smssss :¦ jess ghMe s. osborn [¦'. -. ...;'; "I give thtfe &mks fol' the foufiflixgjifay College In'tM^CflofiyV - iLUBis^isEr • Gift of the HONORABLE HIRAM BINGHAM YALE 1898 THE ANDEAN LAND to H Q wEh THE ANDEAN LAND (SOUTH AMERICA) 0 BV CHASE S. OSBORN MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN WITH OVER FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS AND FOUR MAPS IN TWO VOLUMES Vol. I. CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1909 Copyright A. C. McClurg & Co. 1909 Published May 15, 1909 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England All rights reserved THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. THE AUTHOR AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBES THIS WORK TO HIS Witt AND TO HIS ChtlSren FOREWORD IF the reader will extract from this volume as much information as the author obtained in writing it, the work of both will have been justified. The literature in English upon South America is scant compared with the magni tude and importance of the subject. Since the days of Robertson and Stevenson there has been a dearth of books upon South America until the last decade. Perhaps Prescott's charming classic, the " Conquest of Peru," which was published in the time intervening, was compensation enough for the quiescent state of all other writers. Within the last decade there has been a recrudescence of interest in South American countries. Even touring agents and travelling people, both commercial and otherwise, are awaking to the fact that there are other Rivieras, that the Patagonian channel rivals viii FOREWORD the Norse coast, and that there is a charm of nature and newness in South America quite equalling in attractiveness the ancient monu ments of Egypt. Nowhere are there wilder men than in the Amazonian jungles ; not even in the Himalayas are there more majestic peaks, or so many, as in the Andean Cordil leras ; Africa presents no greater range for zoologist or botanist and is not so accessible. If one seeks rest, adventure, or the exploitation of new regions, he can find all in South America. This volume undertakes in simple manner to tell some things of South America and the people that vitalize its thirteen countries, and to give routes of travel and such suggestions as the author found valuable in travelling in South America from Panama to Patagonia and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Another might have done this work better and sup plied more, but no one could have addressed himself to the task more willingly or found more happiness in the work. It is pleasant to know that there are such new and wide areas wherein the growing population of the earth can be sustained and FOREWORD ix developed to still higher achievement along lines both material and ethical. A better Spain and a superior people of Spanish tongue are building anew in South America. Who knows but that their unique temperamental qualities, combining imagery with persistence, mental with bodily vigor, chivalry with commercial instinct and a higher conception of morals, will not make a more indelible impression upon the history of the earth than Old Spain made? We shall regard them with kindness and sympathy, aside from which every nation must work out its own destiny, succeeding in com parison with others just as its sustained vigor, economy, wisdom, and morals compare. If the author should take space to acknowl edge all of the kindnesses he has received from generous people all over the earth, these pages would have to be doubled. C. S. O. Sault Ste. Marie February i, 1909 Page CONTENTS Volume I CHAPTER I Fellow Passengers The Voyage — Captain Ohls — Samuel Brown Professor Brewster — Mr. Rankin — Riley Sims — Miss Browning — Miss Dark — Furbay's Story of Burr — Stories of Sea and Land — Games on Shipboard — Jones, of Tennessee .... I CHAPTER II Matters Brazilian Brazil — The Coffee Industry — Yerba Mate — The Monetary System — New Quai at Rio — Care less Immigration Regulation — Bahia — A Man trap Sewer — Street Car Etiquette — The Race Problem and Illiteracy — Rio de Janeiro — Rua Ouvidor — Avenida Central — Beautiful Rio Har bor — Corcovado — Mr. Slater — Mr. Shalders — Santos — A Shipping War — Baby Wheel — Conditions of Life in the United States the Best on Earth 25 xii CONTENTS CHAPTER III The Argentine and Beyond Page The Argentine — The Locust Plague — Dearth of Rainfall — Undesirables go to South America — Area and Forests — Rio de la Plata — Shooting the Martinetta — Buenos Ayres — Great La Prensa — Palermo Park — Patagonia's Passing — The Patagonians — The Tierra del Fuegians — Uruguay — Firm Financial Basis — A Banquet in Montevideo — River Plate Competition with American Wheat — British Buyers assert our Inspection is Bad — Nicholas Mihanovich — Pisciculture in Argentina — Fish Eggs from the United States — The Guanaco 52 CHAPTER IV Making for the Horn .Star-gazing at Sea — The Southern Heavens — A Comparison of Prominent Northern and Southern Stars — The Work of Mills Observatory, Univer sity of California, in Chile — Courteous Treatment of Scientists in Chile — Harvard Astronomical Work in Peru — Leaping Porpoises — Speaking the Bark Francis Fisher — The Huge Man-eating Albatross — Battle between a Swordfish and a Whale — The Norse Whaler Lange — Modern Whaling in the Antarctic Ocean — "The Rose of the River Plate " 86 CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER V The Falkland Islands Senator Rowen, American Consul — Port Stanley — AGE Sheep Raising the Sole