist schools in Concepcion, Chile, and in Buenos Ayres, and McKenzie College in Sao Paulo, have achieved more than a national reputation. They are patronized by students from the best families. Presidents, governors, senators, and men of large means, send their children to them, for they are recognized in many cities as giving the best education that can be obtained. The Instituto Ingles in Santiago under the able direc¬ tion of Dr. Browning of the Presbyterian Board of mis¬ sions, may be taken as a representative of one of these schools of higher grade. It takes boys practically through the sophomore year of our average North American col¬ lege, and is always crowded with students, with a long waiting list that cannot be accommodated. I have never THE PEOGEESS OF EDUCATION 301 addressed a brighter or more attractive company of boys than I met at more than one chapel exercise in the Insti¬ tute Ingles of Santiago. Here were not only young Chileans, but many Bolivians and some from Peru and Argentina, so that the school has an opportunity of doing an international work for South America scarcely less important than Hubert College on the Bosphorus is doing for the Balkan states, or the Syrian College of Constanti¬ nople for the Levant. When I went into the playground I found that the boys could play even harder than they could study, an excellent sign, I believe, of virility and national vigour. In fact, I have never seen such untiring and enthusiastic devotion to football as I witnessed at Santiago. The Institute publishes an excellent school magazine, the Southern Cross, which in its make-up and literary excellence would do credit to any North American school of like grade. It is distinctly understood by all patrons and parents that the school is a Protestant school, that the Bible is to be read and studied, and that attendance at morning prayers is compulsory, though students can attend the church of their parents’ preference. Yet, though of course the great majority of the students are from Eoman Catholic families, these requirements do not seem to diminish the popularity of the school. McKenzie College of Sao Paulo, Brazil, was also founded by the Presbyterian Board of missions, and is undoubt¬ edly the school of the highest grade of its kind in South America. It has long been famous throughout Brazil. It is now under a separate board of trustees and no longer directly accountable to the Presbyterian Board, and, in the opinion of most, has largely lost its evangelical character. It is, however, an intellectual centre of much power for all Brazil, occupies large and handsome build- 302 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOKTUNITY ings in a commanding situation near the heart of Sao Paulo, and has educated some of the most influential professional and business men in Brazil. There are also a multitude of mission schools of primary or grammar grade in South America,, which are doing a quiet but vastly important work, for many of them are found in communities where were it not for them, children would receive no education at all. Often the missionary finds that the only practical way of obtain¬ ing entrance to the homes and hearts of the people is to establish a school. In La Paz, for instance, the capital of Bolivia, the first thing done by the Methodist missionaries, Dr. and Mrs. Harrington, was to open a boarding school for boys, which was so immediately successful that the very first year boys had to be turned away for lack of room. Very soon the Bolivian government invited Dr. Harrington to take charge of public instruction in the Oruro district, one of the most important sections of Bolivia, and voted him a subvention of $36,000 for his work. No stronger proof could be given of the estimate placed by a progress¬ ive South American republic on the educational value and capability of an American missionary. Of course the Protestant religion cannot be taught in these public schools, and it seems to involve in a measure an unfortunate union of church and state, but it gives the missionary an admirable opportunity to teach ethics, and to mold the morals of the rising generation of Oruro, an opportunity which he will be sure to improve.. This brief outlook over the educational situation of South America is certainly a hopeful one. It shows the continent to be in this respect, as in so many others, the land of opportunity and progress. The schoolmaster is coming to his own in South America, as in the rest of the world. The people are eager for education and are will- THE PEOGEESS OF EDUCATION 303 ing to pay for it, and though these southern republics have hitherto lagged far behind their great sister of North America, most of them are now doing their best to make the gap ever narrower and narrower. XXXVII THE INSCRUTABLE POLITICS OF SOUTH AMERICA The Periodical Upheavals—Why Foreigners do not Get Naturalized—The Office-Seeking Class—Loose Allegiance to Central Government— The Inheritance From Spain—The Influence of Religion—The New England Town Meeting—Monarchy Impossible—The Presidents of the Republics—Facing in the Right Direction. P OLITICS in South America is a difficult and perilous subject for a foreigner to discuss. It is hard for him to understand, and there are many pitfalls for his unwary pen. I will, however, venture some observations of these matters as they appear to a traveller from North America. The North American is accustomed to think of at least two well defined political parties, of regular elections in which people take an immense interest, and which arouse unlimited excitement. In most of the South American republics he finds nothing of the kind. The dominant party, controlling the machinery of government, is almost sure to win, and the opposition usually take it for granted that it will win. In fact, it is often considered indeli¬ cate, apparently, for the opposition to take any interest in the election, and they often refrain from voting alto¬ gether. How then do they ever get into power ? Usually by a revolution, bloody or bloodless as the case may be, and this accounts for the periodical upheavals that take place at frequent intervals in many of the republics. When the party in power becomes too ambitious or corrupt, or offends public sentiment too seriously on any great ques- 304 POLITICS OF SOUTH AMERICA 305 tion, then the opposition party finds its opportunity, and under some vigorous leader rises against its opponents, turns the Ins out, and installs the Outs in place of the Ins. In Horth America the foreigner is likely to become a naturalized citizen, as soon as he can legally do so and sometimes before, and he takes as warm an inter¬ est in politics as the descendant of the Puritan or the Cavalier. Indeed his interest is often more ardent, and he votes earlier and oftener on election day than the blue- blooded native. In South America the foreigner very rarely becomes naturalized, or takes any interest in national politics. When I asked my English, Scotch or North American friends who had lived practically all their lives in South America, why they did not cast in their lot with the country of their adoption, and become her naturalized citizens, they would shrug their shoulders and say that it would be of little use to vote so far as influencing the election was concerned, for their votes would not be counted unless it pleased the authorities in power to do so, and besides in case of trouble they preferred the pro¬ tection of their home governments. In North America the office-seeking class, though sufficiently large and clamorous, is not overwhelming in proportion to the people who for the most part prefer business, agriculture or professional life. In South America the proportion of office-seekers and the places for office-seekers seem altogether out of pro¬ portion to the people who care to do anything else, and most officials are said to feather their nests most success¬ fully during even a short term in office. I am speaking in a general way of South America, and not of all the republics or of all office holders as corrupt. There are honest and patriotic men in public office, especially in 306 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY the higher posts, but South Americans themselves will be the first to assert that many most of their officials, are venal and have their hands conveniently behind their backs at