¦Ill ¦' CA GEOGRAPHICAL READER i iii iiii "I give theft Books for the founding of a College in this Colony" Gift of Dr. Hiram Bingham of the Class of 1898 190$ ilRIBBEAN 1(}SE A QafceUo •' SOUTH AMERICA CALE OF MILES 200 400 yp^TCapo Htfr" from 6,6 Oreenwioh $0 CARPENTER'S GEOGRAPHICAL READER SOUTH AMERICA BY FRANK G. CARPENTER NEW YORK ; CINCINNATI ¦ : ¦ CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY Copyright, 1899, by Frank G. Carpenter. CrtRP. S. Am. E-P 8 893.A PREFACE. In this book the children are taken by the author upon a personally conducted tour through the most character istic parts of the South American continent. Leaving New York, they sail through the Atlantic Ocean and Carib bean Sea to the Isthmus of Panama. Here they cross over to the Pacific, and travel along the west coast, visiting all the different countries and learning about their civili zation and industries. They climb the Andes; they explore the highlands of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, and steam over Lake Titicaca. They travel extensively upon the great coast desert, visit the wheat and fruit lands of Chile, and then make their way about through the Strait of Magellan into the Atlantic. They go along the Atlantic coast, through Patagonia, into the pastures and pampas of Argentina, and sail on the Parana and Paraguay rivers for thousands of miles into the heart of the continent. Returning through the Rio de la Plata, they make their way along the coast of Brazil to the mouth of the Ama zon. They explore the wilds of the great Amazon valley, and then go on into Venezuela to the Orinoco river, down which they sail into the Atlantic, and close their tour with travels in Dutch, French, and English Guiana. Among the striking features of the book are the pic- 5 6 PREFACE. tures of life and work among the people of the various countries. The children take journeys through the cities ; they see life in the villages, and spend days upon the farms, in the factories, and in the mines, seeing all phases of life among the rich and the poor, the savage and the civilized. The great industries of South America have received especial attention. In the Andes the young readers go down into the mines and see how gold, silver, and tin are extracted from the earth. They explore the nitrate fields on the coast, see the great borax lakes of Bolivia, exam ine the guano islands, and are carried out under the ocean into the subterranean coal mines of southern Chile. They learn about sheep raising during their travels in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, and upon the pampas of Argentina they visit the greatest stock ranches of theworld. They travel through the coffee plantations of Brazil, and spend some time in the rubber camps of the Amazon and in the cacao orchards of Venezuela and Ecuador. They learn much of the curious animals of the different zones, and see the wonders of nature in the flowers and trees of the tropics. The travels are in the shape of an imaginary tour made by the children themselves, with the author as a guide. The book will, it is believed, aid in putting flesh and blood on the bones of the geographies, and will give a living interest to geographical study. The book has the merit of being written from original sources of information. It comprises the observations of the author gathered in a trip of more than twenty- five thousand miles along the routes herein described. Most of the descriptions were written on the ground, and a very large number of the photographs were made by the author especially for this book. CONTENTS. I. From New York to Panama II. The Isthmus of Panama III. Across Panama to the Pacific IV. The Republic of Colombia . V. The Land of the Equator VI. The Great South American Desert VII. In Lima, the Capital of Peru VIII. Up the Andes .... IX. On the Roof of South America . X. Steamboating above the Clouds . XL Travels in Bolivia XII. The Mineral Wealth of the Andes XIII. On the Nitrate Desert and the Guano Islands XIV. Along the Coast to Valparaiso . XV. Across South America by Rail . XVI. Santiago, the Capital of Chile XVII. A Visit to a Chilean Farm . XVIII. Southern Chile and the Araucanians XIX. In the Coal Mines of Chile XX. In and about the Strait of Magellan XXI. At the End of the Continent XXII. In Argentina — Patagonia . XXIII. In Argentina— Life on the Pampas XXIV. In the Great Fruit and Bread Lands of South America 7 PAGE 9 16 242938 5058 67 72 81 8795 100108"5123 130'37144151 159 167 174 182 8 CONTENTS. XXV. In Buenos Aires ....... XXVI. Uruguay— In Montevideo, the Paris of South America XXVII. Up the Rio de la Plata System . XXVIII. In Paraguay .... XXIX. Paraguay— A Trip into the Interior XXX. Paraguay — A Curious Tea — The Chaco and its Indians XXXI. In Brazil-The Wilds of Matto Grosso XXXII. Southern Brazil .... XXXIII. In the Land of Coffee . XXXIV. Rio de Janeiro .... XXXV. More about Rio . XXXVI. Bahia and the Diamond Mines XXXVII. Along the Coast of Brazil . XXXVIII. The Valley of the Amazon XXXIX. Para, the Metropolis of the Amazon XL. In the Land of Rubber XLI. A Trip on the Amazon . XLII. On the Orinoco and the Llanos XLIII. Venezuela and its Capital XLIV. In the Guianas .... Index ...... PAGE 192 201 208 2lS226 233243 249 257 2672 74 283 29I 299 3°5 312 320 327 334342 35i LIST OF MAPS. South America ........ Frontispiece Isthmus of Panama .......... 18 Colombia ............ 30 Peru and Bolivia ..... .... 73 Tierra del Fuego ...... ... 158 Argentina and Chile ......... 202 Brazil ............ 242 Venezuela and Guiana 343 TRAVELS THROUGH SOUTH AMERICA. I. FROM NEW YORK TO PANAMA. IT is a great undertaking to explore a whole continent, but that is what I shall ask the boys and girls to do with me in this book. We shall travel together over all South America, to learn what kind of a country it is and what it has in it, and to see for ourselves just what is going on in every part of it. We shall first sail from New York to the Isthmus of Panama, and crossing that narrow neck of land, go through the Pacific Ocean along the west coast to the Strait of Magellan, stopping here and there, and making many trips far into the interior. We shall go through the strait about the southern end of Patagonia, and then travel along the east coast of the continent through the Atlantic to the mouth of the Amazon, journeying thousands of miles in ward at different points, and exploring all the great rivers. From far up the Amazon we shall go north through the wilds into the lands along the Caribbean Sea, and thence take ship for New York. 9 IO ATLANTIC OCEAN. This will be a very long journey. South America is so large that we must travel much farther than the distance around the world if we would visit only its principal parts. It is a difficult trip. Much of it will be in the Andes Mountains, which are among the highest on earth, and in Argentina we shall travel over plains and pastures where for thousands of miles we shall not see a hill. We shall find all kinds of animals and, I might almost say, all kinds of men. There are curious Indians here and there over South America ; there are mixed races in most of the states; and there are numerous negroes, as well as several varieties of the Caucasian race. Many of the peo ple have odd customs, and we shall find everything strange. But our steamer, the Allianpa, for the Isthmus of Pana ma, is lying at its wharf in New York, ready to start. I " Our steamer is ready to start." VOYAGE TO PANAMA. I I wonder if we are well prepared for the journey. Let us look carefully over our baggage and see. It will be hard to buy things in some of the countries, for we must remem ber that but few South American cities have so good stores as we have. It is now winter. It is so cold in New York that we dare not go out on the street without heavy clothing. We shall be in the land of perpetual summer when we step from the steamer upon the Isthmus of Panama, and our overcoats and flannels will seem very hot on the equator. And still we cannot throw them away, for we shall need them in cold Patagonia and while we are climbing the snowy peaks of the Andes. No ; our first business is to lay in a good stock of all kinds of clothing. Another thing which each of us needs is a good saddle and bridle. Many of the journeys will be on donkeys and mules, and the saddles sold in South America are very uncomfortable. I think the boys should take guns, for we may have shots at alligators and jaguars, at tapirs, and perhaps at peccaries or wild hogs. We also need cameras and photographic supplies to bring back records of the things we see, in order to prove that the stories we tell are founded on truth. But stop a moment. I wonder if we all have our pass ports. There are often revolutions in South America, and during such it is not the easiest thing in the world to keep one's head on one's shoulders or to keep out of prison. We must be able to prove that we are Americans, so that we can claim the protection and rights that our citizens have all over the world. Passports are furnished for this purpose by the Secre tary of State at Washington. Each passport is a piece of white paper about as large as a sheet of foolscap, certifying " ///ii /i//i/i/:j/i/,/i,/.. tin/ii/y 1/ ¦//,//, ,///„ f/„//,,/' /////,.,, /.' /wr,/r//. ,',,,,/// it/ym 1/ //// ////,¦/// //./»/'/// Ir/t/ii'// /,>////¦,//// ' I H ///,/// / ,/ hi//-,,, ,/ //„ V/,„/,,/ ' A//./ Mills,, 1/1/ ,1 //'/ /ifillU'if,!,/,',, ¦/¦//.>, 1/ ii,,i//, ,/lir ¦///,///¦//// ' /„/„,„/ ."'/!, /,r/,hi. Vy*~*A %», ,„„ii- „„//,„ J ,„„///,}. • /,, ', '. WW/. i,'iS,. >„ //» y,,, a ¦ ,„„/,///, /,<,//„,„/„. . . < //„/, , ///, i/ii/ii//i,/i„/,,,„//,,r,7S,, .,„-,.„,/ /- f-2 A Passport. VOYAGE TO PANAMA. 1 3 that its owner is an American citizen. It has the coat of arms of the United States at the top, and at the bottom the big red seal of the State Department at Washington. Between the two there is a description of the person to whom the passport is given. It tells just how tall he is, the color of his eyes, hair, and face, whether his nose, chin, and mouth are big or little, and just how old he was when the passport was issued. It also bears his signature. The paper is signed by the Secretary of State, and it requests all people to permit the bearer, who is a citizen of the United States, safely and freely to pass, and in case of need to give him all lawful aid and protection. We find our passports all right, and are counting over our baggage when we are warned that it is time to be off. The ship has already finished loading its cargo, and we make our way in and out among the men who are wheel ing on board the bags containing the South American mails. A moment later the bell rings to notify all who are not going with us to leave. There are farewell kisses and hurried good-bys. The engines begin to throb, and as we wave our handkerchiefs to our friends on the wharf our boat moves slowly out into the East river and down by Staten Island through the harbor of New York. Within a short time the city has passed out of view, and as evening falls we stand at the stern of the steamer and watch the lights of Sandy Hook fade away into the dark ness, realizing that we shall not see our native land for many months to come. It is about two thousand miles from New York to Colon', on the Isthmus of Panama; but our ship does not go so fast as the big steamers of the Atlantic, and it takes a full week for our voyage. 14 ATLANTIC OCEAN. The first day out is cold and bracing, and we spend the time in learning our steamer. It is a ship of three thousand tons, about fifty feet wide and three hundred feet long. It flies the American flag. The sailors are from different parts of New England, and our captain is a Yankee from Maine. At high noon every day he makes an observation, telling by the sun just where we are, and a little later on we all rush to the cabin to learn how many miles we have gone in the twenty-four hours. At the close of the second day the air becomes warm. We are crossing the Gulf Stream, that mighty river of the Atlan- ticwhich is three thousand times as great as the Mississippi in volume. The water is now warmer than that of the ocean through which it is flow ing. It warms the air like a furnace, and we can feel the difference as we pass out of it and travel along its eastern edge toward the Caribbean Sea. But why do we not keep in the stream and be warm all the way? You will easily see when you remember how "hard it is to pull a boat against a strong current. The Gulf Stream flows northward at the rate of three miles an hour, and we are going as fast as we can to the south. If we should keep in the stream we should have to steam against a three- mile current, and we should lose at least three miles an hour. ' At high noon he makes an observation." VOYAGE TO PANAMA. 1 5 We find the weather much colder outside the stream. It is not long before it grows warmer, however, for we are sailing southward and shall soon be in the Caribbean Sea. It is already so pleasant that we can leave off our over coats, and we walk the deck, scanning the wide expanse of blue water on all sides. But what is that away off to our right? It is little more than a blue speck in the distance. That is one of the most famous islands in the world. It is San Salvador, upon which Columbus landed when he first discovered America. The sight that greets our eyes is the same that greeted his more than four hundred years ago. When he first stood upon San Salvador he thought it an island off the coast of Asia, and did not realize that he had discovered a new world. San Salvador is one of the most fertile of the Bahamas. It produces fruits, grain, and roots in great abundance, and it is as rich to day as it was when Columbus landed upon it. A little farther south we see a white lighthouse stand ing among a grove of palm trees, and the captain tells us we are looking at Bird Rock Island, another of the Baha mas ; and still farther south the bleak and rocky coasts of eastern Cuba come into view, with the purple mountains of Haiti in plain sight on the opposite side of the ship. We sail between these two islands for hours, and then go out over the blue waters of the Caribbean. The sea is now like glass. The sun is quite hot at noon, but during the rest of the day the air is soft, warm, and pleasant. It is like a June day in Ohio. We put on our thin linen clothes and enjoy our voyage over the tropical seas. We sail for two days with no land in sight. There are few ships, and the only moving things upon the waters are 16 COLOMBIA. the gulls which hover about us and the schools of flying fish which dart from wave to wave, one now and then jumping too high and lighting on our deck in its flight. But listen. The captain calls out that we are approach ing the Isthmus of Panama. We are coming near to that wonderful strip of earth and rock which ties North and South America together. We rush to the prow of the ship and look toward the west. At last a thin, hazy line of blue floats up out of the waters at the horizon. Now the blue deepens. It rises up in the form of low mountains, while little green islands bob out of the sea in front of our ship. Now we are still closer. See, there is a low city along the shore. It is surrounded by green trees and plants, and' rising out of it and over it are tall palm trees with fanlike leaves moving to and fro in the breeze. That town is Colon, the city at the northern end of the Panama Rail road, where we are to land, and those trees are real cocoa- nut palms, which seem to be waving to us a welcome to the Isthmus of Panama. II. THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. WE shall cross the Isthmus of Panama on a railroad in a very few hours. The first white man who went over took twenty-nine days, and his journey made him famous for all time as one of the world's great discoverers. It was only a few years after Columbus discovered America. Then no one knew that this land was an isth mus. Most people, supposed it to be a part of Asia. Expeditions were being made to learn just what the land contained, and among the explorers was a young Spaniard ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 1 7 named Vasco Nunez de Balboa, who came with a party to the Gulf of Darien, not far south of Colon. Here he founded a settlement and went out among the Indians trading for gold. One day when he was weighing some gold which he was about to buy, a young Indian chief struck the scales with his fist, scattering the precious metal upon the ground, and said : " If this is what you prize so much that you are ready to leave home and risk your lives for it, I can tell you of a land where gold is as cheap as iron — where it is so com mon that the people eat and drink out of vessels made of it." What the Indian said was true. He spoke of Peru, a country which was then rich in gold, and in which we shall travel by and by. His saying excited Balboa, and he questioned the chief, who told him that the land of gold lay to the southward over the mountains, where there was a sea so great that no one had ever come to its end. Balboa then decided to find out if this story were true, and on September I, 15 13, he started. It took him eleven days to cut his way through the thick forest to the top of the mountains, and then on the 25th of