Industry — -Government Bounty for Killing Wild Geese — Wild Cattle — Remarkable Tussac — The Falklands under Spanish, French, American, and English Flags — A Half-completed Naval Base — English Colonial Paternalism — Prosperous Colonial Savings Bank — Sheep Lice Laws — Geography and History of the Falklands — Flora, Fauna, Geology, and Topography — The Wild Sea between the Falk lands and the Straits of Magellan 102 CHAPTER VI The Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn The Straits of Magellan — Wild Writhing Channels — An Unknown Region — Mount Sarmiento — Darwin's Description — Cape Virgins ¦ — Cape Pillar — The Evangelistas — Punta Arenas — Originally a Penal Colony — Tierra del Fuego — Indians of the Land of Fire — • Worst Weather in the Inhabited World — Bravery of the Pata gonians — The Patagonian Channel — Cape Horn — A Storm at the Tag End of the World 144 CHAPTER VII Trade with South America American Consular Service — Trade with South America — W. R. Grace & Co. — Careless Ship- xiv CONTENTS Page ments — Tricky Germans — A Startling Trade Letter — Juan F. Fowler — Letter in Relation to a South American Steamship Subsidy . . 168 CHAPTER VIII Chile Uniformity of Climate — Political Parties and their Aims — President Montt — General Conditions Improving — How Strikes are Handled by the Government — The Balmaceda Revolution — Financial and Business Situation — Adequate Public Revenues — The Press — Development Generally Slow in South America .... 190 CHAPTER IX The Great Earthquake at Valparaiso Valparaiso — Situation of the City — The Great Earthquake — Destruction of Mendoza in 1861 — Earthquakes at Caracas and Callao — Thrilling Account of the Valparaiso Horror Written on the Spot by an Eyewitness 208 CHAPTER X Santiago and the Chilenos Santiago de Chile — Santa Lucia — Don Benjamin Vicuna MacKenna — Microscopic Baskets — Queer Shop Signs — Women Street Car Con ductors — A Pessimistic American — Hedgehog of the Sea — The South American Evolving a Type — American Women as Wives of Diplo mats — Prominent Americans in Santiago — CONTENTS xv Page General Kilpatrick's Fascinating Widow — Courtesy, Bravery, and Honesty of Chilenos — Arturo Prat, a Hero — Suicide of an Entire Army at Arica — Juan Fernandez, where Defoe Ma rooned Robinson Crusoe 249 CHAPTER XI Social Customs and Natural History Social Conditions — Church and State — A Ban on Bull Fighting — The Passion Play in Santiago de Chile — Education and Schools — Dr. Brown ing's Instituto Inglese — Americans Lead as Edu cators — Dr. William H. Lester — The Color Question — Agitation against the English — The Tropics not for the White Race — Some Dis eases to be Reckoned with — Terciana, Sorroche, and the Deadly Verrugas — Inefficient Health Officers — Preventive Work of the United States at Sea — Poisonous Insects and Reptiles — The Fierce Lagarto and how it is Captured — Intelli gent Sheep Dogs — Odd Use of the Capon . . 274 ILLUSTRATIONS The Andes Frontispiece Faciho Paok Fort and Entrance to Harbor, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil . . 26 Rio de Janeiro — Aqueduct, Bay, etc 34 Babia, Brazil 38 Part of Avenida Central, Rio de Janeiro 42 General View of Part of Buenos Ayres. Uncompleted Dome at Right is that of Halls of Congress ... 54 Buenos Ayres, Avenida de Mayo, showing La Prensa Building and Government Building 58 The Home of La Prensa, the Famous Argentine Daily . 62 Concert and Lecture Room in La Prensa Building, Buenos Ayres 66 Street in Montevideo, Uruguay 70 Manner of Tying a Horse, Montevideo, Uruguay .... 76 The Falls of Yguazu on the Brazilian- Argentine Border . 82 Man-eating Albatross, Pacific Ocean, near the Straits of Magellan 96 American Consulate, Port Stanley, Falkland Islands . . 104 Punta Arenas, Harbor and Town, Straits of Magellan, Southernmost City of the World 158 Valparaiso, Chile 202 Valparaiso, Chile, Cemetery after the Earthquake of August, 15, 1906 212 Valparaiso, Chile, Earthquake Ruins. Taken March, 1907 228 Santa Lucia, Santiago de Chile 250 Fold out THE ANDEAN LAND CHAPTER I FELLOW PASSENGERS The Voyage — Captain Ohls — Samuel Brown — Professor Brewster — Mr. Rankin — Riley Sims — Miss Browning — Miss Dark — Furbays Story of Burr — Stories of Sea and Land — Games on Shipboard — Jones, of Tennessee. THE finest thing about going away from home is the chance to return again. No matter how much engaged or entertained one may be, the uppermost thought is of home, which, more tangibly defined, is Michigan, providing one is so fortunate as to live in that land in the sun bright deep, where sweet waters and birds of lyric throat vie with pure air and kindly Nature to develop the finest people on the best earth we know. The skies may be gray and cold, and the snow-blasts may be borne from the frigid north in gusts that chill one's marrow, and yet I say it is kindly Nature. He who has not known the seasons, who has not felt the thrilling inspiration of a Spring time, who has not keyed his nerves to a contest with Winter, who has not known the lazy, 2 THE ANDEAN LAND languorous, blue-skied dog days, and then the majesty of that ripening time, the golden russet Autumn, has not lived in full. I pity the many people who live under the cloudless skies of Egypt, or between Cancer and Capricorn, where mouths are built for mangoes, just as I pity the poor nomad whose snow-huts are where the sunshine is not sweet and never can even warm the tundra. But one need not say these things to feed content to those of God-blessed Michigan. The next good thing