all times for a bribe. There is no doubt a great difference between Colombia and Argentina, between Venezuela and Brazil, in the purity and efficiency of their governments, and all South America cannot be included under the same condemna¬ tion, any more than all the United States can be held re¬ sponsible for the unspeakable rascalities of Tammany Hall or the Philadelphia Bing. Another characteristic of South American republics, speaking in a general way, is the loose idea of allegiance to the central government and the frequent conflicts be¬ tween certain states or cities and the central authority, resulting in occasional, in some states almost innumerable revolutions. In Argentina, for instance, the so-called “ Unitarians,” and the Federalists were almost constantly at war for more than half a century, and in other repub¬ lics the same fight has been waged under various names. This conflict is not merely a struggle of the Outs and Ins for the spoils of office, as the superficial observer might suppose, though doubtless much of this spirit enters in; but is really a difference of political principles in regard to states’ right, of the same sort that divided the north from the south, and still, to a degree, enters into the dif¬ ferences of the democratic and republican parties. In his illuminating book on the South American Re¬ publics, Mr. Thomas C. Dawson traces these fundamental differences and consequent revolutions far back to the qualities of the Spanish and Portuguese mind molded in the earliest days of those monarchies. “Town or com¬ munal government has been characteristic of Spain,” he says, 11 since before the Roman conquest. ... In the midst of the currents of war and victory setting to and POLITICS OF SOUTH AMERICA 307 fro, the old municipalities survived unchangeable, and always supplying local self-government. A tendency to¬ wards decentralization was ingrained in the Spanish people from the earliest times. . . . The death of a king or the marriage of his daughter was often the signal for war, and a readjustment of boundaries, but these overturnings did not much affect the component and really vital political units. . . . Colonies founded by a monarchy so organized could never be firmly knit to each other nor to the mother country. The only bond of union would be personal allegiance to the monarch . 1 9 A remembrance of these facts accounts for much that seems unstable, erratic and even unaccountable in these South American republics to the Anglo-Saxon mind, and we see that all these revolutions and counter revolutions which for a century have been seething in the southern half of America, making the countries seem oftentimes like opera-bouffe republics, is really the irrepressible con¬ flict between local rights and centralized national power, and is the necessary prelude to national consciousness and stability. It must also be borne in mind in considering the politics of South America, as compared with North America, that religion has been a deciding factor,—the religion of the mother lands. As the Brazilian Journal well puts it: “Great Britain bequeathed to her North American colonies liberty of conscience and action ; education of the people, pure Christian family life, morality, woman ele¬ vated and respected ; a deep rooted religious sense and a strong conviction of individual responsibility ; happiness and prosperity. “The heritage which Spain and Portugal left their South American colonies under papal rule, was priestly tyranny and corruption, ignorance of the masses and il¬ legitimacy ; defective morality, superstition, bigotry or 308 THE CONTINENT OF GPPOBTUNITY open unbelief; external forms of religion degenerated into downright idolatry j chronic revolutions and bank¬ ruptcy.” Many intelligent South Americans in all the countries whom I have met would endorse these strong words, and say that the religion of the respective halves of America has had not a little to do with the development of her politics. Another blessing which North America often fails to appreciate, but which South America never knew, was the New England town meeting. Though the Spanish communities had a town or communal government, the common people had little to do with it, and left it to the junta, often self-elected to run. They knew nothing of free discussion, unlimited expression of opinion, and fear¬ less settlement of all questions at the polls by a majority vote. This institution, which more than any other one estab¬ lished republicanism throughout the United States, and which, journeying west with the movement of population, made democratic principles sure and educated the people in their use, was not indigenous to South American soil, and there has been no educative influence like it to prepare the way for republicanism south of the Isthmus. But the hopeful and cheering thing to remember is that all these republics with two or three exceptions are front¬ ing in the right direction. Their faces are towards the sunrise and not the sunset. They are leaving anarchy, petty squabbling and misrule behind, and are advancing towards a stable, responsible government based more and more upon the will of the people. True republicanism is growing stronger with every decade except in the northern countries of Venezuela and Colombia, and possibly Ecuador. Monarchy has abso- POLITICS OF SOUTH AMEKICA 309 lutely no chance of imposing its chains on South America again. While I was in Brazil, a grandson of the last Emperor, Pedro II, came to Rio de Janeiro, the capital of his grand¬ father’s old domain, but he was not allowed to land. Yet the refusal created no excitement, and aroused no mon¬ archical reaction, but was regarded by all as a sensible and prudent action on the part of the government and largely in the interests of the young prince himself, who might have fared hardly at the hands of fanatical repub¬ licans. There has been no important revolution in any influen¬ tial republic for several years, and Brazil and Argentina, Chile and Peru and Bolivia seem to have a government almost as stable as France or the United States. If a revolution should occur in any of these countries, it would probably be largely a bloodless one, and would mean the accession to power of some rival faction of the govern¬ ment by irregular means. The hopeful thing to note about South American poli¬ tics, as I have said, is that they are on the up grade in most of the states. They are still venal and shamelessly corrupt in many departments of many states, if all re¬ ports are to be believed, and most unstable and rickety in others, but, compared with the state of things half a century or even a quarter of a century ago, there has been a vast improvement. Anarchy is giving way to order, bloody revolutions are replaced by peaceful revolutions, even where free and fair elections are not held, and honesty is coming to be con¬ sidered a prerequisite for the highest offices in all the en¬ lightened states. As a famous old professor of theology used to say to his students: “It makes a vast difference which way a man is facing. Two men may be upon the same spot on 310 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY the hill, one facing up the hill, and the other down, but the man going up has a much better chance of reaching the top than the one going down.” The South American republics for the most part are facing up the hill, so difficult to climb, of an honest gov¬ ernment of the people, for the people and by the people. May they all succeed in reaching the top. SOUTH AMERICA AS A MISSION FIELD A Legitimate Mission Field—Catholicism in North and South America— The Brave Jesuits—The Corrupt Priesthood of To-day—Caring for Foundlings—“ A Letter of Jesus Christ ”—St. Peter’s Toe—Men in Protestant Churches—Catholic Missionaries in Protestant Lands— The Reproof of the Bishop of Cochabamba—The Hopeful Side—The United States a South American Power. S OME people are found who deny that South America is a legitimate mission field for Protes¬ tant effort. They say that the country is already practically evangelized. That the first Spanish discover¬ ers brought the Christian religion with them, that it has spread throughout the continent, and that Protestant Boards of missions should turn their attention to other quarters of the globe. There is even an English Protes¬ tant church in South America which has been