September, 15 13, he saw a great sea to the south, which he called the South Sea, but which we call the Pacific Ocean. Four days later he climbed down the south slope, and with sword in hand rushed into the waters up to his waist, and claimed the great sea and all it contained for the King of Spain. The Isthmus of Panama is not large. The neck of an hourglass is not so narrow in comparison with the globes which it joins as this little neck of land with the conti nents of North and South America above and below it. COLOMBIA. At its narrowest part, if it were level, we could walk across it in a day, while to cross North America from New York to San Francisco requires six days and nights on a fast railroad train, and in South America to make our way from the Atlantic up the Amazon as far as we could go, and thence to the Pacific by land, would take more than two months. Yes, the isthmus is very narrow, but it forms a great wall against the commerce of the world. See those boxes and bales of goods which are being tak en out of the hold ofoursteamer. Men are putting them on the cars which will carry them across to the city of Panama, on the Pacific. There they will again be loaded upon ships going north to San Francisco or south to Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. Those men who are work ing must be paid, and the railroad charges high prices for freight. Indeed, the transfer of goods across the isthmus costs so much that it is often cheaper to send them from New York to San Francisco on ships clear around South America, although the distance is eight thousand miles greater. SECTION OF THLBfS ISTHMUS OF PANAMA Canal almost follows ttle line of the Railroad SCALE OF MILEB * >1& ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. IO, What a fine thing it would be if we had a canal cut across the isthmus wide enough for the biggest ships to sail through! Then our Pacific coast, Hawaii, and the Philippines would be thousands of miles nearer by ship to our Atlantic coast; and Europe and Asia, so far as com merce is concerned, would be much closer together. Such canals have been planned ever since Balboa showed that the two great oceans at this place are so close to each other. There are now two great undertakings to cut through the land from one ocean to the other. One is the Nicaragua Canal across Central America by way of the large Lake of Nicaragua and the river San Juan, and the other is the canal which is being dug by the French from Colon, where we now are, to the Bay of Panama, on the Pacific. We shall see much of the Panama Canal as we cross on the railroad. Vast sums have been spent upon it, but it is still far from completion. We shall see what a great job it is to cut through the land, although at this point the isthmus is so narrow that one of our fastest trains might cross from ocean to ocean in an hour. The chief obstacle is the series of great mountain chains which runs north and south along the west side of our continent from Alaska to the Strait of Magellan. We knew of it in the Rockies and the Andes. It exists also at the Isthmus of Panama, although it sinks so low at this place that the greatest peaks are not half a mile high. Indeed, the pass through which the canal is to go is only two and one half times as high as the Washington Monu ment. Still, the mountains are masses of rock, and it takes a long time, by blasting and drilling and dredging, to cut them down so as to make a ditch wide enough and deep enough for ships to pass through. CARP. S. AM.— 2 20 COLOMBIA. Another difficulty in making the canal is in the great rains. The isthmus is one of the rainiest parts of the world, and during some of the year the streams and rivers flowing down the mountains become raging torrents. The Cha'gres river, which crosses the line of the canal, some times rises in one rainy night as high as a four-story house, so that it will take a great dam to hold back its waters. Indeed, it will cost so much to make the canal that many people wonder if it will be completed. But we have some time yet before the train starts, and we can take a run through Colon. We cross the track of the Panama Railroad, which runs through the town, and visit the entrance to the canal, where we see great dredges and numerous small boats. The dredges are idle and covered with rust. There is a vast amount of machinery "The dredges are idle." ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 21 going to ruin, for the work in this part of the canal has been given up for the time. We learn that Colon was largely made by the canal peo ple, and that the most of the men we see on the streets came here to work upon it. Among them are negroes from Jamaica who address us in English, and brown-faced Colombians who speak nothing but Spanish. The Co lombians are the descendants of the Spaniards who came here centuries ago. Some of them are pure whites, and others are of the mixed race of Spaniards and Indians. Colon has also a sprinkling of French, Americans, and English. It has many Chinese, the first of whom were brought here by the thousands years ago to work on the Front Street, Colon. railroad. They did not get along well, and so many of them died that one of the stations on the railroad is called Mata- chin', which, freely translated, means " dead Chinamen." What a queer town Colon is! We say this again and 22 COLOMBIA. again as we walk through its streets. Many of the houses are empty, and nearly all are going to ruin. When the canal was started, thousands of people were employed upon it, and it was thought that Colon would be a great city. The finest part of it was made for the officers of the canal, and was called, after Columbus, the town of Chris- tophe Colomb. We take carriages and drive through this section. Its wide streets are lined with cocoa palm trees, each of which has a bushel or so of green cocoanuts hanging close "We take carriages and drive through this section." to its trunk where the leaves jut out. The cocoanuts are as big as the heads of the half-naked negro babies who are playing under the trees, and we think that a commo tion would arise if one should drop down among them. We see more cocoanut trees as we drive through other parts of Colon. They are found almost everywhere on ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 23 the isthmus. The most of them are wild, but there are also cocoanut plantations where we can learn just how the trees grow. They are so easy to raise that we almost wish we could stop and start a grove of our own. The cocoanut trees are first sprouted by placing a lot of the nuts on top of the ground, a few inches apart. After a while each nut sends out a sprout from one of the little eyes at its end. The sprout grows up into the air, and at the same time a root shoots out of its base down into the ground. Within a few months the sprout has grown as high as a table. The sprout and nut are now broken off from the root and set out where the tree is to stand. The nut is buried about six inches deep in the ground, the rest of the sprout remaining above. The earth is pressed tightly down about the sprout, and the planting is done. Cocoanut trees are set out at about the same distance apart as the trees of our peach orchards. They grow rapidly, and at seven years begin to bear nuts. The fruit ripens all the year round, and we see blossoms and nuts on the same tree. The nuts are. not picked from the trees, but they drop when- they are ripe. The men go daily from tree to tree to gather the nuts. Each nut has a thick green husk upon it. This is torn off, and the nuts then look as we see them in our stores, and are ready for shipment. Men are loading cocoanuts on the steamer when we get back to the wharves. The captain will take a shipload to New York, and tells us that they will be sold there by the thousand for two or three cents apiece. 24 COLOMBIA. III. ACROSS PANAMA TO THE PACIFIC. OUR train for Panama is ready to start. We buy our tickets of an American station agent, and later on we notice that the conductors and other railroad officials are Americans. The Panama Railroad was built by Ameri cans shortly after gold was discovered in California. It has been very profitable, although it has cost a great deal of money and thousands of lives. Indeed, so many men died of fever while working upon it that it is said there was more tlian one death for every tie in the track. The cars are much like our cars at home. Each seat has its window, and we have a good view of the country as the train whirls us along through tropical wonders. Now we go by a banana plantation. See how the wide Banana Peddlers. ACROSS PANAMA. 25 green leaves of the plants extend up from the ground higher than the head of a man. They are nearly as high as the top of the cars, and great bunches of green bananas bend down among them, almost touching the ground. No.w we pass orange trees loaded with fruit, and there is a tree filled with green and ripe lemons. There are many forest trees, the names of which we do not know. Some of the trees are covered with orchids, and some are masses of other beautiful flowers. Among them are fern trees, and also bamboos of many varieties, which wave their tall, green, feathery branches in the breeze made by the train as we pass. There are twenty different varieties of palms on the isthmus, some of which are of wonderful value. That small, fat, bunchy tree, with, the leaves sticking out on all sides, is the ivory palm. See those prickly green balls, as big as your head, which grow close to its trunk at the top. In those balls are the nuts which form the vegetable ivory of com merce. Each nut is somewhat like a chestnut, but about five times as big. That train which is passing us now is probably carrying thousands of ivory nuts to Colon, whence they will be shipped to New York, and there made into buttons, combs, and other such things. But see, there is another strange palm. I mean that one at your left, with the green shoots at the top. That is the cabbage palm. Its head looks like a cabbage, and if you Sago Palm. 26 COLOMBIA. should cook it you would find that it tastes much the same. On the hill farther back there are palms which furnish the sago we cook in puddings and soups, and now and then we pass what the natives call the wine palm, because from its sap they can make a sweet drink which will intoxicate like wine. But we are coming into the mountains. We are slowly climbing the hills. There are woods all about us. The forests in the distance look more like the woodlands of our country than those of the tropics. The trees are closer together, and they are so bound about with vines i that we could not make our way through them without chopping it out with an ax. We see but few birds, as they are frightened off by the noise of the train ; but a short dis tance back from the railroad there are bright-colored par rots and great scarlet-breasted toucans with bills four inches S long. There are yellow birds about as big as a robin, which j whistle like mocking birds, and orioles whose beautifully woven nests hang down like bags from the trees. There are also many wild animals. See that monkey which is grinning at us out of the branches of that tree as we pass. There are monkeys of all sizes on the isthmus, as well as ant-eaters, jaguars, and wild hogs. There are snakes, large and small, from the poisonous Cocoa Palms and Cocoanut. ACROSS PANAMA. 27 viper to the great boa constrictor. There are plenty of insects. We must be careful where we walk, lest we step on a tarantula, a scorpion, or a centiped. Notice the telegraph poles. They are made of iron. This is because of the ants, some of which eat wood. These ants sometimes travel in armies, and they will con, sume a pine telegraph pole in a night. The mosquitoes are worse than ours of New Jersey, and I warn you to beware of a little insect called the chigoe, or jigger, which attacks the bare toes just under the nail. When it bites you it will not hurt more than the prick of a needle, and the bite will make only a little red spot on your toe. As it bites, however, it lays its eggs in the little hole it makes in the flesh. The eggs are so small that you can hardly see them, but if you do not soon dig them out with a needle they will hatch into worms, which will cause you great pain and probably the loss of your toe. The isthmus has many vari eties of lizards. We see them crawling out from under the ties on the railroad, and we may have a chance to eat them when asked out to dine. The flesh of one variety of lizard is as tender as a spring chicken. It is sold in the Panama markets. This is the iguana lizard. It is from three to six feet in length, and-its eggs are of the size of a marble. The eggs are yellow and shriveled, but are by no means unpalatable. Iguana Lizard. 28 COLOMBIA. But here we are on the other side of the mountains. We go quickly down to the lowlands, and end our journey in Panama, with the Pacific Ocean before us. Panama has about twenty-five thousand people. It is one of the most picturesque cities of the hemisphere. Its houses are built like those of old Spain, with galleries Wharves, Panama. hanging out, so that we are shaded from the sun. as we walk through the streets. The streets go up hill and down. They wind in and out around a great bay which is guarded from the sea by green islands. There are many good stores, and several hotels. We visit the wharves and see the great business that is done in transferring goods from one ocean to the other. We spend some time on the bay looking at the ships which have ACROSS PANAMA. 29 Cathedral, Panama. come from different parts of the world. They are an chored far out from the shore, at the edge of the islands, on account of the tides, which are here very strong. We learn that one is just about to sail southward along the coast of Colombia, and upon it we take passage. oj®V The factories have great boiling tanks, heated by steam pipes which run through them. Into these tanks of hot water the lumps of nitrate are thrown. The boiling melts up the rock, and just as salt melts and goes into water, so fuse the nitrate salt is (l _ ^ :_> taken up by the water of the tank, while the dirt and sand sink to the bottom. After a time all of the nitrate of soda has gone out of the rock into the boiling water. It now looks for all the world like pale maple sirup. ..y^X'V'Y NITRATE-ROCK , ' v\\- \ :w m Diagram of Nitrate Bed. This fluid is drawn from the boiler and run into cooling tanks. In these the nitrate soon crystallizes and sinks to the bottom, so that after a time each tank is filled with what looks like white sugar, while the water on top has become almost clear. The deposit is nitrate of soda. The water is now allowed to flow off, and the nitrate is shoveled out into piles to dry in the sun. It is next bagged up in sacks of three hundred pounds each and taken on the railroad to the seacoast, to be shipped to the United States and to Europe. There is another thing which comes from the nitrate rock, which is carefully saved. This is iodine, a crystal line substance which is used in photography and for mak ing dyes and many kinds of valuable drugs. It is obtained from the boiled water out of which the nitrate has been NITRATE DESERT. 105 taken. Into the water a certain quantity of bisulphite of soda is put. This causes all the iodine in the water to drop to the bottom in a dirty black powder. This powder is washed, and heated in tight iron boxes. It soon turns to vapor, and is then conducted from the boxes into pipes of fire clay. As the vapor touches the clay it cools and changes to crystals of a beautiful violet color. These crystals are the iodine of commerce. They are shipped to Europe, and thence sent to all parts of the world. Is it not curious that men should go so far and work so hard merely to get food for the soil ? The earth is much like man in that it will not work well — that is, produce good crops for many years in succession-without "There is a loud explosion." being fed. The most of the nitrate is used as food for lands which are expected to yield the richest of crops. Good soil foods are so valuable indeed that farmers io6 CHILE. Nitrate Factory. will pay high prices for them, and vast fortunes have been made out of other such things which are found in this part of South America. Next to nitrate of soda the chief of these is guano. Guano is a mixture of the manure of birds, dead seals, and fish, which is found along, certain parts of the seacoast and on a number of islands not far from the shores of Peru and Chile. The islands are volcanic rocks. They are as bare as the desert. They have not a blade of grass or any green thing upon them, and are merely rock masses covered with what looks much like sand. If you stir this sand up it will give forth a smell like ammonia, and if you put it upon the soil it will cause it to produce bountiful crops. If we should stay on the islands overnight we could see that they are then covered by the GUANO ISLANDS. 