about going away from home is to do one's best to learn as much as capacity and comprehension will permit, by observation and contact, about other peoples and other lands. Then, if one is permitted, even in a small way, to carry to others of those things which he has learned and to bring back to homeland a mot of good to make the balance fair, satisfaction is emphasized. I think the average person in starting to plan a voyage to South America — real South America — would develop a good many sur prises. The big countries of South America are Brazil and Argentina. There is n't a single American ship sailing regularly and carrying passengers from the United States to Brazil, and there is n't any kind of a passenger ship of any nation that sails from the United States to that great city of Argentina, Buenos Ayres. There are four British lines from FELLOW PASSENGERS 3 New York to Rio de Janeiro, and in these lines there are but two good ships, the Tennyson and the Byron, of the Lamport & Holt line. We were on the Tennyson. It would not be called a good ship on any first-class route, because it accommodates but forty first-cabin passengers, in second-class style, and is small as ocean steamers go now, with a length of 385 feet and a tonnage of 4800. No wonder Secretary Root was taken to the Pan-American Congress in a cruiser. The only other way to go is via England and the Royal Mail, or on to German, French, or Italian ports, from all of which good steamers sail to the great South American entrepots. In order really to conserve one's pride of country, a United-Stateser has to forget our ocean marine, which, on the Atlantic, aside from coastwise, is not. But we are doing other things that more than make up, and some day we will come back to our own on the broadening seas. We sailed from New York, February 5, 1907. A person who lives on Lake Superior and knows its winter storms is inclined to contempt of weather efforts elsewhere. But the New York storm of February 4 and 5, 1907, was one to make a Borean feel at home. We were three hours fighting our way from the corner of 42d Street and Park Avenue to Pier 8, Robert's Stores, Brooklyn, crossing the Fulton Ferry. Only a heavy team to our carriage, that would 4 THE ANDEAN LAND have been a credit on an iced road in the best days of Michigan pine murdering, could have pulled us at all through the more than knee- deep snow. Street-car snow-ploughs were stuck in nearly every block, and time and again we escaped being pocketed in blockades that wedged the streets only by the skill of our driver. As it was we were embargoed often enough, and a ride that usually consumes three-quarters of an hour required three. When we got to the Tenny son a sight confronted us. Imagine, please, a tropical ship, with a tropical crew, with three feet of snow drifted over the decks from stem to gudgeon. It was the most uninviting prospect for going to sea that ever I saw. The stewards seemed paralyzed. One young Austrian was mourning the death of a lot of marmosets the blizzard had caught in their prime, but he saw a ray of sunshine in the fact that he had sold a Brazilian parrot just the day before for $100. The ship was fit for cold storage in every part, and Mrs. Osborn found warmth only in the wharf office, where a fine old gentleman named Geddes was enthroned over a cocky but polite office-boy from the Barbadoes. Gradually the fierce squalls that blew fitfully over the river cleared up, and the Tennyson got under way a few hours late, snow-bedecked and all. We passed Sandy Hook at 5 p. m., and crossed fairly the threshold of Poseidon. Our course to FELLOW PASSENGERS 5 miss Cape St. Roque was south, southeast, taking us eighty sea miles east of Bermuda and cutting the western edge of that strange zone of ocean inertia, the Sargossa Sea. Prolonged, our course would have just about taken us to Cape Town, but we hauled to westward after passing St. Roque and Punta Piedras. Cape St. Roque lacks twenty miles of being the most eastern extremity of South America, yielding by that much to that "point of rocks," Punta Piedras. Our first noon out found us only 208 knots away and jumping wildly in a huge, lumpy sea caused by fierce coastal storms. Our mixed cargo was well stored and did not shift, so the Tennyson behaved very well. On the second day the engines suddenly stopped, which is ever a source of consternation, and particularly in a single-screw ship. A little tinkering by the en gineer and a half-hour of deep dipping now in the trough and then on the crest of the sea, bow down and stern up, and then the rails playing pendulously, we were away again and everybody happy, even if some were temporarily "on the staff of the Atlantic and a regular contributor." By the third day the weather warmed and the sun shone. Our daily runs averaged 285 knots. Soon we were abreast of Porto Rico, but some hundreds of miles off. The ocean was covered with beautiful gardens of seaweed and much of it bore a pretty golden blossom through which 6 THE ANDEAN LAND we ruthlessly ploughed. We were not far enough into the clutches of the Sargossa to see much of the ocean's dead drift, or any of the derelicts that finally are imprisoned there, enchained by intrenched vegetation that is sometimes so strong and dense in this jungle of the sea as to embarrass a swift-sailing clipper. Skippers give it a wide berth, and even steamers do not like it, for it fouls their wheels. On the afternoon of the fifth day out we crossed the tropic of Cancer, and, although un der