unwilling that its building should be used for any native Protes¬ tant gathering, or for any missionary purpose, lest it should offend the susceptibilities of the Catholics, and possibly lead to a loss of their trade on the part of the Protestant merchants. I scarcely think that this last is an uncharitable sug¬ gestion, from what I know of this church. A few facts will however show that South America is one of the most legitimate fields for Protestant missionary effort in the world. In the first place, the condition of the Catholic church of South America shows the need of some vivifying re¬ ligious influence. The Roman Catholic church of South 311 312 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY America is as different from tlie same church in North America as Spain is different from New England. In South America it is still in the darkness and corruption of the middle ages. In North America it has been leavened by hundreds of years of contact with an enlight¬ ened progressive Protestantism. I am not one of those who would berate and deride Roman Catholicism. I regret sincerely the tendency of some of my brethren to magnify all the defects and short¬ comings of the Catholic church and to harp upon her present evils and her early history of persecution. I recognize the true Christianity and spotless character of many in the church of Rome, and the heroism of her pioneers, especially the early Jesuits, whose self-sacrific¬ ing piety has never been surpassed in the annals of Protestantism. In fact, the story of Jesuit occupation of South America as well as North America, abounds in heroic incidents. There is scarcely a nobler figure in history than that of Padre Jos6 de Anchieta, a follower of Francis Xavier, and a man of like spirit, who established himself in Sao Paulo and as one of its founders doubtless did much to make that the most progressive state in Brazil. A frag¬ ment from his own story best tells his character. “ Here we are,” he says, 44 sometimes more than twenty of us together in a little hut of mud and wicker, roofed with straw, fourteen paces long and ten wide. This is at once the school, the infirmary, dormitory, refectory, kitchen and storeroom. Yet we covet not the more spacious dwellings which our brethren have in other parts. Our Lord Jesus Christ was in a far straiter place when it was His pleasure to be born among beasts in a manger, and in a still straiter when He deigned to die upon the cross.” Yet when it is admitted that there were such heroes SOUTH AMERICA AS A MISSION FIELD 313 in the early days of the Catholic church of South America, and that there are still pure and earnest souls, both among the laity and the priesthood, it is also admitted by all, even by intelligent Catholics, themselves, that in South America the church is decadent and corrupt. The immorality of the priests is taken for granted. Priests’ sons and daughters, of course born not in wedlock, abound everywhere, and no stigma attaches to them or to their fathers and mothers. In fact it is scarcely con¬ sidered immorality, for as the priests are forbidden to marry, it is expected that they will have illegitimate re¬ lations with one or more women. A number of South American prelates petitioned Pope Leo XIII a few years ago, on account of frequent scandals, to allow South American priests to marry, but the Pope would not hear to it, and the old scandals (scandals chiefly in the eyes of the Protestant communi¬ ties) go on and increase. Like priest like people. The immorality of the priests is doubtless one reason for the looseness of the family tie in all parts of South America. While divorces are not allowed for any cause, separations and illegal alliances are very easy and very common. Every large city has public orphan asylums where babies are thrust in and no questions asked. In fact, every convenience is arranged to prevent the recognition of the parents. A kind of three quarter barrel is fixed in the door with the side to¬ wards the street cut half way down. In this the found¬ ling is placed, a bell is rung, and the attendant of the foundling house comes, turns the barrel around, and takes out the baby, while it is purposely made impossible for him or any one else to see who left the child for the state to provide for. In the small city of Arequipa forty children every month are thus left at the public foundling houses. Some such arrangement, varying only in detail, 314 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY is provided in every large city of South America, and cannot but promote immorality and illegitimacy. A considerable percentage of these foundlings are said to be children of the priests. Surely to introduce a purer code of morality and a higher standard of living, Protestant¬ ism is necessary in South America. Gross superstition is still cultivated assiduously by the Catholic church in many parts of South America, and it is unrebuked tacitly or openly by any large reform ele¬ ment. Mr. Lewis T. A. Peters, a Protestant printer of Buenos Ayres, has given me a translation of a Roman Catholic tract which was recently handed him on the street of the capital of Argentina near one of the leading churches. I have room for but a small portion of the translation which I am assured has been carefully and accurately made. It is entitled, “ Letter of Jesus Christ about the Drops of Blood which He shed whilst He went to Cal¬ vary.” The letter, says the tract, was found in the Holy Sepulchre, and is preserved in a silver casket by His Holiness. The letter says : u You know that the armed soldiers numbered 150, twenty-five of whom conducted me bound; the administrators of justice numbered thirty- three. I received fifty blows with the fist on the head, and 108 on the breast. I was pulled by the hair twenty- three times, and thirty persons spat on my face. Those who struck me on the upper part of the body were 6,666 and 100 Jews struck me on the head. I was put upon the cross at the eighteenth hour, and at the same time I sighed 125 times. The wounds on the head numbered twenty ; from the crown of thorns seventy-two ; points of thorns on the forehead, 100. After flogging they dressed me as a fool in a white garment, the wounds on the body were 100. . . . There came out of my body 28,430 drops of blood. THE ALTAR AT THE DOORWAY OF THE JESUIT AN INDIAN ALCALDE AWAY IN THE SIERRAS. CHURCH, AREQUIRA, PERU. SOUTH AMERICA AS A MISSION FIELD 315 “The person who says seven Padre Nuestros , seven Ave Marias and nine Gloria Patras , for the space of fifteen years, to pay for the number of drops of blood I have shed, I will aportion five Gracias. The first, plenary indulgence from all sins ; the second he will be liberated from all the pains of purgatory ; third, if he should die before finishing the fifteen years he will be pardoned ; fourth, he shall be re¬ garded as though he had been killed and had shed all his blood for the holy faith ; I will come down from heaven to look for his soul and those of his relations to the fourth grade. 7 ’ That such sacrilegious foolishness is circulated in the chief city of South America, and believed by the masses, however deluded, seems incredible, were it not of a piece with much that one sees in the churches and other sacred places of South America. I have myself seen indulgence for sin and a promise of heaven offered to those who will kiss the toe of a bronze statue of St. Peter in a South American church, a small reduplication of the great statue in St. Peter’s at Rome, and am assured that similar notices are very common. Need anything else be quoted to show the superstition that is encouraged in South America to-day, or the need of the enlightening influences of a purer faith ? If Prot¬ estantism never made one convert from Catholicism, it is needed in South America to show what pure, unadulter¬ ated religion really is. Indeed, its chief work is not to proselytize from the Roman Catholic church, but to afford a rational faith for those who have left the Roman church and are drifting or have drifted into the worst of all spiritual deserts, the cold and barren regions of absolute unbelief. It cannot be said that the overwhelming majority of the people of South America are Roman Catholics. Most of the peo¬ ple, to be sure, are baptized, and buried, by a priest, but 316 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY those are