107 birds which have for ages chosen them as their roosting places and homes. They are the pelicans and sea gulls which feed by the millions in the waters of this part of the Pacific. They often bring the fish they have caught in their bills to the islands and leave them there. During some parts of the year, many seals come here to breed, and seals often crawl out of the sea upon these rocks to die. On a Guano Island. All this has been going on for many years, and the result is a deposit which is so valuable as manure that ships are sent here to take it away to our country and to Europe. There are houses upon some of the islands, put up for the men who dig out the guano, and on one or two of them there are little railroads which have been made to carry the guano down to the shores. 108 CHILE. XIV. ALONG THE COAST TO VALPARAISO. IT takes us five days by steamer to go from Iquique to Valparaiso (val-pa-ri'so), the chief seaport of Chile. The sail along the west coast is delightful. There are few storms, and almost every day we make a new port, at which we see many strange things. Luscious grapes and oranges are brought to the steamer from the valley oases of the desert, and we now and then take on a few barrels of wine. While our steamer stops at Antofagasta we have time to visit the largest smelter in all South America. It has been built here to smelt the silver out of the ore brought down from the Andes. This work is done in huge furnaces, the ore being melted with other materials in such a way that the pure silver is taken out of the rocks. The ore is first ground to powder, which is then molded into bricks. As we pass through the yard we see a large plot of ground upon which are piled up enough bricks to build a big house. It is perhaps the richest brickyard on earth. The bricks look like blocks of gray sand, but they are really silver ore, ground fine and molded into this shape that the ore may be more easily smelted. Farther down the coast we anchor at Coquimbo (ko- kem'bo) to take on a big load of copper. Hundreds of long bars or bricks of reddish-brown metal are brought out to our steamer on a lighter and put away in the hold. This copper comes from mines not far from the town. We learn that Chile has vast deposits of very rich copper. It lies in great lumps or veins in the mountains, and is ALONG THE COAST. IO9 dug out and smelted in the furnaces at this port and else where. Soon after leaving Coquimbo we notice that the shores have lost their gray, dusty look. Now and then we see a tree and a patch of green grass. We are out of the desert at last. We sail about two hundred miles farther south, and finally come to anchor in the Bay of Valparaiso. It is shaped like a half- moon, being walled with steep hills covered with luxuriant trees and beautiful flowers. A few miles inland from the coast there are orange and lemon groves, vineyards and trees bearing almost all kinds of fruits; and just over the mountains is the long valley of Chile, one of the richest farming and fruit-raising re gions of all South America. At Valparaiso we are not halfway along the coast. Chile extends from here to the Strait of Magellan. It is the narrowest of all countries in proportion to its length. It stretches only from the ocean to the top of the Andes, and its width is nowhere greater than the distance from New York to Boston. In some places, indeed, its width is not greater than the distance from Philadelphia to New York, but it is so long that if laid from east to west upon the United States, with one end at New York, it would stretch out far beyond Great Salt Lake. If you could twist it around, so that it would lie north and south, with Tierra del Fuego on the Florida Keys, the nitrate fields which we have just left would be in Hudson Bay, about even with the northern part of Labrador. A land of this kind must have many climates. It was quite hot at Iquique, but the winter air here at Valparaiso is pleasantly cool, and near the Strait of Magellan the ground is often covered with snow. The same difference no CHILE. Harbor, Valparaiso. exists in regard to rain. In the northern desert one never needs an umbrella, but at Valparaiso it rains now and then throughout the year. It rains more as you go farther south, and in some places so much water falls that the people jokingly say it rains thirteen months every year. As we reach the rain belt the desert suddenly stops; green fields are frequently seen ; and as we go still farther south we shall travel in a valley covered with crops, and come into a country where the grass grows luxuriantly and where there are great forests bound together with vines. But what is the cause of the change? Why is northern Chile so dry and the greater part of southern Chile wet ? It comes from the winds, We have learned that the VALPARAISO. 1 1 1 desert exists because the winds which come from the east have had the water squeezed out of them by the cold air of the mountains before they reach the west slope. The winds which roll over southern Chile come from a different direction. They are blown toward the south east. As they cross the warm waters of the Pacific they drink themselves full of moisture, and when they reach the cold part of Chile the difference in the temperature makes this moisture drop down. Hence we shall find that there are copious rains, producing many streams, which flow down the west slope of the Andes. On the other side of the mountains, in parts of Patagonia, the country is almost a desert, for the winds have been wrung dry before they reach there. Leaving our ship, we explore Valparaiso. The city is about the size of Indianapolis. It is the best business point upon the whole coast, owing its growth to its harbor, which is large enough to float all the ships of the world. We come to anchor among steamers from different parts of Europe. They are loading' and discharging goods. Some of them are taking on cattle, wheat, vegetables, and fruits for the cities of the desert farther north, and others have stopped on their way to add to their cargoes of nitrate, copper, and hides, which they will carry from Chile to Europe. We take a boat to the shore, wondering how we can get up the hills to the houses above us. Valparaiso rises from th.e water in the shape of an amphitheater, or like the grand stand of a ball ground. The streets rise in terraces, one above the other, so that the buildings at the top seem to hang out above and threaten to fall down upon those below. But see, there are cable cars climbing up and down the 112 CHILE. steep hills. It is by them we shall mount from one street to another, for the only level land in the city is a narrow stretch along the shore. Upon this level place is the business part of Valparaiso. It is all on made ground. The hills were dug down and the waters kept back by walls of stone and iron rails, in order that the tide might not eat out the land. Westepfromour boat upon stone wharves, and walk over streets as well paved as our streets at home. It is hard for us to believe we are in a South American city. The buildings are large andmuchlikethose of our cities. The stores have plate glass windows. We see German and English names over some of them, and we learn that Valparaiso has many Europeans who have come here to engage in trade. The people do not look much different from those of New York and Chicago. There are electric lights. We hear the boys cry the newspapers, and as we notice the signs of enterprise all about us we believe what has been told us, that the Chileans are among the most enterpris ing people of the South American continent. The country contains about three million inhabitants. Chileans. VALPARAISO. H3 They do not call themselves Chileans, but Chilenos (che- la'nos), and they pride themselves on being better and stronger than the people of the countries farther north. They are like them, however, in that they are the de scendants of the Spaniards and of the mixed race of Spaniards and Indians. The difference is that the Span iards who came to Chile were chiefly from the northern provinces of Spain, where the people are stronger and better than those of the south, and also that the Chilean Indians were the famed Araucanians, a much stronger and braver race than the tribes ruled by the Incas, with whom the Spaniards united in Ecuador and Peru. Street Scene, Valparaiso. The Chileans we see on the streets of Valparaiso are dressed just as we are. We hear many of them speak H4 CHILE. English, and as we look at our familiar surroundings we wonder whether Chile is, after all, much different from the United States. But stop. There comes a lady with a black shawl draped about her head, and behind her is a vegetable ped dler with his stock in panniers on the sides of a mule. There is a bread mule being dragged along by the baker, and a milk mule going down that side street. Get out of the way of that carriage with its high-stepping horses, and, as you do so, look out for the horse which has just come around the corner. Its rider is a man with a poncho and a broad-brimmed hat. He is probably a rich farmer in from the country. We shall see many of his kind later on. " A queer street car." ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA. 115 What a queer street car that is going by us! It has seats on top as well as inside. See that pretty woman on the rear platform. She is the conductor.' She is taking up the fares and making change from the money in her white apron pocket. There are women street car con ductors in all of the chief cities of Chile. The custom was introduced when Chile was at war with Peru and the men were all needed for soldiers. But we may as well leave Valparaiso. It has so many foreigners that we must go inland to see how the Chileans live and to learn about their country. There are railroads to the interior, and we decide to make our first journey on the Transandine line. XV. ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA BY RAIL. WE have already seen something of the railroads farther north which go from the Pacific to the, top of the Andes. The one upon which we are riding to-day will soon join the Atlantic and Pacific oceans together. It is the Transandine Railroad, going over the Andes from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires. Our car is a Pullman, and we can see well as we go. Leaving Valparaiso, the train skirts the edge of the harbor, passing through the rich suburb of Vina del Mar. How soft the air is, and how sweet the smell of the trees and grass after our long stay in the desert ! Morn ing-glories are blooming on the fences at the roadside, and that great bush over there is loaded with roses. Now we whiz by an orange grove, almost close enough to grab at the yellow balls peeping out of the leaves. Now we go by vineyards, and now we stop at a station, at which pears, u6 CHILE. Transandine Railroad. figs, and lemons are brought to the car windows for sale. How cheap everything is ! We can get a big bunch of grapes, or all the oranges we can eat, for a dime. Now the road leaves the coast, and we are climbing the hills. There is but little green except in the valleys. They are covered with cultivated fields, through which flow irrigating ditches supplied by the streams. See the men at work in the fields. There is one plow ing. He has two white oxen joined to the plow by a pole. The pole is tied to the yoke, which rests on the necks of the oxen just back of the horns, to which it is fast ened with skin ropes. At the next station we see oxen yoked the same way pulling huge carts loaded with grain. Notice the wheels ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA. 117 of the carts. They are twice as high as those of our carts, and the loads are so heavy that eight oxen are yoked in double file to each cart. How the wheels creak and screech on their way past the train ! The oxen are push ing their burden along by their heads. The method of yoking them is cruel indeed. An ox cannot move his head unless his fellow ox moves at the same time. A Load of Grain. The houses of the Chilean towns are very similar to those we saw on the coast of Peru. There are many huts in the fields, made of mud, with roofs of straw, thatch, or sheet iron. After we cross the coast range the farms are larger and the country is more thickly populated. We ride for some n8 CHILE. time through the irrigated valley of the Aconcagua river, with the mighty mountains rising above us. We are now climbing the second range of the Andes. As we go on, gradually rising, we pass orchards of apples and peaches, with rich, well-watered gardens lying high up in the mountains. The country grows wilder and wilder, and at last we are at the station where the road ends. We are now very near the frontier of Argentina and within a short distance of .the long Argentina Railroad, which crosses the pampas to Buenos Aires. We have not Uspallata Pass. ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA. 119 time now to make the whole journey, for we wish to go about through the southern part of the continent by the Strait of Magellan. So we shall merely ride over the mountains on mules, to look at the other end of the road, and then return to our travels in Chile. The railroad is not yet completed, but the distance between the two sec tions is so short that we can go there and back in less than three days. Wagon Road up the Andes. This road over the Andes is by the Uspallata Pass, which is 12,340 feet above the sea. It is a fairly good mountain road in the summer, but now, in the winter, it is often blocked up with deep snows. At times the snows are so heavy that all travel is stopped. The mails pile up at the two ends of the railroad, and the mail carriers going between them are sometimes lost in the storm. CARP. S. AM. — 8 120 CHILE. That is why the little stone huts which we pass now and then have been built. They have no windows. They look more like bake ovens than houses. They are for shelter for the passengers and postmen who are caught in the storms. Men sometimes have to live in them for days, waiting for the snows to melt in the mountains. There are one or two rude inns on the way, where we stop; the hot soup tastes good, for we are cold. The Andes at this point are wild in the extreme. One of the worst parts of the pass is called the Valley of Deso lation. Here the land is covered with volcanic rock, upon which nothing can grow. Now and then we see a gua- naco, a wild animal which looks somewhat like a llama, except that its fur is yellow spotted with white. We shall see more such farther south. Now a condor soars about over us. There it is between us and the sun, casting a shadow upon the snow. Condors when they are hungry are like vultures ; they will eat dead things, and we are wondering whether that mighty bird is not waiting to see us drop in our tracks. How pure the air is, and how thin! We fear we may have another attack of mountain sickness. We are, how- A Condor. ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA. 121 ever, more than a mile lower down at the summit of this pass than at the Galera tunnel, through which we crossed the Andes on the Oroya Railroad back of Lima, and our faintness soon passes off. The highest part of the Transandine Railroad, yet to be built, will include many tunnels. The cars will be taken up the steepest part of the mountain by a track like those which go up Pikes Peak and Mount Washington. The track will have three rails. In addition to the two which you usually see on a railroad there will be a third narrow rail with many rungs in it, like a ladder. Upon this a cog wheel attached to the car will move, and the little engine made for the purpose will be behind the train instead of in front of it. The cars will be pushed, not pulled, up the mountains. At about two miles above the sea there will be a tunnel through the mountains, and there will also be many snowsheds cut out of the solid rock, through which the trains will pass in order that they may not be stopped in the winter. The road will be of great good to South American travelers. We shall see this as we go by the old route around the south end of the continent to Buenos Aires. The voyage from Valparaiso by the Strait of Magellan takes from fourteen to sixteen days. When this road is finished passengers will be carried clear across the conti nent in twenty-nine hours. It will make the trip from Europe to the west coast of South America very much shorter, and travelers from Europe to Australia will come to Buenos Aires in about twenty days, then cross South America by rail, and take ship at Valparaiso, instead of making the long voyage around through the Strait of Magellan as they now do. On our journey over the road we have fine views of 122 CHILE. Aconcagua, the highest of the Andes. It is one of the fine mountain sights of the world. When the sky is clear it can be seen from Valparaiso rising in a great cone high above the others of the Chilean Andes, dwarfing all the peaks near it except Mount Tupungato (too - poon - ga'to), which is more than four miles in height. Aconcagua is more than 23,900 feet high, and as we look at its snowy top we long to climb it. If we should make the attempt, we should probably meet snowstorms, and we might be froz'en during the cold nights. Near the summit there are cliffs which are hard to scale, and at the top we should stand on a square plateau about two hundred feet wide, with great masses of fleecy clouds far below us, and the mountains stretching away to the east and to the south. On one side we could see the pampas of Argentina, and on the other, over the narrow band of green which is the country of Chile, ninety miles away, would be the shining, silvery waters of the Pacific. This journey, however, can be made only in the sum mer, and our guides will not allow us to make the attempt. We must be satisfied with the magnificent views we have Aconcagua. SANTIAGO. 