tropical skies, the sea was still nubby and the northeast trades blew fresh and cool and fine. Just before reaching the latitude of the trade winds we passed through what the jolly captain, a fine old sea dog of the old school, called the "horse latitudes." This name, he said, came from the fact that in the early days of navigating the Spanish Main, the Spaniards and Portuguese would get into the doldrums here, and, getting out of fodder, would have to throw overboard all live-stock. Later, they learned that by laying a course a little farther south they would have the trades fair all the way, and so they were careful to avoid the "horse latitudes." I must not forget to introduce the captain. A good captain and a tuneful crew can make a 4000-tonner a 12,000-tonner in feeling and a 12-knot ship a 20-knotter. Capt. A. Ohls ' of the 1 Since deceased. FELLOW PASSENGERS 7 Tennyson is that sort. Never a keener Britisher in sentiment, although his father was Scotch and his mother German. He was born and raised in Mecklenburg, had been thoroughly educated in the old German schools at Rostock and else where, and has practised thoroughness in navi gation with such good fortune that if next year comes friendly the Lloyds will present him with one hundred guineas for twenty-five years a master without a flaw of misfortune or bad luck in his record. Devout old Unitarian skipper, he can swear for Marryat or Clark Russell if need be, with a little in a capsule for Bullen. His prayer is : " Lord, save me from Hull, Hell, and Halifax." When a boy he served before the mast and became master of several smart sailing ships before he went into the steam trade, where he has been for twenty-seven years. Once when a young, dare-devil skipper he was ashore at Smyrna with his mate, a Scotchman six feet, six inches, and all bone and sinew. They heard groans from behind a high stone wall. The long-necked, haggis-eating mate peered over. He saw a beautiful young woman stretched at full length on a frame. A big eunuch, with face of burnished ebony, was beating the soles of her feet with a bastinado. Alongside sat a fat and lazy Turk smoking his chibouk and seeming to enjoy the groans and shrieks that accompanied every muscular stroke, as if they 8 THE ANDEAN LAND were the songs of a nightingale. Rude Scotch man! Unlucky Turk! Where was Allah? Over the wall leapt the sailormen. A hook on the jaw by the attenuated mate settled Mr. Eunuch ; a swift poke in the solar plexus by the captain put Mr. Turk where he could not hear the muezzin's call until he took the count. But here was a fix. The woman was a beautiful Circassian and belonged to the cruel Turk's harem. Her yamchak was down and dogs of infidels had seen her face ! Only a lingering death awaited her ! Not so. She followed her deliverers and the captain took her to Scotland. At Glasgow she married a fine young Scot who is now a prominent board-of-trade man, and the world is richer for a half-dozen fine girls and boys who call the Circassian lady "Mother." Such is one of the many yarns the captain told us, and in his tales we found his life. Never a duty shirked, never an honor forgotten, never a right action dodged. A fine lot of passengers, forty, a ship full, enjoyed him every day as one of themselves. Last voyage he gave up his com modious home on the bridge deck to an Ameri can girl coming home from Brazil, who was very sick, and he thought nothing more of it than to wish to be kind and helpful. And so the world is full of good people: "The bravest are the tenderest; the loving are the daring." This was not the season for those fearful re- FELLOW PASSENGERS 9 volving storms that are called hurricanes in these waters and cyclones and typhoons in other waters. Here is the sailor's rule : July, stand by; August, you must ; September, remember; October, all over. In the northern waters a hurricane revolves against the hands of the watch and proceeds in a parabolic track. In southern waters it is just the opposite. A typhoon is a revolving storm against the hands of the watch and proceeding in a straight path. All of them are full of terror and destruction, and navigators flee from them as from a scourge. One may ride out the edge of a hurricane, but there is no escape for any ship from the vortex, — such is the belief of old sailors. In the tropical waters, flying fish are constantly skimming the waves, their iridescent scales glistening in the sunlight. Sometimes they fly 250 feet, and always, we are told, until their aeroplane fins, like wings, become dry. Now and then one will get a big start athwart the ship and land on the deck " kerslap," all aquiver. At such times a deck-hand makes a quick cap ture and somebody has broiled flying fish. They are good. We were lucky in having a fine lot of passen gers. There were young engineers and elec- 10 THE ANDEAN LAND tricians going down on the Tennyson for a firm which has huge light and power franchises in Sao Paulo and Rio. They will run street cars, public lights, and power for manufactures. To reach Rio the electric current will be carried for one hundred miles from the water power where it is generated. Some of the young men were from the Univer sity of Michigan, others from Cornell, others from Princeton, and one very bright graduate from the University of Nebraska. There were also Brazilian and American coffee experts and graders. One of the best men aboard was Samuel W. Brown, of Albany, N. Y., junior member of Bacon, Stickney & Co., who have been grinding coffee and spices so