the only occasions when many have any nse for him. The churches are full of women and empty of men. I have been in churches where I have seen hundreds of women worshippers, and when I, a heretic, in their esti¬ mation, was the only man within its walls. The unbelief of the men or their utter indifference to spiritual things, is the greatest peril of South America, and if Protestantism can do anything to avert this peril and stem this tide of indifferentism, it is in duty bound to do it. That the Protestant churches do reach the men is evident to the most casual observer. Their predominance is as striking in the meetings of the Protestants as the preponderance of the women in the Catholic churches. I have counted more than fifty men and only two or three women in little Protestant chapels of Peru and Bolivia, and even in Argentina and Brazil where Protestantism has been longer established, and is better known, and consequently where the women dare to attend the services, the majority of the congregation are men. At scores of Christian Endeavour meetings in half a dozen republics, I have noticed this disparity of women so unusual at home. Once more, if any further reasons are demanded for the peaceful invasion of South America by Protestantism, it is found in the fact that Catholics do not hesitate to send their missionaries to every Protestant country. America, England, Holland, even Norway and Sweden, so overwhelmingly Protestant, are full of them, and it is only right that on a fair field and without favour from governmental authorities, both religions should have a chance to prove which is better fitted to the needs of the twentieth century. One would think that the Roman Catholics themselves would welcome the coming of a strong and virile faith which has done so much to purify and ennoble their own SOUTH AMERICA AS A MISSION FIELD 317 church in all countries where Protestantism is strong, for they themselves being the witnesses, there is need enough of such purification. Some years ago the Bishop of Cochabamba, Bolivia, was asked by a distinguished man to retain in his office a priest who had been unfrocked for a very serious misdemean¬ our. The Bishop while acceding to the request, vented his real opinion of the priests of his district in the follow¬ ing letter : “ I have done all in my power to pull them out of the cesspool of ignorance and vice. . . . They are always the same—brutal, drunken, seducers of inno¬ cence, without religion and without conscience. Better would be the people without them. . . . The priests of these villages have no idea of God, nor of the religion of which they are the professed ministers. They never study. Their daily round of life is first to fill their stom¬ achs, then the disorders of the bed, from these to the tem¬ ple looking for more prey for their horrible sacrilege, then back to laziness, drunkenness and the awful disorders of the bed again. You cannot imagine the pain these things give me. I am sick and tired of it all. There are excep¬ tions, but so very few that they are not enough to miti¬ gate the pain. (Signed) Alfonso, Bishop.” Things have doubtless improved somewhat in Bolivia since this letter was written, but it still describes the con¬ dition in many parishes in the remoter regions of South America, and many like testimonies could be adduced. An eminent Protestant theologian of England likes to tell his students the remark of a Catholic Bishop, a friend of his, who declared before the Ecumenical Council that pronounced the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope, that the Spirit of God would never allow the Council to promulgate such a doctrine. When the Council was over, and the dogma proclaimed, the Protestant theologian re¬ minded his Catholic friend of this former statement, and 318 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY asked how it happened, since the Holy Spirit guided the Council’s actions. “ What can yon expect the Holy Spirit to do with a lot of South American bishops?” was the quick reply. Enlightened Catholics in other parts of the world rec¬ ognize the degeneracy of the Romish church in South America, and doubtless deplore it profoundly. One would think they would welcome the purifying example and emulation in righteousness which the growth of Prot¬ estantism would bring. As in other aspects of affairs South American, there is a hopeful side, so it is in matters religious and ecclesias¬ tical. There are already signs in some places that the great historic church of South America is feeling the vivifying influences of freer thought, and the larger out¬ look of the twentieth century. The Bible has been widely circulated in all the languages of South America, and is constantly winning its way to the hearts of the people. All the republics except Peru have decreed full religious liberty, and the President of the Peruvian republic him¬ self told me that while the constitution of Peru was illib¬ eral, the temper of the people was very liberal to Prot¬ estantism. And this I found to be true except in such bigoted, priest-ridden cities as Arequipa. Surely the United States has some responsibility in sending a purer gospel to her sister republics of the southern hemisphere. We are already a South American power as Bishop Neely in his admirable little book re¬ minds us. Since we control the Panama Canal and the Canal zone, five miles wide, in the Republic of Panama, which is a South American power, we can no longer hold ourselves aloof from South American affairs, or refuse our share of responsibility for her welfare. In most of the South American countries the United States is honoured ; in all of them she is respected, in SOUTH AMERICA AS A MISSION FIELD 319 some she is beloved as a friend, and, if necessary, as an ally. Coveting no foot of South American territory, but de¬ siring the best good of both Americas, one duty of North America is to send to the South land the best education, the best morality, the best religion which she herself possesses, for, by thus giving freely, she herself will be enriched, and the ideals of both halves of the great American continent will be ennobled. XXXIX A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS No Longer the Neglected Continent—The Presbyterians and Methodists— The Work of the Southern Baptists—The South American Missionary Society—The Moravians in the North—An Independent Congrega¬ tional Church—The Gospel Mission of Kansas—The Great Work of the Bible Societies—The Bible in Brazil—Foreign Churches—Work for the Sailors—The Y. M. C. A.—Christian Endeavour Societies. T HE scope and design of this volume do not ad¬ mit of any detailed account of missionary oper¬ ations in South America. For such accounts I must refer my readers to Dr. Brown’s u Latin America,” the little volume published by the Student Volunteer Move¬ ment, entitled, 1 * Protestant Missions in South America,” Miss Guinness’ “ The Neglected Continent,” to Bev. H. C. Tucker's “Bible in Brazil," and to numberless mission¬ ary reports and minutes. I can only hope to prove, as I enumerate the forces at work for evangelical Christianity, that South America is no longer preeminently li the Neglected Continent,” but the Continent of Opportunity for Protestant missions, as well as for all material advancement. The American Presbyterians and the American Method¬ ists (both North and South) have thus far been the largest factors in the evangelization of South America, and the missions of one or the other of these denomina¬ tions are found in every republic of the continent. The Presbyterians have done and are doing splendid work in the northern republics of Colombia and Vene¬ zuela, in Chile and especially in Brazil, where they have 320 PROTESTANT MISSIONS 321 long been established, and have raised np an efficient and eloquent native ministry. The Methodists have done much of the pioneer educa¬ tional work in Peru, have recently established themselves in Bolivia, are strong in Chile, and especially so in Argentina and Uruguay, in which latter republic their missions are the only ones of importance. My regret that I cannot give more space to the work of these greatest of factors in the evangelization of South America, and to other denominational missions, a work to which it would take volumes to do justice, is tempered by the fact that full reports of these missions can be ob¬ tained