123 had as we rode through the pass. So we remount our mules and slowly climb back down the hills to the railroad. Here we take the train for Los Andes, where we change cars to the line which goes down the central valley of Chile and brings us at last to Santiago. 0XK0 XVI. SANTIAGO, THE CAPITAL OF CHILE. SANTIAGO (san-ti-a'go) is the capital of Chile. It is almost as large as our national capital, and in many things like it. Washington is six hours distant from our chief seaport, New York. Santiago is about six hours by rail from Valparaiso, the chief seaport of Chile. Wash ington lies in a basin on the banks of the Potomac. San tiago is cut in two by the river Mapo'cho, and the basin upon which it is built is walled by the snowy Andes and by low mountains which rise one above another from grassy plains. We have our Capitol Hill. Santiago has its Santa Lucia (loo-se'a), a mass of volcanic rocks rising almost precipitously in the midst of the city to a height more than half that of the Washington Monument. Santa Lucia is perhaps the most picturesque hill of any city of the world. It has a base of a little more than an acre. It is composed of rocks enormous in size and piled together in curious shapes. There is earth mixed with the rocks, so that trees grow among them. Flowers and vines have been planted, and the hill has been made into a beautiful park. Its sides are covered with English ivy. Tall eucalyptus trees rise out of the crevices of the rocks from its base to its summit. It has wonderful ferns, dark 124 CHILE. caves, and beautiful grottoes in which there are waterfalls, making altogether what might be called a hanging garden away up there above the city, under the shadow of the Andes. There are winding driveways and footpaths which go round and round the hill to the summit. We walk up one Santa Lucia. of the paths to take a look over Santiago. It is early morning, and the sun is just rising up in the great blue dome of the sky. It has caught the tops of the Andes at the back of the city, and the snows upon them are shining like frosted silver incrusted with diamonds. The foothills in the shadow are like blue velvet, and we look at the plains away off in the distance, with their rich growth of green. SANTIAGO. 125 Our eyes now drop to the city below us. Red-tiled roofs with trees and bushes growing out of them extend about on all sides. Those are the roofs of the Chilean capital. The scene is not unlike that we saw from the top of our hotel in Lima. The houses are built in the same style. They are close to the streets, and consist of rooms built around small courts, or patios, in which are the gardens. Some of the Santiago houses are of vast size, although all are low, few being of more than two stories. ' The Alameda, the chief street of this South American' capital.1 See that wide avenue which cuts the city almost in halves. That is the Alameda, the chief street of this South American capital. It is twice as wide as Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. There are rows of tall poplar 126 CHILE. trees running through it from one end to the other, and along each side of the trees are stone aqueducts in which streams of mountain water are flowing. With our field glasses we see the statues of many Chil ean heroes under the trees, and at every few feet stone seats upon which men and women are sitting, enjoying the air. Boys are riding on bicycles along the paths in the center of the street, and at every few hundred feet there are two or three cows with their calves beside them. Each of the calves wears a muzzle. The cows are owned by women, who milk them from time to time and sell the milk warm from the cow to the people who are out taking the air. The cows are not tied, but are hobbled by ropes about their hind legs. Now turn your eyes a little more to the right. There is another wide strip of green, with a band of silver run ning through it. That is the river Mapocho, which flows through the eity. A little more to the left is the race course, which is thronged by thousands on Sunday after noons, when the chief races are held. The forest above it is Cousifio (co-u-sen'y°) Park, where the people drive in their carriages every afternoon. But let us go down from the hill and take a street car ride through the city. The seats on the roof of the car are the best for sight-seeing, and to ride there costs only one cent of our money per trip. Think of a street car ride for a cent, and that ride through Santiago ! We give our fare to the woman con ductor, and are soon whizzing along, as high up as the roofs of the one-story houses, through the suburbs and poorer parts of the town. Now we pass between the higher buildings of the business section. What fine stores they are ! They are as good as our stores at home. The show SANTIAGO. 127 windows have all sorts of beautiful goods, and there are several great arcades roofed with glass which have been cut through the business blocks from one side to the other. " Let us take a street car ride through the city." We go by the Moneda, or the mint. It is a great build ing which contains also the home of the president and most of the offices of the Chilean government. At the door there are soldiers with drawn swords in their hands. Later on we see that the president of Chile has a military guard of two hundred cavalry which goes with his carriage on all state occasions. The Chileans are fond of pomp and display. We meet policemen with swords at their sides on every street corner, and we shall see soldiers drilling in every city and town. Chile is a republic after the South American fashion, in 128 CHILE. which the chief families control the elections and hold most of the offices. In that building we are now passing the houses of Con gress meet, and those men who are going in are senators and deputies who sit there and make laws just as in our Congress at home. But here we are at the Plaza des Armes, where all the cars stop. This is the center of the Chilean capital. That big building over there is the cathedral, and the great " In that building the houses of Congress meet.' structure next door is the palace where the archbishop lives. The Roman Catholic religion is the chief religion of Chile, and the church has a great deal of property. Some of the best business blocks of Santiago belong to it, SANTIAGO. I29 and it has vast estates in the country, upon which fruit and wheat and other such things are raised for sale. Those ladies dressed all in black, with black shawls on their heads, are going to mass. See the little rugs which fhey have with them. They kneel upon them when they pray, for many of the churches have no seats, and the stone floors are cold. Later on we visit the schools. They are much like our schools at home, save that the girls and the boys are kept in different buildings, and that the children of the lower grades all study out loud. Chile has now a good public school system. There are schools in every city and vil lage, although four children out of every five are still kept at home. We find Santiago has a national university with a thousand students, and that there are also schools for the army and navy. Indeed, we are surprised at the intelligence of the Chil eans. They have been called the Yankees of South America, because they are so bright and enterprising and in other ways like us. Many people of the better classes speak French and English, some having been educated in Europe. In all the cities there are daily newspapers. We meet newsboys on almost every street corner, and visit large bookstores in the business parts of the city. At the post office we learn that millions of letters and newspapers go through the mails every year, and when we inquire we find that there are telegraph lines to all parts of the country, and that the prices for telegrams are much lower than we pay at home. There are electric lights and electric railroads in the principal Chilean cities. Telephones are to be found in all the large towns, and you can talk from Santiago to your friends in Valparaiso over the telephone, although it is distant six hours by rail. 130 CHILE. During our stay at the capital we are invited to visit the homes of some well-to-do Chileans. We are surprised at the size of their houses. They are of one or two stories, but many of them have forty large rooms, which are fur nished as expensively as the houses of our millionaires. In many homes we see fine paintings and statues, and in the suburbs we visit mansions with gardens about them, in which are lemon and orange trees and all kinds of beautiful flowers. But how about the poor? All of the Chileans cannot be rich. No, indeed ; they are not. There are poor people everywhere. We see them driving carts, and carrying goods on their backs through the streets. We shall find them living in mud huts in all parts of the country, and if we will again mount to the top of the street car we may ride through sections of Santiago which are filled with low one-story houses in which whole families live in one room. Many of the poor people sleep on the floor, and their food costs but a few cents a day. They are mostly of the mixed race of Spanish and Indians. They do the hard work of Chile, and we shall see much of them in our trips through the country. XVII. A VISIT TO A CHILEAN FARM. TO-DAY we start down the great central valley of Chile. This valley lies between the main range of the Andes and the mountains which border the coast. It is in places over a hundred miles wide, and as long as the distance from New York to Pittsburg. It is divided into vast estates, upon which all sorts of fruits and grains are grown, and where cattle and horses are grazed in droves of thousands. A VISIT TO A FARM. 131 There are few countries in the world where farms are so large as in Chile, or their owners so rich. We meet men who each own thousands of acres, and. see many estates which are worth more than a million dollars'. The wealthier farmers live like lords upon their estates or haciendas. Farming is profitable in Chile. The country produces every year more than twenty-eight million bushels of wheat, millions of gallons of wine, and the best horses and cattle on the west coast of South America. More than half of the people of Chile are engaged in farming, but only a few families own land. Most of thejarms are in this great central valley. They are irri- Hay Wagon. gated by the streams from the mountains, and are in most places cultivated like gardens. The fields are divided by canals, along which trees have been planted. Some of the estates have stone walls about them, and now and then 132 CHILE. we see a fence of wire or boards. We look in vain for barns and haystacks and farmhouses like our own. The only buildings are the vast one-story structures of the owners and the mud huts of the workmen. Oxen every where take the place of horses and mules. Huge carts drawn by oxen with yokes tied to their horns are used instead of farm wagons, and the plows are dragged through the furrows by the same clumsy beasts. Some of the more enterprising Chileans, how ever, have been in troducing modern machinery lately, and some of the rich farmers now have American plows, threshers, and reapers. We visit one of the farms, where we are the guests of the proprietor. He has given us rooms in his coun try home, whichhe occupies only in the summer time, when he lives on his country estate. What a lot of rooms there are ! There must be a hundred all told, and all on the ground floor. The buildings are of one story, Chilean Farmer. A VISIT TO A FARM. 133 with roofs of red tiles, mud walls, and brick floors. They surround little green courts and gardens. Groves of trees, some of which are one hundred feet high, are growing about them. There are many other guests at the time of our visit. There are about thirty children among them, and when "There are horses for all." we go out to ride there are horses for all, some of the lit tle ones being tied to the saddles of their ponies to keep them from falling, for the children here learn to ride when quite young. Every child of a rich farmer has its own pony, and we see boys and girls between the ages of four and fourteen gallop ing over the fields, holding their seats like men and women. 134 CHILE. The farm is so large that we might ride all day on the roads which go through the fields and not visit the whole. The fields are divided by fences of stone and also by canals, along which have been planted Lombardy poplars, which so shade the road that we do not feel the warm sun. We are delighted with the horses. The peons chase them on the gallop over the fields to show us how well they can run. They are fine riding animals. They are trained to a gait much like a pace, but so easy that we remain in our saddles for hours without fatigue. The horses are directed by pressing the reins against the sides of the neck, and not by pulling at the bit, and the lines are usually left loose. As a result the horses are seldom hard in the mouth. The saddles are much heavier than ours. Many of them are plated with silver, and ladies and gentlemen frequently use silver stirrups. A Chilean often cares more to have his horse well dressed than to be well dressed himself. His bridle bit is of silver, and his spurs are often of the same metal. The spurs used by the peons have rowels, or spiked wheels, as big around as a coffee cup. Some have wheels four inches in diameter, so that they cause great pain if the owner is cruel. Later on we go to the cattle. There are great herds of fine stock and flocks of fat sheep. The crops in the fields are growing luxuriantly, and the vineyards and orange orchards are loaded with fruits. We ask how such a place is managed, and are told that it has a major-domo, or chief, who has overseers under him and who organizes his laborers much like an army. Each overseer has so many men to take charge of, and he tells each man what to do. Books are kept showing just how much money is paid out and what is A VISIT TO A FARM. 135 "There are great herds of fine stock." done every day, so that the proprietor knows how well each field is paying. Indeed, the only poor things on the farm are the rotos, or farm workmen. The rotos are the laboring class of the country. They are somewhat like the Indians we saw in Peru and Bolivia. They come of the mixed race of Spaniards and Indians, inheriting the bravery of both. Peruvian and Bolivian Indians are afraid of their mas ters ; the Chilean' rotos are not. They carry knives, and the master who should strike one of them would probably be stabbed in return. It is said, however, that the rotos love their masters. They do not often leave the estates upon which they were born. Let us enter one of their huts. What a contrast to the luxurious city home of the owner! The walls are of mud bricks, and the roof is of thatch. The ground forms the CARP. S. AM. — 9 136 CHILE. floor, and in this case the bed of the family. Two boxes and a table are the only furniture. The hut has but one room, about fifteen feet square, and we are told that a family of eight lives in it. We wonder how people can exist in such quarters, and when we learn what they eat we wonder more. Their first meal usually consists of a double handful of toasted wheat flour mixed with water into a mush or baked as a cake. At noon they have a bowl of hot beans, and for "We wonder how people can exist in such quarters." supper, or dinner, as they call it, a second bowl of beans, to which is added some toasted meal. They seldom eat meat, preferring to spend their money for drink. As a result of this mode of living many of the roto children die. Only the strongest survive, but those who THE ARAUCANIANS. 1 37 grow up are so strong that four rotos can easily lift a piano on their heads and trot away with it. The rotos are very polite. When not drunk they are kind to their families. They are always ready to help one another in trouble. It is difficult to teach them habits of thrift, but it is hoped that through the common schools, which have recently been introduced into all parts of Chile, they will become educated and in time be a much better race. 0XK0 XVIII. SOUTHERN CHILE AND THE ARAUCANIANS. WE have left our friends in the country and are again on the train. We travel several hundred miles south ward through the great central valley. The snowy Andes are still on our left, with smoke rising here and there from a volcanic peak. We cross little rivers and travel through vast wheat fields cut up by ditches in which the clear water flows. What a lot of vineyards there are ! The hills are cov ered with low grapevines, now brown and leafless, for it is winter. See that drove of cattle at the side of the road, with the rotos on horseback driving the animals this way and that. They are rounding up, or counting, the stock and branding the young with red-hot irons. There are a thousand horses in the next field, and we shall pass other cattle and horses between the stations on our way farther south. What queer trees border the fields! They are lofty poplars planted along the irrigating ditches, all leaning 138 CHILE. north, blown so by the winds, which usually come from the south. They look like hedges, and form lines of green a hundred feet high running between the great fields. What is this broad stream we are crossing? It is the Biobio (be-o-be'o), the largest river of Chile. It rises in the Andes, not far from the Argentina boundary, and Bridge over the Biobio. flows across the country, emptying into the Bay of Con cepcion. How wide it is ! The steel bridge over which we cross is one of the finest in South America; it seems to us more than a mile long. There are woods on the banks of the Biobio, and from now on we shall frequently be in the forests. There are no more irrigating ditches, for the rains furnish plenty of water. THE ARAUCANIANS. 