long and so honestly that the pure food law, when it came, demanded not one single change. Most interesting and acceptable to us was the presence aboard of Professor James H. Brewster and son, Chauncey, of Ann Arbor. Professor Brewster has the chair of conveyancing in the law department at the University of Michigan, and is also editor of the strong Michigan Law Review. Before going to the University of Michigan, he was a successful Detroit lawyer and a fighting and reforming member of the Detroit school board. In discussing Judge Joseph H. Steere, of Sault Sainte Marie, Pro fessor Brewster said he hoped the day would FELLOW PASSENGERS 11 come in Michigan, and he believed it would come, when such a man would not have to be a candidate for the Supreme Court, but would be so clearly desired that he would be compelled to regard it as a command from the people not to be disregarded or denied. He was going to Brazil and the Argentine and would cross the continent on the Transandine Railway and visit Chile and Peru. His plans for Peru included many interior trips, during one of which he hoped to visit Cuzco, the ancient seat of the Incas. He would take photographs and gather material for lectures and perhaps write a book. The professor needed a rest, but was so constituted temperamentally as to be unable to be idle even in the tropics. He permitted me to see the advance manuscript of a synoptical his tory of South America which is being written by Samuel McC. Stanton, his brother-in-law. Mr. Stanton is a scholarly architect of Ann Arbor, who is absorbed in history. His style is lucid and fascinating and he weaves the facts so artfully into the romance of his subject that the reader is entertained every moment. The United States may not be supplying South American countries with all things, but they are sending it expert talent. Here is an example: Robert Rankin, aged twenty-four, was a passenger on the Tennyson. He lives at Ithaca, N. Y., and since fourteen 12 THE ANDEAN LAND has made his way. Being graduated from Cornell in '04 he went to Pittsburg for the Westinghouse people. This big American con cern has 350 young electricians selected from various universities, fitting them practically to install and take care of their machinery in all parts of the world. These young men are paid $8.50 per week the first year and $9.50 the second. For them they have a club called the Electrical Club. Here poor boys touch shoulders with sons of millionaires who are determined to lead a useful life. Young Rankin found the Elec trical Club run down and insufficient to hold the boys' interest or patronage. He told the club president what he thought was wrong and was invited to take the management. Wedded to his electrical work he did not wish to leave it. However, he was persuaded it was his duty. Dropping everything else he tackled the club. In three months he had it on its feet. This work brought Rankin in touch with the Westinghouse principals. They saw that he had superior ability and recommended him to the electrical people at Rio. He contracted for a year at $225 a month gold and all expenses both ways. Young men never know in what way they will have a chance to show what is in them. The only sure rule is never to dodge a duty. One most interesting passenger was a bright- faced, red-haired man named Riley Sims. His FELLOW PASSENGERS 13 experiences would make a book. Sims has travelled all over the world. He peddled moving pictures and jewelry from New Zealand to Tas mania and from there to every part of Australia. Sims swears by newspaper advertising and his "hunch." When he fails to heed his hunch he "goes bust," in his vocabulary, and when he does n't use enough advertising it results the same. He went from the Barbadoes to George town, British Guiana. The night he arrived there an English cinematograph was playing to $4 in the opera house, and this in a place of seventy-five thousand population. Everybody advised Sims to keep away, but his hunch was with him. He went to the leading Georgetown daily and arranged for a two-page advertisement. Then he got out one hundred thousand bills. Negroes distributed the bills and were closely watched to see that they did not "eat" them, as Sims put it. Three days were spent in advertis ing and then the show. By 8.10 the governor- general and party arrived and could not get in. There was a $i200-house for a show not a bit better than the English outfit got a ^4-house for. Sims left town next morning. Making a good, big jump he stopped at a town in which nothing seemed alive but "niggers." No street lights, no anything. Sims set up his boiler and dynamo, strung arc lights down the main street, set his advertising to going and filled the house. In 14 THE ANDEAN LAND Waco, Texas, where he is a good Elk, he con ducted a jewelry store. Business was good and he made money, so he thought he could make more money with a bigger stock. Borrowing $18,000 of a Waco bank so as to save discounts, he went to New York and bought enough to have the largest stock of jewelry in Texas. Then came the boll weevil and Texas was in the slough of despond. Sims was in Texas. Things looked black. But he quadrupled his advertising in the Waco papers, made a grand "sell out," put prices way down, and told the exact situa tion of his borrowing and having to pay or go up the spout. Old and young came and bought bargain jewelry. Brides-to-be and bridegrooms- to-be bought and were bought for, and all the Texans tributary to Waco bought jewelry for all time. It