at their respective denominational headquarters. Other agencies not so well known, must be accorded a place in any account, however brief, of missionary enter¬ prise in South America. In Brazil the Southern Methodist Church has taken over the work begun by the Northern Methodists, and their schools and churches are powerful factors in the making of a new Brazil. The Southern Baptists of the United States also have a strong and fruitful work in Brazil, and are beginning in Argentina with large hopes of success. In this republic, too, a beginning has been made by the Disciples of Christ, while the Canadian Baptists have a mission in needy Bolivia. For a time they were established in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, but the illness or death of their missionaries obliged them to withdraw for a time, during which the Methodists occupied this field, though the Baptists still hold the fort at Oruro, an important city in Southern Bolivia. The work of the South American Missionary Society of the Church of England is an interesting and important one, and is the oldest continuous mission of all, except that of the Moravians, having celebrated its sixtieth an- 322 THE CONTINENT OF OPPOBTUNITY niversary in 1904. It was baptized in suffering and martyrdom, for Captain Allen F. Gardiner, of the Boyal Navy, one of the heroes of missionary annals of all the centuries, was the founder of this society. He died of starvation at Spaniard Harbour, Terra del Fuego, in Sep¬ tember, 1851. The field in the extreme south so early occupied by these heroic missionaries, is still manned by them, but the Indians in these parts are a fast disappearing race, killed off by the rum and licentiousness of civilization (?) and the society has extended its field to embrace the Araucanian Indians, a strong and warlike race in South¬ ern Chile, and the Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco—that is the western portion of the Bepublic of Paraguay, which is for the most part a vast plain covered with palm forests and sparsely peopled. The 11 Begions Beyond Mission,” established by Dr. Guinness of London, is another important element in the evangelization of South America, especially among the Incas of Peru, for whom the younger Dr. Guinness is about to make a new and special effort, purchasing a great hacienda or farm, ten miles in extent, where the Indians may live free from the cruel exactions of their taskmasters, who have reduced them almost to a state of slavery, and where they may be at the same time under Christian influences. The oldest and one of the most important missions in South America is that of the Moravians in British and Dutch Guiana. Indeed, this denomination, famed for its missionary spirit, and for seeking out the hardest fields, established these stations long before the reputed birth of modern missions in England or America,—long before William Carey left the shoemaker’s bench for India, or the devoted students gathered under the haystack at Williamstown. In 1738 the Moravians began their mis- PROTESTANT MISSIONS 323 sion in British Guiana, and in 1739 in Dutch Guiana, and in their churches they number more communicants to-day than any one missionary society in South America. An important development in the religious life of South America was the planting of an independent Con¬ gregational church in Rio de Janeiro by Dr. Kelley, a Scotchman, in 1855. This church has a vigorous and influential life to-day, while from it have sprung several other independent churches in different parts of Brazil, and a missionary society called “Help for Brazil,” which has several missionaries and occupies five or six stations. An interesting feature of these Congregational churches is that they are thoroughly Brazilian in their member¬ ship, their pastors and their support. Dr. Kelley went back to Scotland more than thirty years ago, leaving his church in the hands of a native pastor, and from that day no help has come from foreign sources, and no con¬ nection is maintained with churches in other lands. It will be seen that there is no lack of missionary societies at work in South America. In fact, when one enumerates them all, he finds that there are no less than thirty-seven, some of which, to be sure, are very small, but all of which are doing something for the evangeliza¬ tion of the Continent of Opportunity, though I regret to say that the object of one or two seems chiefly to capture the converts made by other missions. We must not forget the independent workers, like Rev. J. S. Watson of Lima, and Rev. J. L. Jarrett of Arequipa, who have laboured long and successfully and largely at their own charges, supporting themselves by teaching or in other ways as opportunity offered ; making it their first business, however, like William Carey, to preach the gospel, while they did these “other things to pay expenses.” Their churches have recently joined “The Regions Beyond Mission.” 324 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY The State of Kansas has the honour of having a South American mission of its own. “The Gospel Mission of Kansas,” with its headquarters at Kansas City, Kansas, supports Rev. William Reed in Ecuador, one of the few workers in the forest region of Northern South America ; Mr. Detweiler of Quito is another independent missionary whose work should not be overlooked. Among the agencies for the spread of pure Christianity in South America, none has been blessed of Providence more than the Bible Societies, both the American and the British and Foreign Bible societies. For many years the colporteurs of these societies have gone up and down throughout South America, on railroad trains and coach, on mule back and on foot, following up the great rivers in dugout canoes, receiving often insults and contumely, and sometimes stones, cabbages or potatoes not presented, but thrown at their heads as a reward of their self-sacri¬ ficing work. I shall never forget a typical scene in Peru, new and strange to me, but common enough to all colporteurs, that I witnessed at a little railway station. My friend, the Bible agent, dismounted from the train, unpacked his bundle of Bibles and portions of the Bible, unstrapped his baby organ, and sitting down in the midst of the filth and flies, began to play some gospel tunes. Quickly the people gathered around him, the railroad hands, the fruit sellers, old hags dishevelled and half naked, and little children alike. He had not played one tune half through before he had an audience, and at the end of the tune the sale began. No Bibles were given away, for it was not necessary. The people are willing to buy, espe¬ cially the small portions, containing a single gospel, which could be had for the equivalent of a penny. When trade became slack, another tune on the baby organ would bring the people back and the sales would go on once PROTESTANT MISSIONS 325 more, while the colporteur all the time he sold the Word, explained its value and importance to willing ears. Such scenes have been going on all over South America for many year’s, in the most populous cities, as well as in the most remote forests, and the gospel leaven which has thus been disseminated is beyond calculation. I rejoice to number among the friends whom I made on my jour¬ ney, such, men as Rev. A. R. Stark of the British and Foreign Bible Society of Callao, Rev. Mr. Milne, the veteran agent of the American Bible Society of Buenos Ayres, recently deceased, Rev. J. H. Wenburg of La Paz, Rev. Mr. Pilling of Santiago, and Rev. H. C. Tucker of Rio de Janeiro, in whose hospitable home I found a delightful temporary abode while in the capital of Brazil. If one desires a book beside which most novels are dull, which abounds in information concerning the country as well as in regard to the Scripture in Brazil, let him get 11 The Bible in Brazil,” 1 by this same accom¬ plished agent of the American Bible Society, Rev. H. C. Tucker. There are various foreign Protestant churches in South America, which must also be numbered among the evan¬ gelistic agencies. In Valparaiso, Chile, the Union church under the lead of Rev. W. B. Inglis, is doing an admirable work as is also the Union church of Santiago, of which Ur. Lester is the much esteemed pastor. In Buenos Ayres are several English speaking churches, an American church (made up largely of English and Scotch people) whose pastor has long been the genial and beloved Dr. McLaughlin, and a Scotch church, worshipping in a beautiful and stately edifice, to which Rev. J. W. Flem¬ ing, B. D., has ministered with great acceptance for more than a quarter of a century. 