1 39 See the big trees on both sides of the railroad. We have at last come into the forest region of Chile, which extends from here to the Strait of Magellan. The wheat fields we are now passing have been cut out of the woods. How large they are ! They look like our fields in the new lands of the Northwest. There are stumps in them. The houses of the poor are log cabins. We see men at work cutting down the trees. Those long teams of oxen are dragging out lumber, their big, soft eyes looking sadly at us as they painfully pull the heavy loads along by their heads. Notice the people at the station. How different they seem from the rotos we saw in the north! They are dark-faced and fierce-looking. They are more warmly clad. The men wear ponchos, and many have on high boots covered with mud. Listen to that group at the corner. The men are talk ing German, and they do not look like Chileans. They are German settlers who have come here from Europe to farm the land, which the Chilean government sells to im migrants at a very low price. We shall see more Ger mans in the towns of this part of Chile. At Valdivia there are large tanneries, in which German workmen make fine leather for shipment to Hamburg and Russia. The trees about us have good bark for tanning, and Chile has so many cattle that hides are cheap. But who are the copper- colored people we meet every where ? They wear gorgeous ponchos woven in stripes of bright colors. The women have bare arms. Their dresses seem to be long blankets wrapped tightly over their chests and falling down to their feet. Some have square earrings of silver, half as big as a schoolbook and as thick as one of its covers. Others have silver plates on their bosoms, and 140 CHILE. bands of silver beads about their necks and their ankles. They look like Indians, but they are not dressed like our Indians at home. They are Indians. They are the descendants of the famed Araucanians, who inhabited Chile at the time the Spaniards first came. They were noted for their bravery, and it is said that more Spanish lives were lost in attempts "They are the descendants of the famed Araucanians." to conquer them than in all the wars for the conquests of Mexico and Peru. Their struggle with the Spaniards lasted more than a century, and ended by leaving to the Araucanians a great part of southern Chile. Since then some of this has been taken away year after year, and now the lands of the Araucanians are few. THE ARAUCANIANS. 141 Alcohol furnished by the whites has made them a nation of drunkards, and their bad habits are fast killing them off. They are now less in number than when they first fought the Spaniards, and they grow fewer and fewer each year. The Araucanians have different tribes, commanded by chiefs, although many of them live on farms of their own. We leave our train and visit one of their homes. The " We visit one of their homes." house is more like a shed than anything else. It contains but one room about twenty feet square, and it has no wall at all at the front, the open side being faced away from the wind. Skins are drawn over this side when the weather is cold. Take a look at the roof. It is made of skins and straw thatch. The walls are of logs, and the floor is of dirt. Let us go in. How black everything is ! You can hardly see about you for the dense smoke which comes from that fire in the middle of the hut. It is built in a 142 CHILE. hole in the ground, and the smoke finds its way out as it can. The squaw who bends over the fire is cooking the din ner. She has a pot on the coals, in which she is stewing mutton and vegetables cut up in small pieces. Now the meal is ready, and our host asks us to sit down and eat with him. We squat on the floor, and each takes a spoon and dips the stew out of the pot. The women of the family do not dine with us. The men always eat first, the Indian women standing behind them like servants and taking what is left. How hot the stew is ! It is full of red pepper, and it brings the tears to our eyes. But who is that woman who has come in during the meal and started another fire farther back in the hut ? That is our host's other wife. An Araucanian often has more than one wife, and in such cases each wife cooks for her self. There are two beds on the different sides of the room, curtained off with fur rugs or blankets. Each bed be longs to a wife, in which she sleeps with her own children about her. The Araucanians have queer notions of courtship. Marriage with them is largely a matter of bargain and sale. A father expects a lot of presents of cattle, sheep, or horses for his daughter, and until these are promised he will not consent to the marriage. After all is settled the young man comes some dark night to the house of his sweetheart and carries her off. The girl usually knows he is coming, and though she may want to be married, she pretends she does not. She has her friends with her, and when her lover and his friends break in, there is a fight between the men and the women. The men try to carry off the girl, and the girl and her friends use all their powers of resistance. At last the THE ARAUCANIANS. 143 groom drags the bride out. He swings her upon his horse, and jumping behind her, goes off on the gallop, making for the nearest woods. The girl's friends follow shrieking behind, but the groom of course soon distances them. Having reached the forest, he takes his lady love into its recesses, and there they spend a few days. After this short honeymoon they return to the house of the groom, and are then looked upon as married. The husband now takes his presents to the father of his wife, and the young couple set tle down. The women we meet seem to be happy. They are kind to their children and are fond of them. The children laugh and play just as our children do, and we laugh ourselves when we see the little papooses smiling at us out of the bundles in which they are tied. Almost as soon as one of these Indian babies is born it is wrapped in a skin or cloth and tied to a framework about a yard high and so wide that it will easily rest on the back of its mother. The mo ther carries it on her back by a strap which runs around her head, and when she is tired she takes off the strap and stands the papoose against a tree or the wall of her hut. She keeps it thus tied up until it is able to walk, carrying it with her wherever she goes. Some of the Indian women are skilled in weaving. They spin their own wool and weave their own clothes. ' The mother carries it on her back." 144 CHILE. They make beautiful blankets, weaving them in stripes of red, black, and blue. We spend a day moving about over their farms, and notice that the men at work in the fields are often of the mixed race. The Indians employ them to work for them rather than labor themselves. oJ»io XIX. IN THE COAL MINES OF CHILE. WE have left the land of the Araucanians and are now in the city of Concepcion. It is the chief port of southern Chile. It lies a few miles back from Arauco Bay, where we expect to get a ship for the Strait of Magellan. Concepcion is the greatest commercial city of southern Chile, and its people say it will soon be the chief seaport of the southern Pacific. It has two excellent harbors, Arauco Bay and Talcahuano (tal-ka-wah'no), which are near by, and it is so connected by railroads with all parts of the country that it has a great trade. The city has about fifty thousand people. It is a flat Spanish town with a plaza in the center, and streets which cross one another at right angles. This part of Chile is especially important because it contains some of the chief coal fields of the Pacific coast of South America. There is but little coal on the coast, and coal is brought here by the shipload from Australia and England.' The coal fields of Chile lie along the ocean shore for a distance of almost one hundred miles. The coal is not so good as that which is brought from abroad, and it must be sold at a lower price. The mines are so close to the sea, however, that they can be worked at a profit. COAL MINES. 145 Street Scene, Concepcion. It is for coal that the steamer for the Strait of Magellan has stopped in Arauco Bay. She now lies at anchor near Lota, with great barges of coal by her side. We see sooty-faced rotos standing in the barges and shoveling the coal on board. The ship is bound for Hamburg. She must force her way through the ocean, a distance of about five thousand miles, before she can get coal again. It takes a vast deal of fuel to make steam for such a big ship. This vessel uses more in one day than many families can consume in a year, and it will keep the rotos shoveling until night to load up. As we go on board the captain tells us we have time to visit one of the mines. We are tired, and at first think it 146 CHILE. hardly worth while, until the captain says that the coal beds of this region slope from the land down under the ocean, and that the coal which they are now shoveling on board comes from under the sea. This seems very strange. So we call a small boat which is near the ship, waiting for passengers, to take us on shore. We are soon landed at the entrance to one of the great est of the coal mines. The works above ground consist of Entrance to a Coal Mine. large buildings situated upon little islands connected with the coast by a railroad built upon piers. We tell the manager that we wish to visit his mine, and he kindly sends a guide with us. We are taken to a great shaft or well in which, by a steam engine and pulleys, two elevators are raising cars filled with coal and lowering empty cars to the bottom. We step upon the elevator that is just going down, and drop into darkness. Down, down, down we go, until at last rays of light shoot up from below us. Our speed grows slower, and we stop before a long tunnel with a line COAL MINES. 147 of electric lights extending on and on in front of us, grow ing less and less in size until they fade into stars in the distance. As we step out of the shaft a train of loaded cars comes thundering toward us, and we see that they are moved by an overhead trolley like the electric street cars of some of our cities. But there is another train going back. Can we get on ? Yes ; a special car with seats upon it has been attached to the train for us. We climb upon the platform, and speed away over the track at the rate of twenty miles an hour. Within a few moments we leave the shore, and are soon far out under the bed of the Pacific Ocean. We are moving along through a tunnel which has been cut out of the great sheet of coal which lies down here between the layers of rock. As we go on we pass open ings to the right and to the left. They are the entrances to tunnels, which have been made to cut out the coal. Think where we are! We are hundreds of feet down under the ocean, and big steamers are floating above us. And still it is dry. There is not a drop on our clothes or our hats, for the great beds of rock just over the cars are such that the water cannot get through. As we ride on, now and then a train passes. In the tunnels at the sides we see half-naked miners covered with dirt, digging out the coal and loading it upon cars. What is that boom, boom, boom which sounds as though the sea were breaking in through the rocks away at the right ? That is from the blasting done to get out the coal. There is no danger where we are now, but we must look out, for if such an explosion occurred near us it might blow us to pieces. What a great mine this is ! There are hundreds of men 148 CHILE. at work in it, and vast quantities of coal are taken out every day. We return to the shaft on a train with twenty-seven cars of coal in front of us, and another train arrives while we are waiting to ride to the top. Again we are back on the steamer. It is almost ready to sail. It has loaded nine hundred tons of coal in the last twenty-four hours. Its freight has been packed away " In the tunnels we see half-naked miners." during its calls at the various ports farther north, and within a few moments it will start on its long voyage to Europe around through the Strait of Magellan. It is a big ship, and it carries a vast deal of freight. Below deck are three thousand tons of nitrate of soda, two thousand barrels of liquid honey, and great rolls of sole leather, all going to Europe. We have wheat, wine, and COAL MINES. I49 flour for Punta Arenas, on the Strait of Magellan, and similar freight for Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Everything is carefully packed, for we are now going into some of the stormiest seas of the world. The ex treme southern end of the continent may be called the very home of the winds. About Cape Horn fierce winds blow all the year through. There are many storms farther north, and seamen are glad when they reach the Strait of Magellan, in which the waters are usually quiet. It is by the Strait of Magellan that we shall go, and our steamer will avoid some of the storms by traveling through the narrow channels which run in and out among the moun tainous islands along the west coast. This is the Smythes Channel route, the scenery of which is wonderfully grand. We are anxious to be off, and are glad when, as evening falls, there is a rattling of chains and the anchor is raised. We hear the thump, thump, thump of the engines, and as we go to bed we are moving out of the smooth waters of Arauco Bay into the ocean. We awake to find the ship rolling. We have to hold to our berths while we dress, and a lurch of the vessel often sends us against the walls of our rooms. We climb upstairs to the deck, and bracing ourselves against the rail look out over the sea. There are white- caps everywhere. The waves rise and fall in huge masses. They whip the ship, striking its sides with a noise like a cannon. Now a great wave dashes over the lower deck, and now a still higher one splashes over the top, flooding everything and making us run to our cabins. When we sit down at dinner there is a network of slats upon the table to hold the plates, cups, and other dishes, that a lurch of the ship may not send them into our laps. We lift our soup plates halfway to our mouths and balance 150 CHILE. them with the roll of the vessel, trying at the same time to get our spoons between our lips without spilling the soup. How few of the girls have come down to dinner! They are more subject to seasickness than the boys, and prefer to stay in bed in their cabins. Some of the boys are sea sick too, and even the bravest of us does not care quite so much for his food as he did upon land. A day or so later we have grown used to the motion and are all upon deck. We enjoy the changes which the rough sea and the storms bring every hour. Now we are shrouded in mist, and every few minutes the fog horn blows to warn other ships to keep out of our way. Now the fog lifts, and we see high waves rolling about on all sides. There is a break in the clouds, and away off to the east is a faint line of blue. That is the long, nar row island of Chiloe (che-lo-a') ; the mainland is much farther off. We are fortunate in securing a view, for in the winter in Chiloe the natives say it rains six days every week, and on the seventh the sky is much overcast. In the summer there are a few pleasant days, but even then the island is half shrouded in mist. There is more fog and snow as we sail on southward. The sea is still rough, and we cannot safely walk about the deck until we enter the Gulf of Pefias, from which we are to sail inward on our way through Smythes Channel. It is only four o'clock when we enter the gulf, but it is already quite dark. We are now so far south that in winter night begins very early, and the electric lights are already turned on. The ship moves very gently, and when we go to sleep we feel no more motion than when in our own beds at home. STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 15 1 XX. IN AND ABOUT THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. WE have been moving slowly all night, and awake to find the waves gone. We have left the open Pacific and are passing through the series of channels, about four hundred miles long, which winds in and out among the islands of western Patagonia and will bring us at last to the Strait of Magellan. The scenes about us are among the grandest of the world. There are mountains on all sides. We are sail ing amongst their tops and are in a land of clouds. The channel is more like a narrow river than a branch of the ocean. It carries us in