would n't rust and it would n't eat and it was a good investment, was Sims' argument. "Advertising pays the biggest percentage I know of," says Sims. Honesty and publicity are good mottoes. Miss E. M. Browning, an Ohio girl, had been teaching for a couple of years at Sao Paulo, Brazil, three hundred thousand population, capital of the state of that name, and was return ing from her Summer vacation — which is in December. Spring at Rio begins in September. The Presbyterians have McKenzie College, under Dr. Lane, in Sao Paulo. It is one of the best FELLOW PASSENGERS 15 educational institutions in all South America. Miss Browning knew the best of the United States well and had been in the Philippines, and yet she liked Brazil. We met a brave American woman in the person of Miss Rosa Dark, of Indianapolis. She has been secured by the Argentina National Board of Education to take charge of the National Normal School at Corrientes, a six days' trip up the Parana River from Buenos Ayres. There she was going and all alone, although she did not know a single soul at her destination at the junction of the Parana and Paraguay Rivers. So far as she had been in formed not an English-speaking person resides in that region and Corrientes is in a turbulent politi cal condition. She will earn her salary of $600 in Argentina money and a house, amounting to about $250 gold per month. Miss Dark is a modest, retiring little woman, with plenty of determination behind her tranquil exterior. She is a fine type of the highest class of American school teacher. We were only two degrees off the equator ; the tropical cloudbursts had quit; the sea had flattened its humpiness and the sun shone fiercely. The headway of the Tennyson made enough air to woo comfort under the awnings, but it was lazy enough on deck. The Princeton man, Charles L. Furbay, an Ohio boy, class of 16 THE ANDEAN LAND '97, who started out to be a lawyer and ended up in the electric railway business, was doing the talking and somehow or other his voice droned in welcome cadence. He had just come from five years of success at Augusta, Georgia, where he managed the Augusta electric line, including the service to Aiken, with fine results. On his way to direct the service of the eighty cars at Sao Paulo he was one of the popular passengers. Somebody said it was time for the Princeton man to tell a story, and all refused to be satisfied with the account of the Battle of Princeton, wherein a cannon ball pierced famous old Nassau Hall, at that time America's largest building, and took clean off the head of King George, whose picture remained hanging on the wall. So Furbay gave this: "You, who have been at Princeton, will remember a grave on the campus, the headstone of which bears the name of Catherine Bullock. It is hedged about with arbor vitae and interests all students and visitors. You will remember also that Aaron Burr was an honor graduate of Princeton. He was the first to get the Summa Cum Laude, and I believe only two graduates have ever gotten it. Catherine Bullock, a most beautiful young woman, came from Philadelphia to attend the social functions accompanying the season of graduation. The young bucks declared her to be the prettiest girl who had ever honored FELLOW PASSENGERS 17 Princeton. Burr was the hero of the students. Wherever life was gayest and wine deepest there was Burr. His reputation with women began right there, too. When revel reached the summit of boast Burr declared he was going to conquer Miss Bullock. Nobody paid any attention to him then as they would have done in after years and the poor girl had no warning. She fell a victim to the dastard's devilish wiles and death most mercifully claimed her. As if to honor her and make as much restitution as possible the Princeton management gave her burial on the campus. There she still seems to be a revered part of the great institution of Henry Van Dyke and Woodrow Wilson." Everybody agreed that in all Burr's black life he had never done a more despicable deed. The college men on board formed a temporary university club. They discussed all sorts of things. One day I happened into the smoking room while a red-hot comparison of universities was going on. At the moment the University of Michigan was undergoing analysis and criti cism. It was the William and Mary man, who had been to Michigan for some post-graduate work, who was talking. He said : " I have pride in the greatness of the Univer sity of Michigan and bow to it, but I question whether it is as potent as it used to be. True, it was the first and best institution of its kind VOL. I. — 2 18 THE ANDEAN LAND and all of the big Western State schools were patterned after it. But is it keeping up ? Are n't some of its children outstripping it or at least giving it a close race for laurels ? " I know it is claimed that the State does n't treat the university as liberally as it should. I don't know how that is, but I think it is a fact that the University of Wisconsin has a bigger income than the University of Michigan. The question of salaries for members of the Faculty at Michigan is two-sided. I used to think that the higher salaries paid by other institutions would take all of Michigan's strong men. True, some have gone, but on the other hand these changes make way for newer and younger blood. Young men who are anxious to make a reputa tion are given a chance, and I would rather have a young man working for a reputation than an old man who has won his name and is resting on his oars. Anyhow, it is