1 “The Bible in Brazil,” by Rev. H. C. Tucker, New York, Flem¬ ing H. Revell Company. 326 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Buenos Ayres, too, is the residence of Bishop Every, the Bishop of the Falkland Islands, whose diocese is perhaps the largest in the world, embracing nearly the whole of South America on both the East and West coasts. There is a movement, however, to divide this unwieldy diocese, making the Andes the natural dividing line. Under Bishop Every’s jurisdiction are a number of im¬ portant churches in the large centres of population, which minister to the Anglicans who abound in all these cen¬ tres. The rector of one of these, the church at Sao Paulo, Brazil, is Rev. H. C. Macartney, so well known for his writings and for his work in connection with the Keswick movement. In Rio is an English church, and a Methodist church, which maintains a weekly English service, and in many parts of Brazil where Germans abound, Lutheran churches have been established, to look after the flock that has wandered so far from the Fatherland. Work for the sailors has not been neglected in South America, and Sailors’ Homes or Bethels are found in most of the large seaports. The Victoria Sailors’ Home in Buenos Ayres occupies large and substantial quarters, and has an able superintendent in Mr. H. F. Fellows. A similar institution at Santos is presided over by Mr. Fitzgerald Holmes, and the New Central Mission in Rio, established by Rev. H. C. Tucker, and ministered to by Rev. Mr. Kennedy of the Methodist Episcopal Mission (South) is doing much for the sailors as well as for the neglected classes of this great seaport. The vast importance of the Protestant Christian schools in South America is touched upon in another chapter. Most of the missionary organizations make use of the printing press in the publication of papers and tracts in Spanish or Portuguese or the Indian languages, and in PKOTESTANT MISSIONS 327 furnishing abundant literature in English for the infor¬ mation of friends at home. At least one organization, the Victoria Gospel Press of Buenos Ayres, is chiefly a printing establishment for the dissemination of the gospel in print in South America, and for arousing interest in South America in English speaking lands. The Salvation Army is also established in several large cities of the continent, and is doing its usual benevolent and evangelistic work. There are at present but five Young Men’s Christian Associations in South America, but where they exist, there are no more useful agencies in all the continent. They are all manned by young men from the United States. The Association in Buenos Ayres, under the care of Mr. B. F. Shuman and his associates, is about to erect a fine building for which $100,000 has been raised in that city, and another $100,000 has been given by a friend in the United States. It is already a great power for good in the city, and will do far more with its larger equip¬ ment in the future. In Bio, Mr. Myron A. Clark with comparatively small funds at his disposal has accomplished an admirable work for Brazilian young men, and the evening classes, gym¬ nasium, reading room and religious meetings are all well attended and greatly appreciated. Mr. Clark has the unique distinction of being the best interpreter in Brazil of English into Portuguese, and I can testify to his ex¬ traordinary skill as he has stood by my side at more than thirty different meetings, never at loss for the right word, and never failing to put spirit and enthusiasm into his translation,—the sure test of a good interpreter. The Young Women’s Christian Association has made a good beginning in Buenos Ayres under the lead of an admirable secretary, Miss Batty, an American young lady. 328 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY Last, but I hope by no means least in the evangelization of South America, is the work of the Christian Endeavour societies. Of course the churches in South America, as in North America, have their organizations within them¬ selves, like the Sunday-school, Mission Circles, Ladies’ Aid Societies, etc., but it seems fair to give a paragraph to the Christian Endeavour societies since they are inter¬ denominational and international in their character, and their unions, state and national, have a distinct life of their own. The society is represented in every country in South America, except where the Methodist Episcopal church, like Uruguay, is the only Protestant missionary force. In British and Dutch Guiana, in Chile and in Brazil, it is well represented, and in Peru, Argentina, and Colom¬ bia and Panama, a good beginning has been made. Its work among the Araucanian Indians has been especially commended. Counting the societies in Trinidad, which really be¬ longs to South America, there are at the present writing about 150 societies, and the number is constantly increas¬ ing. In Brazil is by far the largest number of societies, and great credit is due to Dr. Eliezer dos Sanctos Saraiva, who has been the secretary of the Brazilian Union from the beginning, for his indefatigable efforts. A South American Christian Endeavour Union has recently been formed, and the conventions, state and national, which I have recently attended, in Rio, Sao Paulo, Jahu, and other places of Brazil, show the extraordinary vigour and vitality of the movement. It is not too much to say, perhaps, that the Christian Endeavour Society is the one great unifying movement among the churches of South America, where unity is so much needed. There are also a number of Epworth Leagues connected with the Methodist Episcopal churches PROTESTANT MISSIONS 329 doing a good work. It would be a joy to many if they had a more vital connection with the only interdenomina¬ tional movement of the kind in South America. This chapter is already long enough, and I am aware that it is little more than a catalogue of Protestant re¬ ligious work in South America. But it is a catalogue of immense significance, for the future of the continent, and it is a catalogue which records names, most of which are personally familiar to me, and loved for their work and their worth’s sake. It has at least the merit of giving a bird’s-eye view, however unsatisfactory, of the chief evan¬ gelical work carried on in South America. I append in the supplement a tabular view of the mis¬ sionary and evangelical societies which have their fields in this continent. These are the latest figures I could obtain, but they doubtless need correction in some par¬ ticulars, corrections, I am glad to say, largely in the way of enlargement. XL LIGHTS AND SHADOWS ON THE MAP Great European Emigration—The Vast Material Resources—Free In* stitutions—Republicanism Intrenched—A Mediaeval Catholicism— Pope Leo’s Encyclical—Need of a Luther—Lightning-Like Changes —Sr. Forgas—Illiteracy—Lives of Foreigners—The Light Winning Its Way. HAT is the outlook for South America?” I hear my readers ask. u We do not care so much for statistics and figures and elaborate details, as we do for a general view of the helps and hin¬ drances, the lights and shadows of the situation.” He would be a rash man who, after spending only four months in a great continent like South America, and vis¬ iting so hastily as a traveller must in that brief time, its many republics, should speak with dogmatic certainty of the future. His cock-sure prophecies would be very likely to be discredited by the events. I have read too many such oracular statements about South America which have already been discredited, to desire to add to them. One can only speak modestly of his own impres¬ sions and describe what he has actually seen, and draw reasonable deductions from facts as they are. There are both lights and shadows on the map of South America. There is no doubt that the continent is devel¬ oping in material things at a tremendous rate, at least all the southern half of it. Emigrants are pouring in, capi¬ tal from Europe and North America seems to be supplied in unlimited amounts, the people in Peru, Bolivia, Ar¬ gentina and Brazil are waking up to a life of enterprise of which they never dreamed in the days of