and out among rocky, grass-clad islands. On our left, ragged mountains of curious shapes rise almost straight up from the water. Their sides near the shore are green, and we see they are matted with moss and evergreen trees. Higher up, the green is dusted with snow, and at the top there is ice. Some of the peaks are half hidden in vapor. Others, nearer our vessel, stand out bold and clear — great masses of dark-green velvet under a lavender sky. As we sail on the scenery changes. The mountains as sume curious shapes, and we imagine pictures in them such as you sometimes see in the clouds. There is one that looks like the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and there is an other which has a striking resemblance to the Sphinx. Now the green hills in front of us appear to be climbing over one another like a troop of giants playing leapfrog, and there farther on they rise upward in cathedrals and forts of green a thousand feet high. CARP. S. AM. — 10 152 CHILE. Now the sun comes out. It has penetrated that deep gorge in the mountains and turned the black water to sil ver. It catches the snow which is dusted over the green on the hills, and they are spangled with diamonds. It has caught the ice of that glacier and made it an immense lump of sapphire ice set in silvery snow. Now the clouds are settling down upon the channel and hiding the sun. See, there is a wall of them in front of it. We are sailing into a snowstorm. A half-hour later we shall sail out into the sun again. How the sky changes ! Now it is blue overhead, with fleecy white clouds scattered here and there through it. See those cloud masses nestling in the velvety laps of the hills and wrapping themselves about the snowy peaks as though to warm them. Now the clouds seem to rise from the water, making a wall across the channel as high as our ship. Now they come down from the top, and we sail out of the dry air into a mist so thick that we can almost wash our hands in it as we go through. Again we are out of the clouds. The air is clear. The sun is bathing the hills with its rays. The ferns, moss, and trees shine out in their green luxuriance, and the many cascades, some as big as your wrist and others no larger than your little finger, which fall down them, are threads and cords and ropes of silver. These waterfalls come from the glaciers and the moun tain snows. Is it not strange that moss and green trees can grow so luxuriantly amid such surroundings? Yes; but it is only on the highest peaks that it is all snow and ice. Those trees are evergreens, and they are so close' to gether that if we should land we might walk on their tops with snowshoes. A bed of moss, waist deep, grows STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 1 53 among them, and great ferns with leaves as long as your arms extend out and cover every bare, rocky spot. The glaciers which are found on the higher mountains extend down into the green, and now and then icebergs break off and fill up the channels. During some years this voyage is not possible, and, as it is, we make our way a part of the journey through fields of glacial ice. It is not like the ice of our rivers and lakes. It is as clear as crystal, and green rather than white. There is a little iceberg now in front of the ship. It is not bigger than a city lot, and it does not extend out of the water so high as the deck. It is beautifully green, and as the sun catches it it looks like a great emerald rock with a top of frosted silver. But the machinery is stopping! What is the matter? The captain tells us he is going to get some ice from that berg for the ship. The sailors are already bending over the rails. One of them has a long rope in his hands, with a running noose at its end. Now he gives it a throw. The coil flies out, and the noose catches on a projection of one corner of the iceberg. We have heard of lassoing cat tle, put we have never heard of lassoing an iceberg before. Is it not strange? Yes, but not such a bad way after all. The other end of the rope is fastened to a wheel on deck moved by our steam engine, and as the wheel turns the rope is rolled up and the iceberg dragged close to the ship. Now the steward and some of the sailors have taken one of the ship's boats and landed upon it. They are break ing off great lumps of ice with crowbars. They wrap chains about the ice blocks, and by means of a derrick the machinery of the steamer raises the blocks to the deck. Some of the blocks weigh many tons, and altogether we have got enough ice to last us for the rest of the voyage. 154 CHTLE. But what are those queer-looking boats which are mak ing out from the shore? They look like canoes, and each has a fire in its center, about which huddle brown-skinned, frowzy-headed men, women, and children, almost naked. That man who is paddling the front boat wears little more than a vest, and that boat behind contains several children who have on no clothes at all. ' Each has a fire in its center.' These people are some of the savages who live in these waters along the coast of western Patagonia. They are called Alacalufes (a-la-ka-loo'fes). They are not like the Indians we have in America. They usually live in their canoes, although they sometimes sleep upon land in little wigwams about as high as your waist. They make the wigwams by bending over the branches of small trees and STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 155 tying them together. They then build a fire in front, and crawl into their little houses for the night. They seldom sleep in the same place for more than a week at a time, for it is much easier to build a new house than to go back home if they have wandered very far off. The men have bows and arrows to defend themselves, The women, as a rule, do the fishing, using lines without Alacalufes. hooks. A little chunk of meat is tied to the end of the line, and when the fish has swallowed it the woman jerks it into her canoe. Their food consists of fish, mussels, and now and then a fox, a seal, or an otter. They are fond of whale meat, and if they can find a dead whale they will feast upon it for weeks. They do not seem to care to have the meat 156 CHILE. fresh, for they cut it in pieces and bury it, digging it up for food as long as it lasts. They are fond of tobacco and biscuits, and row about our ship, holding out their hands and calling out in shrill voices, "Galleta! Galleta! " " Tabaco ! Tabaco ! " the two Spanish words for cake and tobacco. As we look we wonder that they do not take cold. The hills on the shore are covered with snow, and we have pn our heaviest clothing. There is not enough cloth in the whole crowd below us to make a full suit for a four-year- old child. We pity the poor naked savages, and one of us goes to his cabin and gets out a pair of old trousers. He throws them down into one of the boats. See, that woman has grabbed them. She evidently does not know what they are for, as she is tying them around her neck, fastening the legs over the chest. Until white people came here these savages used no clothes at all. A thick coat of whale oil or seal oil was enough to keep out the cold. Now they sometimes wear such cast-off things as they can get from the steamers, but as a rule they go naked. The Alacalufes do not know the use of money. We try to buy some skins of them, and they sneer and draw back at the sight of our silver dollars and bank notes. They act differently as we show them some bright cloths and beads, and when the steward holds up a butcher knife one of the savages is glad to give him two skins in exchange. We ask them to come on, board, but they are afraid and draw back. They are not friendly to strangers, and would kill a white man if they could catch one alone. We see more savages on our way farther south. We cast anchor night after night, for it is too dangerous to travel by dark. The scenery grows grander and grander, STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 157 until at last we steam through a narrow channel the mouth of which seems to be blocked by a great island. As we come nearer we see that there is a wide waterway beyond, and the captain tells us the island is called Desola tion Island, and that we are at last in the Strait of Magellan. Strait of Magellan. Standing upon the deck as our ship turns to the east, we look back, and away off in the distance see massive rocks. They belong to Cape Pilar, at the entrance to the strait from the Pacific. In front of us the strait extends for a distance of more than three hundred miles, winding its way in and out between the mainland of Patagonia and the islands of the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, until it opens out into the Atlantic. Its scenery, however, is not so grand as that of Smythes Channel. In passing through the strait we are at times 158 CHILE. within a stone's throw of the shore. We sail under great mountains, and often in the distance see the high peaks of Tierra del Fuego, and of others of the islands of the archipelago. At the eastern end the channel is wider. The land is low, and the waters almost bound the horizon. The Strait of Magellan is one of the commercial high ways of the world. It was discovered in 1520 by a Span ish navigator, Ferdinand Magellan, and has been explored by other navigators from time to time. For many years, however, the regions about it were little known, and for a time some supposed that Tierra AT THE END OF THE CONTINENT. 1 59 del Fuego belonged to another continent which extended farther to the south. The strait is about three hundred and fifty miles long, and it varies in width from two to twenty-four miles. It has deep waters all the way through, but it winds about so that large sailing vessels, on account of the winds, prefer to go about stormy Cape Horn, although this takes them many hundred miles out of their way. It is different with steamers. They can move as well in the calms as when the wind blows. All steamers cross ing the Atlantic between Australia and Europe, and those going to and from the east and west coasts of South America, pass through the strait. There are indeed so many ships that a city has grown up there on the tail end of the continent to furnish them coal and other supplies. This city is about midway through the strait. It is called Punta Arenas, or Sandy Point, and here we shall stay for a time. XXI. AT THE END OF THE CONTINENT. PUNTA ARENAS is the southernmost city of the world. It is so far along on the other side of the globe that people who live near our Canadian border would have to travel a distance as great as the diameter of the earth to get to it. It is at the very end of the continent, a thousand miles nearer the south pole than Cape Town, and several thousand miles farther south than any city of Europe or Asia. It is a lonesome city. There is no town of any size within a thousand miles of it, and its supplies are brought to it by steamers. Great stores of coal and other goods i6o CHILE. are kept in Punta Arenas, for the ships passing through the strait often stop here to lay in a new stock of coal and other things for the long voyages which they have yet to make. Punta Arenas. We find English and German ships in the harbor, and there is a great steamer from New Zealand at anchor, with lighters beside her, and men loading and unloading freight. We step out of our boat upon a pier, and by a short walk are in the heart of the city. What a queer place it is! It consists of scattered buildings built on the sides of the hills surrounding the harbor. It has been cut out of the forest, and it reminds us of the frontier towns of our wooded Northwest. See the stumps in that vacant lot over there, and look at those trees on the hills at the back. Keep to the sidewalks. The AT THE END OF THE CONTINENT. 161 streets are a mass of black mud, with here and there a puddle of water. See that team of oxen dragging its heavy cart through the mud. The wheels have sunk in to their hubs, and the eyes of the oxen almost pop out as they try to pull them on by the yokes tied to their horns. What queer-looking houses ! Few of them are of more than one story, and all have iron roofs. Many of the walls are made of sheets of galvanized iron ; others are of logs or boards. It is only in the business parts of the city that there is stone or brick. None of the smaller buildings have chimneys. Those stovepipes sticking out of the windows, with elbows upturned, take their places. Police Station, Punta Arenas. What is that long, low structure of galvanized iron whose walls are wrinkled up like a washboard? There are soldiers in front, with swords at their sides. That is 1 62 CHILE. the police station. Those soldiers are under the governor of the territory of the Magellans, who lives in a big house on the other side of the square. He is appointed by the president of Chile, and has charge of this city, of the greater part of Tierra del Fuego, and of the thousands of islands of these far-away seas. But what kind of people live away down here at this tail end of creation? We can learn from the men we see standing in knots on the corners of the streets or pass ing us as we go through the city. The most of them have their trousers tucked into their boots. They are roughly dressed. Many have long beards, and there are some we would not like to meet after dark. They come from all parts of the world. They are talk ing together in German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian, and we often hear them speaking English and French. Here come two who are chatting in English. We hear the words "sheep" and "sheep farming." This is one of the chief sheep raising parts of South America, and the men in high boots are shepherds who have come to Punta Arenas to purchase supplies. Some live far north in Pata gonia, and others have come from the sheep farms in Tierra del Fuego, across the strait. As we go through the business part of the city we see that there are also many persons well dressed. The stores are quite large, and we learn that Punta Arenas has a big trade. Some of its houses are comfortable. It has a theater, churches, and schools, and we are surprised at the modern improvements which exist in this almost un known part of the globe. But we must not leave the Magellans without making a tour through the great archipelago south of the strait. It is composed of thousands of wooded islands which look AT THE END OF THE CONTINENT. 163 very small on the map. Many of them are small, but all together they contain as much land as Kansas, and sev eral are quite large, Tierra del Fuego proper being as large as Ohio. It lies just across the strait from Punta Arenas. There is a tugboat which goes there three times a week, and upon it we take passage for Port Venir (ve-neer'), a little town where the Chilean authorities On the island live. From here we make excursions by boat and land about this curious country. The island of Tierra del Fuego has a rim of mountains around the greater part of it. The mountains rise in many places almost precipitously from the water, and upon them great glaciers hang down, now and then breaking off and falling into the sea with a terrible noise. The scenery is even grander than that of the strait, but the waters are often rough, and we have to move about very slowly. At some places we see men washing the sands on the shore for gold. There are gold ledges in some parts of Tierra del Fuego which run far out into the sea. Here in time of storms the gold dust and nuggets are often thrown up on the beach. The miners go out as far as they can at low tide and gather up the sand, looking carefully over it for gold. Some of the gold is found in lumps as big as marrowfat peas. The precious metal, however, is difficult to get, and the men often work a long time in vain. But let us go inland and see something of the interior of Tierra del . Fuego. What a rich vegetation there is everywhere ! We thought it was all snow and ice. We imagined it must be the bleakest part of the globe. It is, however, far different. It is only on the tops of the mountains that the snow remains all the year round, and the glaciers which move down their slopes are often bedded in green. The mountain slopes, for a thousand 1 64 CHILE. feet up from the water, are covered with trees, ferns, and moss so thick that we can hardly crawl through them. How big the trees are! Some of the beeches are as tall as an eight-story building, and six feet in thickness. There are great magnolia trees and other trees somewhat like those of our central states. Nearly all of the trees are of the evergreen variety, and both trees and grass are green here the year round. Over the mountains there are great plains of rich grass, which in the summer are spotted with wild flowers. There are wild gooseberries and wild raspberries. Wild straw berries of large size are found in their season, and there are also wild grapes and wild celery. The sheep farmers raise cabbages, potatoes, turnips, and peas in their gar dens, and the pastures are so good that the sheep quickly grow fat. We make our way inland to visit the sheep farms. The country in places is swampy and boggy, and as we ride on our horses over the plains we go very slowly because of the rats. The ground rats are one of the great pests of this region. They burrow through the earth, filling it with holes like a prairie dog town. They eat so much grass that the shepherds are anxious to destroy them. They do this by driving herds of cattle over the plains, which trample the rats to death. We find that the sheep are kept in flocks of one and two thousand. Each flock is allotted a piece of land about as large as one of our townships, and it is watched by its own shepherd on horseback. The shepherd has dogs to help him. Most of the dogs are Scotch collies, which are very intelligent. They un derstand their masters almost as well as though they understood language. When the shepherd makes a AT THE END OF THE CONTINENT. 