good to have both and Michigan has them." Somebody aboard the Tennyson suggested a competition of yarns between a landsman and a sailor, and it came off. This is one of the lands man's stories for the prize : "I was cooking in a Michigan lumber camp. One day we were boiling pork and the savor swept out far on the fragrant winds. A big black bear sniffed it and investigated. All of a sudden he marched straight into the cook's shanty. I FELLOW PASSENGERS 19 fled to the loft pulling the ladder up after me. From my vantage point I watched the bear. He first filled up pretty well on salt pork. Then he went to the dried-apple barrel and ate nearly half a barrel of dried apples. Of course the salt pork and dried apples made him thirsty. He went to the water barrel and drank copiously. All of a sudden he began to clasp his abdomen with his paws and forelegs. Then he rolled over and over and roared and roared. He swelled up until he seemed to be blown out like a fat sail caressed by the wanton wind. All at once there was an explosion. It was so loud that the boss came in from the woods a mile off to see what was up. All we could find was the bear's left paw." In spite of this classic and other struggles on the part of the landlubber the sailorman won the prize as the biggest romancer on land or sea. Athletic day on shipboard brings out games of both land and sea but naturally most of the latter. The life-belt race is useful and also suggestive. One runs a short distance on deck and fastens on a life preserver, the prize going to the person who accomplishes the feat in the shortest time. Spar-boxing is fine sport for the boys. A spar six inches in diameter and very smooth is fastened just high enough so the feet of the contestants do not touch the mats on deck when they are astride. A blanket is wrapped 20 THE ANDEAN LAND around the spar to increase the difficulty of keeping one's seat. Armed with pillows the two fighters smash away at each other until one is knocked from the spar. This often occurs at once, but in one instance two young men kept their seats astride until they were tired out, a period of nearly twenty minutes. In tent-pegging the participant sits on a spar that is unsteady by reason of being supported by two shaky stools and has his feet and limbs on the spar as well. In this difficult position he steadies himself with a shuffle-board cue and knocks several ringtoss rings off from where they are hung just within reach both before and behind. The young fellows also have rooster fights. There are needle-threading races, potato and cravat-tying races for the ladies, and no end of other games, ending often with semi-professional performances by both members of the crew and passengers. The Atlantic tropics do not seem to be nearly so hot as the Pacific tropics. On the equator going to South America the thermometer rarely indicates more than 84 degrees in the shade on shipboard. One who has seen it 120 degrees on deck at Samoa and the tar frying out of the deck seams, almost fails to recognize the Atlantic equator. True, the Tennyson machinery ran hot on the line and we had to stop while lazy FELLOW PASSENGERS 21 sharks dawdled alongside in the sea. No frigate birds, no albatross, no gulls, no stormy petrels, no Mother Carey's chickens, no sign of life about the ship except flying fish, porpoises, sharks, and now and again a big, clumsy tortoise taking a sunning on the crest of a billow. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, from Tennessee, who had been living in Havana, were passengers. They quite sniffed at the tropics and said it was twice as hot in the valleys of Tennessee in the Summer. An old whaler aboard said he had seen it 135 degrees in the Summer around Spitzbergen, during the long period of nightless days in the land of the midnight sun. It is hot up there when it is hot and for a time in Summer when the sun shines constantly it never gets a chance to cool off. There are many Masonic lodges in Brazil and a Brazilian Englishman, who had been given the thirty-third degree in Brazil, was a shipmate. Most of the lodges are under English jurisdiction. A young General Electric Co. expert named Jones was going to Brazil to install machinery. He had gone to Central University, Danville, Kentucky, for his classical education, where he saw a great deal of Proctor Knott, dean of the law school. Knott gave his services and would accept no remuneration. He was a Kentucky idol — anti-negro, anti-protection, anti-gold basis and all. He said the regret of his life was his 22 THE ANDEAN LAND Duluth speech, which ranks as a masterpiece of humorous satire. It was the only speech of the kind he ever delivered, but it clung to him in public repute like a cockle-burr and gave him an undeserved reputation, he always thought. Jones says that Knott, conversing in company, was always the entertainer. He would have two cuspidors at remote angles, each nearly a rod from him, one on the right and the other on the left. First he would fire a charge of nicotine at one and then at the other, always hitting them with unerring skill. The one thing Kentuckians had against him was that Knott would drink Scotch whiskey, which was an affront to all loyal Kentuckians and their ambrosia. Jones ranks high in the electric service. He recalled that Lord Kelvin and Tesla had both demonstrated that a man could take a high voltage without injury. The killing current is 1500 to 6000 volts. Lord Kelvin took 125,000 volts. Jones saw a companion accidentally subjected to 70,000 