the Spanish dominion or in the early days of republican rule. 330 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS ON THE MAP 331 Tlie large European emigration grafted upon the native stock is producing in some of the republics practically a new race as in the republic of Argentina and the state of S&o Paulo in Brazil, a race as distinct from any one of the European or Indian stocks from which it has sprung, as the amalgamated race of the United States is from any one of the mother countries. Though the people speak the Spanish or Portuguese languages, they are no more Spanish or Portuguese than the Americans are English, or the Boers of South Africa are Hollanders. This amalgamation and mixture of virile races is a good sign for South America, and the result will be a far stronger race, physically, mentally, let us hope also spir¬ itually, than though Spain or Portugal alone had fur¬ nished the only strain of European blood. It is difficult, too, to overestimate, as has been inti¬ mated in other chapters, the material resources of South America. It has double the territory of the United States available for emigrants and less than half the population. It is evident that as the United States and Canada fill up, and there are signs already that that day is not far dis¬ tant, South America, which now welcomes emigrants with open arms, will be the greatest field in the world for the continual inflow of the peaceful European hordes. Already every emigrant steamer to South America is crowded with Italians, Spaniards, Germans and men of many other nationalities, and, though the returning steamers also take many back to their native lands, a large residuum remains behind, and become the sons of the new soil. There is no questioning this fact, that South America is destined to be not only a country of vast resources, but of vast developed resources, and of enormous population, of a varied and virile European stock. Another broad patch of sunlight on the map of South 332 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY America is its free institutions. From the Isthmus to Cape Horn these free institutions are established. To be sure, this freedom has been abused in the past, and will doubtless be abused in the future. Some of the republics seem to be republics only in name, and Tyranny at times masquerades under the name of Democracy. But there is improvement all along the line, and real republicanism is making headway with every year. It is something to find a whole continent where free speech and a free press and freedom to worship God according to the dictates of one’s conscience prevails from end to end. To be sure there are a few fanatical centres where free¬ dom of worship is scarcely allowed as yet, but these are hardly more than the exceptions that prove the conti¬ nental rule. A Sultan with his foot of iron on all his subject races ; a Czar ruling with absolute authority, and dissolving the people’s parliament at his own caprice, is inconceivable in South America. In fact it would be morally and physically impossible for any monarchical government to establish itself anew on any foot of South American terri¬ tory, and the portions which still owe allegiance to Euro¬ pean powers are comparatively insignificant. It is a source of satisfaction to North Americans that in spite of the great influx of Europeans and their pre¬ dominance in business and all commercial affairs, yet the South American countries have so largely modelled themselves upon the governmental principles tested and tried in the United States. Says Dr. Thomas B. Wood : “ Those ten nations (he wrote before Panama became a separate republic, but his words are now true of eleven nations) have copied our constitutions, our laws, our political methods ; they have introduced our school systems, and imported teachers from the United States to work them ; they have made a LIGHTS AND SHADOWS ON THE MAP 333 study of our whole ‘ mode of existence ’ as they call it, on purpose to seek to reproduce it among themselves. This is without parallel elsewhere ; and when we take into account the barriers of language, religion and race prejudice that separate them from us, their inclination to follow the United States—profound and all prevailing as it is,—stands unmatched in history.” In a word, South America is a land of enormous re¬ sources, and is attracting a population that will develop them. It is a continent of liberty and large aspiration, whose people prize the freedom for which they have fought and bled so freely. It is a country where educa¬ tion, so largely neglected in the past, is making headway, and where superstition and bigotry are every year loosen¬ ing their hold on the minds and hearts of the people. But are there no shadows ? Surely there are, and some are dark enough. No land is without them, and we could hardly expect such a vast continent as South America to be unflecked by them. The worst, as has before been implied, is the shadow of a mediaeval Boman Catholicism. I do not like to hear it called “ Paganism” as some of my brethren are fond of denominating it. With all its darkness it is far removed from the fetichism of Africa, or the filthy Hinduism of the Ganges, and I do not believe that such epithets carry any conviction or make any converts. But Boman Catholicism as practiced in many parts of South America, is a dark and degraded form of Chris¬ tianity, and it is undoubtedly true that the sanctions and restraints of pure Christianity have little effect on the great majority of priests and people alike. To show that this is no exaggeration, I quote, not from any Protestant source, but from the encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII to the clergy of Chile, issued in 1897. “ It is sad to reflect,” he says, “that prelates, priests and other clergy are 334 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY never to be found doing service among the poor ; they are never in the hospitals or lazar house ; never in the orphan asylum or hospice, in the dwellings of the afflicted or dis¬ tressed or engaged in works of beneficence, aiding primary instruction or found in refuges or prisons. ... As a rule they are ever absent where human misery exists, un¬ less paid as chaplains, or a fee is given. On the other hand you (the clergy) are always to be found in the houses of the rich, or wherever gluttony may be indulged in, wherever the choicest wines may be freely obtained.” Most Protestants who were not absolutely familiar with the facts would hesitate to use such scathing language as the Pope himself here employs, or as was quoted in a previous chapter from the Bishop of Cochabamba, and I would refer for these facts to no prejudiced witness. Yet in spite of this corruption and degeneracy, which Catholics themselves admit, the Roman Church is yet a great power iu South America. There is no use in blink¬ ing this fact out of sight. It still controls the hearts and consciences of millions of the people. In some countries the women and consequently the children, are entirely under its domination. Its churches are imposing, stately, and often gorgeously adorned, to suit the somewhat bar¬ baric taste of the poorer worshippers. In Lima, San¬ tiago, Buenos Ayres, Rio de Janeiro and other centres will be found cathedrals which for size and beauty can hardly be surpassed on the continent of Europe, and scarcely equalled in North America. When we compare these churches with the insignificant Protestant chapels which in all but a few cases serve for the Reformed religion, when we look at the bare, uninviting, and sometimes untidy interior of these chapels, and compare them with the gold and frescoes and the gorgeous and elaborate ceremonial of the great Catholic churches, we can forgive the unbeliever who sees but a little ways LIGHTS AND SHADOWS ON THE MAP 335 beneath the surface, for contending that Protestantism has made no headway, and that Eoman Catholicism is as strong as ever. The trouble with the superficial skeptic is that he does not see beneath the surface. He cannot see the leaven at work in the meal, but the leaven is there. Yet, corrupt as it is, I do not believe that the Catholic Church of South America is to be destroyed. It has taken too strong a hold of the imaginations, yes, and of the affections of the people, especially of the women. The hope of the church is in a