1 65 motion to the front, they run ahead ; if he motions to the rear, they come back ; and when he raises his hand in the air, they stop short. Other motions will send them to the right and left, and, in fact, as we see them driving the sheep this way and that in response to their master's orders, we think that human beings could not do better. The shepherds do not feed the sheep. It is their busi ness to see that they do not get lost, to keep off the pan thers and Indians, and to look out for the vultures. The sheep are so fat and heavy that when they fall down and roll over on their backs they cannot get up. They lie there kicking. The vultures of Tierra del Fuego are very cun ning birds, and when they see a sheep in this helpless con dition, they swoop down upon him and pick out his eyes. The poor sheep is now blind. The vultures keep picking at him, and he soon dies. They now quickly tear off the skin and pick every bit of meat from the bones. It is the shepherd's duty to be on hand when a sheep falls and to help him to his feet again, and also to get him out of the bogs if he should fall in. Another great danger is from the Indians. Tierra del Fuego contains some fierce savages called Onas, who wage war with the shepherds and kill them whenever they can. They steal in at night and drive off the sheep in flocks of five hundred or more, and when they get them far away in the forests they have a big feast. The Indian bands are not large, and of course they cannot eat so many sheep at a time. They kill what are left over, however, and bury them in some deep stream or in the ground, leaving them there until the chase of the shepherds is over, when they go back and eat the decayed flesh. Are not these curious Indians? Yes; and, strange to say, they are among the finest-looking of the Indians of our 166 CHILE. hemisphere. The men are usually about six feet tall, and the women are of about the same height as our women. The Onas have high cheekbones, flat noses, and dark eyes. Their hair is black and straight. The men singe their heads close at the crown, and the women let their hair grow so that it hangs down over their shoulders. Onas. The Ona Indians wear but little clothing, except loose skins which they wrap about their bodies. They live chiefly on the land, but do not like to stay more than a night or two in the same place, for they have an idea that the evil spirit is after them, and that they must move on or he will catch them. So they have no fixed homes. When they stop, they merely make a hole in the ground about three feet deep and weave branches over it. Here PATAGONIA. I67 at night they crawl in and cuddle together, with their dogs about them for warmth. The chief weapons of the Onas are bows and arrows, and they get their food by hunting and trapping. Before we leave Tierra del Fuego we visit another tribe of Indians, which has now become partially civilized. This tribe is the Yaghan (ya'gan), which is largely con fined to the southern part of Tierra del Fuego. Its peo ple are much like the Onas, except that they are smaller. They get their living from the sea rather than from the land. The Yaghans eat mollusks, fish, birds, and fungi. They cook birds by putting red-hot stones inside of them and then placing the birds on the coals. They have an odd way of roasting eggs. They break a hole in one end of the egg and stand it upright in the ashes before the fire, turning it round and round to make it cook evenly. They are very good hunters, and the women are excel lent fishers, being more fearless in the management of their boats and in swimming than the men. oXWo XXII. IN ARGENTINA— PATAGONIA. THIS morning we are again in Punta Arenas, ready to start up the eastern side of the continent. We shall make our way north through Patagonia, and for the next few weeks shall be traveling in Argentina. Argentina is one of the richest and most healthful countries of South America. It has a vast territory. It is greater than the combined areas of our States east of the Mississippi river. It is twelve times as large as Great CARP. S. AM. — II 1 68 ARGENTINA. Britain. It extends a long distance from north to south, having many different climates and products. In the north sugar cane, cocoanuts, and oranges grow ; in the central provinces are wheatfields and rich pastures; while in the far south the country is almost altogether a sandy desert, with a climate somewhat like that of southern California. The most of the country is flat. It is composed of great plains called pampas, upon which we may travel hundreds of miles without seeing a hill. There are only a few low mountain ranges. The most of the land is covered with pasture. On the western side of the coun try are the lofty Andes, which we saw in Chile. Only a small part of the country is settled. There are now many more people in the State of New York than in Argentina. The population, however, is rapidly increasing. Immigrants are coming in from Europe to work in the cities or to raise wheat, cattle, and sheep in the country. So many people have come that every third man is a foreigner. The most of the immigrants are from southern Europe. They have come chiefly from Italy and Spain, although there are a few English, Germans, and French. We shall find the people far different from those of the west coast. There are not so many Indians, and there are many Italians. Our first tour is to be over the rough lands of the far south. A coasting ship takes us from Punta Arenas out through the east end of the Strait of Magellan. We round Cape Virgin, on the northern side of the strait, and make our way along the coast, calling at the ports of Pata gonia, and now and then stopping for a short run into the interior. How bleak and bare everything is! The whole coun try seems to be nothing but sand. The only green spot PATAGONIA. 169 is where we stop at the mouth of the river Chubut to visit a colony of Welsh shepherds who have come there to live. They have irrigated the land along the river and have rich crops of wheat. Now we are again on the sea, going north, and now we sail up the deep but narrow harbor of Bahia Blanca (ba- he'a blan'ca), on the edge of a more fertile part of the country. Bahia Blanca is the chief port of Argentina on the Atlantic. Buenos Aires, it is true, is a much larger city, but it is on the Rio de la Plata, two hundred miles inland from the ocean. Bahia Blanca is right on the sea. It has a good harbor, and the town which has grown up here is now accessible to all parts of the country by railroad. A railroad has been built from it across the desert pampas to the foot of the Andes. It will soon go over the Andes through a low pass, and then crossing Chile will end at the port of Valdivia, on the Pacific. This will make a much shorter route from ocean to ocean than the Trans andine Railroad farther north. Let us take the new railroad and ride over the pampas to the foot of the Andes, stopping now and then on the way. What a curious region it is ! We go for miles see ing nothing but sand, with thorny, scrubby bushes grow ing up here and there. There is little grass — so little, indeed, that it takes from three to five acres to furnish food for one sheep. How wild everything is! There is not a fence to be seen. There are no barns, no roads, no farms, not any thing living. There is nothing but thorn bushes and sand. But stop. What are those yellow animals which are galloping away to the right? There must be fifty of them. They look like miniature camels. They are bigger I JO ARGENTINA. than sheep and more beautiful than llamas. See how queerly they run. Their gait is more like short jumps than a gallop. What are they? They are guanacos, animals of the same family as the llamas, only wild and not quite so large. They are often hunted, but are hard to shoot. Our guide tells us that they have a keen sense of smell and that they can scent a hunter a full mile away. Their flesh, he says, is very good eating. It tastes much like venison, and when roasted over the coals is delicious. The fur is of a tawny yellow color spotted with white, and three or four skins sewed together make a beautiful rug. Now we have left the guanacos far in the rear. We are again surrounded by nothing but thorn bushes and sand, with spots of white far off to the right. The white spots are moving. They are sheep, and that little brown thing which runs here and there through them is their shepherd on horseback. He is so far off that he looks like a pygmy, and his horse seems the size of a dog. But what are those gray birds swimming through the air over the sand ? They are coming toward us. That is a flock of ostriches with outstretched wings. They hold their heads far in front, and they fairly skim over the ground, their long legs kicking up a dust as they go. Some of them run very fast. There is one which has started up out of the bushes, and is racing the train. We are going at a speed of forty miles an hour. The ostrich keeps up with us for a few minutes and then drops behind. There are wild ostriches through this whole region, and had we time we might capture one. The proper way to catch ostriches is by means of the bolas. This is a long string of tough leather, with an iron ball as big as your fist at each end. The hunter rides after the ostriches Patagonia. 171 on horseback, and when he gets near them he throws the bolas so that the string wraps itself around the legs of the ostrich, which falls to the ground. Ostriches are not easy to catch. When hunted they often squat down and hide their heads in the sand. Many people who have not seen these birds in their homes think this foolish, but indeed on the desert there could be nothing more cunning. The feathers of the ostrich " Ostriches are not easy to catch." are of about the same color as the bushes of the pam pas, and when one of them squats down and hides his head in this way he looks for all the world like a bunch of gray bush, and the hunter may ride by him without seeing anything strange. The ostriches of the pampas are not those which furnish the feathers our mothers use in their bonnets. They are much smaller, and their feathers are coarser. These feathers are used to make feather dusters, and sometimes 172 ARGENTINA. for feather rugs. The rugs are made of the breasts of the young birds, and it would be fine, would it not, if we could each take a rug of ostrich breasts home? But here we are at a station. What a lonesome place for a town, and what a town ! The half-dozen houses are gray one-story structures built of sheet iron. The station itself is of iron, and that water tank there stands upon a framework of iron. The men on the platform are fierce-looking fellows with bright-colored ponchos over their shoulders. They all ' But here we are at a station.' carry knives, and we are told that they are gauchos, or cowboys, who herd the cattle and now and then work for the sheep farmers at shearing time. We shall see more of them as we go farther north. Now we are again out on the desert. We have left the cars for a time and are alone on plains as dry as the coast PATAGONIA. 173 of Peru. Our cheeks burn and our lips crack under the hot sun in the clear, thirsty air. What is that cloud coming up? That surely is the sign of a storm. Hear the wind. It is blowing with the force of a blizzard and driving the cloud toward us. Yes, this is a storm, but not a rainstorm. That cloud is now between us and the sun. The sun is a great round red ball instead of the fiery white furnace it was a moment ago. The cloud is not vapor. It is dust and sand. We are in the midst of one of the sand storms of the pampas. Our guide drags us down into a hole he finds in the desert, and draws our blankets over the top. Soon the storm is upon us. The sand comes down like fine hail. It sifts through the blankets, and we close our eyes. Now it is over, and we find we have a heavy load to raise when we push back the blankets. How queer we all look ! We thought we were white, but the sand which has drifted through the blankets has turned us all brown. Our nostrils, ears, and mouths are filled with dust, and our clothes are covered with sand. Such storms are common on the pampas of Patagonia. The dust comes in great clouds, and in the cities it covers the houses. It is as fine as flour, and closed doors and windows will not protect a house from it. It creeps through every crack and crevice, and covers everything with dust. Such a storm is much like a thunderstorm at home. The dust goes with the wind, and it is often fol lowed by a drenching rain. This wets the dust in the air, and for a time it really rains mud. If the rain does not last long the houses are covered with mud, and it is only when the rain is heavy that they are scoured clean. These storms sometimes stop the railroad trains, so that it takes dust plows and men to clear off the track. 1 74 ARGENTINA. XXIII. IN ARGENTINA— LIFE ON THE PAMPAS. ALONG ride by train has brought us back to Bahia Blanca. Here we again take the railroad, and are soon traveling through some of the great pasture lands of the world. Some parts of the country are fenced with barbed wire, but the most of it is just as nature made it — vast pampas which extend on and on until they lose themselves in the sky. Now we see a flock of two thousand sheep browsing on the rich grass. Their white wool shines out among the dark-green bushes. We hear the shrill baa, baa, baa, of the lambs and the coarser voices of the old sheep as we go by. Over there on the horizon is a drove of horses, mere brown specks against the blue sky, and between us and them a long train of huge carts, each hauled by eight oxen, is dragging its weary way over the plain. Those carts are filled with wool and hides, and the men who are walking beside them are driving the loads to the station. In these pastures is found the chief wealth of Argen tina. We might travel thousands of miles back and forth over the country and, with the exception of the rude huts of the herdsmen and now and then the larger buildings of some rich farmer, we should see little else than great flocks of sheep and droves of cattle and horses. Argentina has tens of millions of sheep. Sheep raising is by far its most important industry. It has indeed so many sheep that if they were all divided equally each man, woman, and child in the country would have at least LIFE ON THE PAMPAS. 175 •' — vast pampas which extend on and on until they lose themselves in the sky." twenty-five. The sheep are kept in large flocks and are watched by shepherds on horseback. They feed out of doors the year round, for there is good grass here in all seasons. We see neither barns nor haystacks as we ride over the pampas. The inhabitants, as a rule, do not raise hay or corn for their stock. It is only necessary to let the ani mals graze, to protect the sheep from the vultures, and to give them a bit of salt now and then. The sheep are shorn once every year. The wool is cut off and tied up in bales- much as we bale cotton. It usu ally goes first to Buenos Aires, where it is transferred to the steamers and sent across the Atlantic to Europe. Very few sheep are sold here for mutton. They are so plentiful that there is no great demand for their meat, and in the cities you can buy chops for four cents a pound. Within a few years, however, factories have been built to freeze mutton for shipment to Europe, where it will sell for from three to five times as much. In these factories 176 ARGENTINA. the sheep are killed and dressed just as they are for our markets. They are then hung up in rooms which by cer tain chemical processes are made so cold that the meat soon freezes stiff. In this state it will keep fresh. It is now wrapped up in white cloths and carried to the refrig erators of the steamers which take it to Europe. As soon as it lands there it is thawed out and placed on the butchers' counters for sale. It then looks just like freshly killed mutton, and indeed it is said that when cooked it tastes like fresh mutton. But let us leave the train and ride on horseback over the pampas. Here we are at the home of a shepherd. What a rude hut it is! Its walls are poles covered with mud, and its roof is straw thatch. We have to stoop as we enter the door, and we look about in vain for chairs for our party. The hut is scantily furnished. Much of the cooking is done on the ground outside. The oven is that round mound of mud which looks like a beehive. The shepherd is an Italian. He lives with his little family all alone here, away out on the plain. He spends his day riding about among the sheep, and at night drives them into that corral hear the hut. He works for a rich farmer who owns thousands of acres of land and more than one hundred thousand sheep. The shepherd tells us that the estate, or estancia, is so large that we might ride all day in one direction and not come to its end. We learn later on that much of the land of Argentina is in large tracts. Land is not sold by the acre, but by the square league, which contains more than six thousand acres. But suppose we go farther on over the pampas. We gallop for miles, now riding where the turf is soft, fresh, and green, and now where the grass is gray, dead, and coarse. LIFE ON THE PAMPAS. 177 This is the natural grass of the pampas. The green turf has been pastured year after year. When so used the coarse grass disappears after a time, and a more tender and a richer grass springs up. But see that smoke away off to the right. The flames are rolling up from the earth, and the dense white smoke is blowing toward us. Is that a prairie fire down here on the pampas? Don't be alarmed. There is no danger. " Now they have caught one with a lasso." The men who have lighted the fire have burned a strip around their fields so that it will not go beyond them. They are burning off the coarse grass and thorn bushes. After such a burning a more tender vegetation springs up. The owners say it makes the land better to burn off the grass once every few years. But we have now left the sheep farm and are passing 178 ARGENTINA. through a large estate devoted to stock raising. We might ride eighty miles in a straight line and not get across it. It has great droves of cattle, and we pass herds of thousands of horses. There is one now where they are branding the animals. They have driven the horses into an inclosure fenced round by stakes. Now they have caught one with a lasso. See, they are driving him about in a circle. Now he is tired, and they pull him down to the ground. One man sits on his head, and another holds him tight by a rope fastened about his front leg, while a third seizes a red-hot iron from a fire near by and burns a mark on his side. That brand is the brand of the owner, and by it he can claim the horse if it gets lost. Drying Horse Hides. In that inclosure farther over, they are killing horses and skinning them. There are hundreds of fresh horse hides tied to stakes out there in the sun. They are stretched out to dry. In Argentina horses are raised largely for LIFE ON THE PAMPAS. 179 their hides. The animals are so cheap that you can buy one for a very few dollars. It is not uncommon here for a man to give a horse to his friend. Even the poor natives own one or more horses. Indeed, it is said that a beggar sometimes follows his trade going from one farm to another rid ing upon his own horse, so that there real ly is a country where beggars go on horse back. But look at those strange men who are branding the horses. They are dark-faced, and they seem to be very fierce. What a queer dress they have ! They do not wear trousers, but have blankets wrapped around their waists, the ends being tucked through between the legs and fastened to their belts. See, there is one standing at the side looking on. He has white drawers which extend down below his blanket and are edged with lace. Many of the others wear slouch hats. Each carries a whip, and all have knives in their belts. Those are the gauchos, or, as we might call them, the cowboys of the pampas. They are the descendants of the Spaniards and Indians. They act as the herdsmen of the pampas. They do not like steady work, except A Gaueho. i8o ARGENTINA. such as can be done upon horseback, and they are always ready to ride over the plains to watch or drive cattle. They are very good men when they are sober, but when drunk are by no means backward in using their knives. They are men of no education, and are not very civilized. Gaueho Hut. We enter one of their houses as we pass by on our ride over the pampas. We are in a mud hut fifteen feet square and so low that we have to stoop down to come through the door. The floor is of earth. Those dry bullock skulls scattered about are the seats, and a rude table, a box, and a chair comprise the rest of the furniture. The cooking is done upon a fire outside the door. The food is usually beef, and it is roasted upon a spit over the coals. As the meat cooks, the gaucho's wife bastes it with the juice, which she catches in a pan as it falls. After the meat is done it is cut off in large slices, being LIFE ON THE PAMPAS. 181 usually eaten without plates or forks. Each one at the meal takes a slice in his hand. He puts one end of it between his teeth, and pulling out the slice as far as he can, he draws his knife across it within a sixteenth of an inch of his nose. When his first bite is chewed up he takes another in the same way, so that he really has no need of a fork. A favorite dish is carne concuero (car'na con-kwa'ro), or meat cooked in the skin. The meat is cut from the flesh of the animal, with the skin upon it. It is wrapped up tightly, so that the skin keeps in the juices when it is roasted over the coals. We try it ourselves and like it. m Cowboys at Breakfast. 1 82 ARGENTINA. XXIV. IN THE GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS OF SOUTH AMERICA. WE shall travel to-day through some of the chief food lands of the world. Argentina has many different industries. It grows almost all kinds of crops, and we can describe only a few of them. We pass cattle and horses on our way back to the railroad, and see more sheep as we go on to the capital, Buenos Aires. Here we change cars for the north, and ride for two days through the rich lands along the Parana river. We travel a long time by train through wheatfields and pas tures. Every day the weather grows warmer, and at last we come into a land where there are oranges and lemons, and other tropical fruits. We are now in the province of Tucuman, in the northern part of the republic. How different it is from the desert where we traveled after we left Punta Arenas ! All nature is green, for the soil is rich and there is plenty of rain. We pass groves of tall palm trees, their green fanlike leaves rustling in the wind. We visit sugar plantations where gangs of men and women are cutting the cane. They chop it off close to the ground, and load it on ox carts to be hauled to the factory. We follow a cart and watch the cane stalks as they are thrown between steel rollers which squeeze out the juice, and farther on we see the juice boiled down into sugar. We are now surrounded by mountains. There are streams everywhere. Some are almost dry now, for it is winter. In summer the rain comes down in great sheets and turns the streams to torrents. We can see how they GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS. 183 " Gangs of men and women are cutting the cane.' have cut deep gorges here and there through the hills. They often flood large tracts of land. We see more hills as we leave Tucuman, going west ward and southward through Argentina. The country is rolling. We are in the foothills of the Andes. There are forests of fine woods, and farther south we enter a land of great vineyards. See how the vines cover the hills. They extend on and on for miles. The western part of Argentina is a rich wine raising country. Trainloads of grapes are shipped from here to Buenos Aires and to other parts of the republic. When the grapes are ripe, men, women, and children walk through the vineyards, gathering them in baskets and carrying them to the wine presses. CARP. S. AM. — 12 1 84 ARGENTINA. Look up at the mountains to the west. Those are the snowcapped Andes. This town we are coming into now is the little city of Mendoza, and that snowy peak just beyond is Aconcagua, which we saw in Chile. Mendoza is a station on the Transandine Railroad, and that iron C'^fe^W**' ¦''¦' 'We enter a land of great vineyards. track which climbs up the mountains is the eastern part of the line which is to stretch from ocean to ocean, and over the western part of which we had such a pleasant journey in Chile some weeks ago. There is a good railroad from here to Buenos Aires, and we can, in fact, travel by railroad to almost any part of the republic. We decide to go back to the wheat lands by the way of Cor'dova, and stop there for a few hours on the way. GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS. 1 85 Have you ever heard of Cordova? It is a town well known in the history of South America. It was for two hundred years one of the chief centers of education and culture on this continent, and it had a university seven years before our Pilgrim fathers landed on Plymouth Rock. Cordova has a large university now. It is also a business center, so that a stay in it will give us some idea of a small city in Argentina. We take a carriage at the station and drive to the plaza. Cordova is much like the cities of Chile in that it is laid out in square blocks, with its streets crossing one another at right angles. The houses are almost all of one story. They are painted in the brightest of colors, and nearly all have iron bars over their windows, making us think of a jail. Back of these bars we see women and girls standing or sitting. It seems to us as though the girls were caged in. This is so to a certain extent in all towns in Argentina. Young women and girls seldom go alone on the street. They are not allowed to associate with young men or boys until they are married, and a young man who should stop at a window and chat would be told he had better move on. We drive on through the wide Avenida General Paz, admiring the statues at its ends, and then out among the shabby huts of the suburbs, where the poor people live. Here all is dirty and squalid, but the sky is bright blue, and the gorgeous sunlight has given Cordova an atmo sphere like that of the Orient. Its outskirts remind trav elers of Cairo, and the Moorish architecture of the churches and the better class houses is like that of southern Spain. Now we are again in the city. What^queer names the streets have ! Some are taken from the noted days of the 1 86 ARGENTINA. history of Argentina. Here is one called Twenty-fifth of May Street. We turn the corner and go into the street of the Eighteenth of July, and wonder if we shall not find farther on a street named " Week after Next." We stop at the market. It is in a hollow square sur rounded by rose-colored one-story buildings containing the meat stalls. The red beef and mutton hang down from ' We stop at the market. hooks under dirty white awnings. There are no scales. Those women with the black shawls around their heads, who are buying, pay for the meat by the chunk. The market court is filled with carts which have come in from the farms. On the ground sit dark-faced women with vegetables about them, which they sell by the pile. GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS. I87 What is that squealing outside the market? It sounds like a pig in the hands of a butcher. They surely cannot kill hogs here in the midst of the city. It is only the creaking of a farm cart which is bringing wheat to the market. There it comes through the door. It has wheels eight feet in height, with hubs as big around as your waist, and an axle as thick as a telegraph pole. " It has wheels eight feet in height." The cart has an arched cover of reeds over its bed. The skins which have been sewed to the top are put there to keep the rain off the wheat. Such farm carts take the place of farm wagons throughout Argentina. They look very rude, but each cart will hold several tons — so much, indeed, that teams of twelve oxen are often hitched to one cart. The owner of the cart is that dark-faced man in the poncho, and his wife is the woman in the calico dress who is now climbing out. But let us leave Cordova and ride on the railroad into the wheat lands. We reach them within a few hours 1 88 ARGENTINA. after leaving the city. The best wheat region of Argen tina lies in the Parana basin, within a hundred miles of both banks of the river, for the soil which it has brought down from the uplands is exceedingly rich. The wheat lands are all together so large that if they could be put into one block they would make a wheatfield five times the size of New York, or six times that of Ohio. This tract in good seasons produces far more wheat than the people can use, and the wheat exports are sometimes so large that they compete with our wheat in the markets of Europe, and as a result we receive much lower prices. Our farmers, indeed, might have to stop exporting wheat did not Argentina have many droughts, when the wheat will not grow, and also in good seasons terrible in vasions of locusts which sometimes eat up the crops. Locusts and Their Eggs. The locusts come down in swarms of millions from the warm lands of southern Brazil. There are so many of them at times that they shut out the sunlight like a storm cloud. They alight on everything green and eat up all as they go. They eat the leaves of the trees and also the fruit. They are especially fond of green wheat. A swarm of them will chew up a wheatfield in a night, and GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS. 1 89 when they come in vast numbers, as they sometimes do year after year, the crops of the farmers are ruined. They lay their eggs in the holes in the ground, and these hatch out thousands more. The people never know when they are coming, and plant on and on, hoping they may be able to harvest their crops. We pity the farmers as we watch them at work. It is spring, and they are plowing the fields. We ride for hours through vast tracts of brown soil upon which dark-faced men are guiding their oxen this way and that through the furrows. Here one is sowing the seed, scattering it by hand over the land, and in the next field oxen are drag ging harrows and brush over the clods to cover the grain. Now we are passing farms where the wheat has been sown for some time. As far as we can see there is nothing but the emerald green of the fresh sprouting grain. A little later on, as harvest time comes, this vast sea of emerald will change to a billowy ocean of gold. There will be wheat on all sides, and the yellow waves will roll on and on until at last they lose themselves in the blue sky. Then there will be reapers and mowers moving over the fields, some drawn by horses, some by oxen, cutting the grain. There will be steam thrashers puffing away as they shell the wheat out, and there will be great ox carts, like those we saw in the markets of Cordova, with teams of eight and twelve oxen hauling the great loads of bags to the train. At that time, were we here, we might find it very slow traveling. There is so much wheat that all the freight cars of the country are needed to carry it to Rosario, the chief port of the Parana, and to Buenos Aires for ship ment to Europe. The tracks are so crowded with wheat cars that the passenger trains are sometimes kept back to 190 ARGENTINA. let them go by. We should then find stacks of bags awaiting shipment at the stations, many of the stacks being covered with canvas to protect the wheat from the rain. Why do not the farmers store the wheat in barns ? We can easily see as we ride on and on through the fields. There are no barns anywhere! No feed is stored, and the stock is seldom kept under cover. Even the work ing horses and oxen are turned out to graze. There are " There will be steam thrashers puffing away." no farm buildings except the little mud huts thatched with straw in which the small farmers live. The huts are so small that there is no place in them for storing wheat. The result is that the grain is sold as soon as it is thrashed, and the farmer must take what he can get. Most of the grain is shipped to Europe soon after har vest. This is along in January and February, in the mid dle of our winter. There is so much wheat, however, that GREAT FRUIT AND BREAD LANDS. 191 some is exported all the year round. We can see how it is handled by watching the loading of steamers at Rosario. Rosario is one of the chief wheat ports of Argentina. It is situated on the south bank of the Parana river, about three hundred miles by water from Buenos Aires. It is of about the size of Indianapolis. It is built right on the banks of the river, which is here so deep that great ocean steam ers can sail through the Rio de la Plata and the Parana up to it. Rosario is built upon a bluff so high that it is above the masts of the steam ers on the water be low. All along, a little back of the edge of the bluff, warehouses of gray galvanized iron have been constructed. In these the wheat is stored as it is brought from the fields. Loading a Vessel, Rosario. Now, in front of each warehouse, there is a long chute, or trough, made of wood or iron, extending down to the water. These troughs are in sections, so that they can be shortened or lengthened at will, and so that when con- 192 ARGENTINA. nect'ed they make a continuous chute running from the bluff right into the hold of the steamer. The bags of wheat are carried by men from the ware houses and thrown into the chute. Gravity makes them descend, and they bounce up and down as they fly into the steamer, making us think of an army of gigantic yellow mice galloping down into the hold. At some places the railroad tracks run close to the bluff, so that the wheat bags can be taken from the cars direct to the chutes. <*»