Savonarola or a Luther from among her own people, who may arise and purify her from within, or, failing in this, establish a pure religious faith that may attract the masses, and save them from drifting into open skepticism and unbelief, which is even now threatening South America with a greater curse than Catholicism. We need not despair of the rise of such a reformer or the spread of such a reformation. These South American countries have a way of under¬ going revolutionary changes in government and industry in the twinkling of an eye, as compared with the slower changes of older nations. In fifteen years more than half the continent changed from monarchical rule to repub¬ licanism, and established its freedom, and, when the time came, the other half (Brazil) made the same change in a single night, without the shedding of a drop of blood. The city of Bio de Janeiro has witnessed a like marvel¬ lous change which in two short years has changed a cramped, ill-paved, dirty, fever-stricken city into one of the most beautiful cities of any continent and one which can boast absolutely the finest avenue in the world. What can thus be done as by a stroke of lightning in politics and architecture, involving a like change in the temper and attitude of the people, may come at any 336 THE CONTINENT OF OPPORTUNITY time in the moral and spiritual sphere. God hasten the day! There are already signs that such a prophet may arise in South America. I do not believe he will ever be imported from abroad. In Peru, Senor Forgas has made a great sensation by his free speech and his unsparing attacks on the Papacy, and though he does not probably have the positive belief and the spiritual stamina necessary to head a great reform movement, yet the fact that he has spoken and written so vigorously as to be practically banished from Peru by the Priesthood, and the further fact that he has obtained a considerable following and his numerous pamphlets a wide reading, point the way to a spiritual awakening which may at any time sweep over South America from Panama to Patagonia. The lack of good schools and the appalling illiteracy in many parts of the continent is another shadow on its fair surface. But slowly this shadow is disappearing, as the sun of popular education breaks through the clouds of ignorance in which Romanism has so long held the people. The frequent revolutions and political disturbances have set back South America for a full half century, as compared with her neighbours on the north, but these revolutions have been growing 11 smaller by degrees and beautifully less,” and no decade has been so free from them as the last. In fact, in the more progressive republics they may already be considered things of the past. Another great hindrance to the spread of evangelical Christianity and a shadow on South America which alas, has come from nominally Christian lands, is the looseness of the lives of foreigners in all the great cities. Drunken¬ ness, licentiousness, Sabbath breaking, and gambling abound among them, and even church goers and church 336 time in day! Thert in Sou importe In Pi his free and the and the movemi so vigoi the Pri a cons! wide re which i Panama The ] in man fair sur the sun of igno people. The have se compar revoluti beautih as the ' they nn Anot' Christia has cou of the li ness, li abound LIGHTS AND SHADOWS ON THE MAP 337 members at home, I am assured, do not hesitate to patronize Sunday races in Buenos Ayres, and such large centres. ‘ 1 If Protestant Christian merchants and Chris¬ tian emigrants generally in South America were true to their profession, and consistent in their lives, I could alm ost say that there would be no need of missionaries,” said a missionary to me, and I have heard his words reechoed by more than one. Such are some of the lights and shadows on the larger moral and spiritual as well as material outlook for South America. I cannot help believing that the light is win¬ ning its way, and chasing away the clouds. An impartial outlook over the history of the country for a hundred years certainly shows far more sunshine to-day than a century ago and the progress of the last quarter century has been unrivalled, showing that in a rapidly increasing ratio the light is gaining on the darkness. “ Watchman, what of the night in South America?” “The morning cometh.” GENERAL STATISTICS CONCERNING SOUTH AMERICAN COUNTRIES Compiled mainly from “ The Statesman’s Year-Book/' and “The World Almanac.” Abbreviations: est.=esti mated ; c.=census ; parentheses indicate dates. These statistics, while the latest available, may not be strictly accurate, as in some countries a census is rarely if ever taken. The figures are, however, approximately correct. •sicjide3 •= £ 3 -2 3 PM » O' iJ < B PQ S < C JZ .2 U MO. 2 >> *: ° sj tn oi a «« .i .i .i i .i MM ’m ^'m ^ sS«i 3 rt c 3 g 3 g lllll.ll O O U U " o ~ °~ o o oi oi» Ov, JZ JZ ^ J3 O O 3 3 d 3 3 3 £ UUO'J §CJ § CCMc’Sc’O 3 3— 3 £ 3 « E 6ii c> G.^ O O ^ o ^ O 1*4 &p4 <& 0 JZ Js 10 *i a, u 3 E « § £ £ « «3 2 “.2,8 |o c rt 3 3 >,.2.g cr o <-> WH •sjuopnjg •S3IJISJ3AIUn puc S 333 JI 03 -SJBioqDS 'S[OOlJOS J 3 MOJ pue Ajbuiuj Orot^vo^ vo^o^ O 00 VO -tf- wwooovo 00 OO ON 00*0 M O w m m m 00 m m w vo •SUBipUJ s§ § § 3 § § % §/§;§ in o' to o' q*' tr 'o"'n l/> o' vcT hT Jq\cT On m Q 10 ON cn CO M « co m 00 t>» 5 00 0 cn vro w m ^ •uotjBindoj 340,000 3,878,600 1,271,861 (1896 est) 4,609,999 1,633,000 (1895 c) 2,712,145 5,022,248 (1897 est) 978,000 530,000 (1897) 2.050 (est) 1 N OO^nQ ^-nVO > ^ M ^VO 0 ■*- m L 00 N „ s: ” 8 ^ 8 °° 1 O'vO ON \r> rr, 1 8 "* 3 ;? L w ^ w 0 co T > M M « *s3i;ui 'bs ui Baay H i i, •S CS~ o • — G -O w 3 G .22 3 .J3'2o i|(2 a 3'o^ 1 o aurt W CM w 3 .2 c! ? 2 > 3 -s .2 3 .2 3 .2 111 5-2 m2 3>3 0 . 20 . V r\ *> - a ro W 338 SOUTH AMERICAN MISSIONARY STATISTICS' •SJUdTJBJ | : : : : : : : ! •sjuapms j : « : : : : : : •suoijnjijsui j»q 3 ijj | : ** : : : : : : •sndnj i i ! S i M i ■sjooqos-XBQ 3 47 2 'siUBDianui -uiod jou ‘sjuaaaqpy 1 ! Ml! a i •sjuBDiunuiuio 3 i » | | ! i s s •suoijBjs-jno : § ? : : s : : •suoijbjs co m in so S 3 X 3 S qjoq ‘SJ 33 (iOAV 8 AI}«^ $ 3 S $ :<2 S' : •surpisXqd spsp^ I : : : : : : : : •U 3 UIOA jsqjo i S 5 " « : : : •S 3 A ?A V : ^ £ J « : : : •uauiXeq 8 X 4 18 •pu.pao ‘S 3 UBUOSSSt W moo J Countries occupied; year of entrance. Arg. Rep. (1864). Venez. (1888), Brazil (1876), Col’mbia (1888). Brazil (1889). Chile, Arg. Rep., Uruguay. Chile (1873), Colombia (1856), Brazil (1859), Venez. (1897). Brazil (1876). Brazil (1893). Arg. Republic (1821), Brazil. British Guiana (1873). Auxiliary to No. 32. Arg. Rep., Brazil, Chile, Vene¬ zuela, Ecuador. •jjodsi jo #1111 #| | j 1 > £ iP?!fiij SWiili mifM'liW H « m 4 wS «o od c> o 339 ••jaaijrj « : 8 : fO : : s : : •sjuopnjg | • 00 ; ro • g. •taoiinjtjsui aaqSijj | • " : - - •sndnj vO 00 ON CO vo : 0 w M ci •siooqos-XBQ Ov « ”» : « ♦ ro : M : •sjuBDiunia •moo joa ‘siuojaqpv VO s? • ro • «o ro 1,000 *sjaT5o;anuiuio3 Cl ''f §5 : 1,012 s qv 8: •sao;jrjs-jno r. = ro w : : •suoijbjs 2 VO M W ro 00 « 00 03 ro S H M S3X3S qjoq 'SJSqJOAV 3AIJB^ 0 VO Ov - 0 : : « •sirepisXqd spjpq 1 •: « : « •U3UI0M joqio 1 0 • *■ ro H •S3AI M 1 a 0 : N 00 " ♦ S S - *U3UiXb^ 1 1 * w Ov W N « • j •pu.pjo 'SOUBUOJSSIJ^ | 0 2 : ro 00 H M is O c if o * U >< * O , s| , a '-j* u S 2 S q u ■- O^g _ rt Ofl 2H> j£c| 8s *-.2® —' sO o S' 3 £ | 2® 3 3 O 0 ’S •C 3 to u S w S bi2 C K Si *U0d3J JO J«3A ^ <2* 85 85 & E-S o V O ti W CQ i § J»5- g c 6 e c 5.2 « '-' o u. ^ -f* «U 7 * 2 3 ►g J3 9-S • u-_n w j c3| -g > W§«3 £< : # C *C * ^5 rt . 2 CO sis a. .§11 -S-o «' °J !| J C V] S2|f .2 0 g OT = g > •g g rt > •£ ,ss ss .2 Ew «_ o w = 2-u« 1° u CL C •tj rt v c « e 3 «j 12 -Ss S rt on X O, 340 Argentine Republic. to 5 s S § CT> 'fop o S- g.s§ ^ z « £ ~ 3 -C . . 3ft •s £* S*i3^ * < $ 4J ,< ^.^co •- co o oo ” rt on ro S OO 0O0O K. IB ^ rt < a rzv g, 2 3 33 03 ° rt rt G G rt ctf 3 3 OO ft <; ft! >N . rt 60 3 u 60 « 2 p D co O ^ co C « rt 2 3 ft 33 tf . < Si u ® “ 2« « O 3« GO >. : ~ rt ! ‘3 1= = s< I -Sai rt u . .2 o £ ■a > 4 i « « c *_ 2 "3 ft r, o .2.2 .r* ,T 3 ! s O >.J 3 : « H o 3 o~ C/3CJ >•■2 l£ o . *1! -a c « « 1 s .2D - 2.S Cut) c £0 ■2 c .2 t/> <.2 —* v o qj '“J z;, rt JSS3 S Pi d C/3 C/3 oft 341 E £ <-~ ■Sin ft c ■o ^ ‘ = S M * .C v o . e|^-“ — C c't; "2S .3 G o o £c^ > o <« B-H oi 3 n MR lb’4 § F2223.C59 The continent of opportunity : the South S?min ary-Speer Letora 1 1012 00071-2770.