volts. In the electric chair at electrocutions 1700 volts are used. Most victims are only temporarily paralyzed by this current, Jones says, and six out of ten could be resuscitated. This gives rise to the belief on the part of many that most criminals who are elec trocuted are really killed by the surgeon's knife in the autopsy that follows. Electricians have instructions to work three hours on a person FELLOW PASSENGERS 23 who has been apparently fatally shocked. The method is the same as used in drowning with the omission of the rolling for removing water. The tongue is held out and artificial respiration induced, both by slowly raising the arms and breathing by another into the mouth of the victim. A very large percentage recover. In Columbus, Ohio, criminals electrocuted have been known to recover and require reshocking as often as three times. Jones says no electri cian on a jury would ever vote to electrocute a criminal, no matter what the nature of the crime. Purser Rennie got into a shark-yarning mood when we were about ten degrees north of the equator. Some passenger started it by contend ing that a shark would not attack a moving bait or anything alive, coupling the declaration with another that he doubted if any one on board had ever seen or known of his own personal knowledge an instance to the contrary. Purser Rennie, who has been a half-century at sea, was disgusted. "We pulled a shark aboard the clipper Molly Stoker once," he said, "that had a whole dolphin in his 'innards,' and the dolphin is the race horse of the sea. Another time a sentinel at St. Helena somehow or other fell into the sea and a shark grabbed him and swallowed him — knapsack and all." 24 THE ANDEAN LAND Captain Ohls knew of man-eating sharks and had seen them take several human victims, but he declared a shark with its small throat and five rows of teeth, two fixed and three movable, never could have swallowed a dolphin without chewing it up, or a beknapsacked sentinel either. The nearest the argument came to settlement was the contribution of a Kentuckian who had fished for man-eating sharks off the Morro at Havana and had taken a rubber bicycle tire and a chair-back out of the stomach of a shark. The purser contended that if a shark could swallow a man, bicycle and all, and digest everything but the tire, his stories were entitled to credence. CHAPTER II MATTERS BRAZILIAN Brazil — The Coffee Industry — Terba Mate — The Monetary System — New Quai at Rio — Careless Immigration Regulation — Bahia — A Mantrap Sewer — Street Car Etiquette — The Race Problem and Illiteracy — Rio de Janeiro — Rua Ouvidor — Avenida Central — Beautiful Rio Harbor — Corcovado — Mr. Slater — Mr. S holders — Santos — A Shipping War — Baby Wheel — Conditions of Life in the United States the Best on Earth. SOUTH AMERICA is n't south; it is south east. In area it is n't quite as large as North America; it lacks about half a million square miles. Brazil occupies nearly half of South America. It is as large as the United States, counting out Alaska, or, in other words, has an area of 3,000,000 square miles and a little more. Pernambuco, or Recife, the coast city of con sequence farthest north in Brazil, is 3700 miles from New York; Bahia is 4100, and Rio de Janeiro, 4800 miles. In making the voyage to Rio, the Tennyson consumes eighteen days. The Royal Mail steamers make about the same time from Southampton, while some of the newer and faster Italian steamers cover the course from 25 26 THE ANDEAN LAND Genoa in sixteen days. Rio is nearer Cape Town than New York. Brazil had in 1900 a population of 14,000,000 and Rio a million. If Brazil's population was as dense as India's, to which country it is not dissimilar, it would have a population of 500,000,000. This does not neces sarily mean that Brazil could adequately support such a population, but it might do so as well as India, where the fangs of famine are sharper than the python's tooth. There are parts of Brazil that are probably the least known of any region in the world, or at any rate on a par with that savage island, New Guinea, with just as murderous and cannibalistic tribes. Brazil's boundaries touch those of every other nation in South America, save only Chile. From Rio to Buenos Ayres is 1200 miles, making the great capital of Argentina 6000 miles from New York, a steamer voyage of twenty-two to twenty-four days. The Argentine is about half the area of Brazil, with a population of less than six mil lions. Buenos Ayres or Aires or just B. A. is somewhat larger than Rio, with a population of about 1,200,000. The Argentine covers a latitude equal to the distance from Key West to the middle of Hudson Bay, giving the country all climatic conditions. At Buenos Ayres, the climate in Summer is much like Detroit and in the Winter like Atlanta. Brazil could furnish all the world with coffee, FORT AND ENTRANCE TO HARBOR, EIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL MATTERS BRAZILIAN 27 and does supply the bulk of both coffee and rubber. The entire world consumes 17,000,000 bags of coffee. A bag of coffee is 60 kilos or 132 pounds. Of this the United States uses 6,000,000 bags, or more than one-third of the world's consumption — a bag to every thirteen people, men, women, and children, — ten pounds per capita, which, after all, is not half an ounce a day. This year (1907) Brazil has its record coffee crop, estimated at 19,000,000 bags, or two millions above the needs of all the earth. The Brazilian state of Sao Paulo (first syllable pronounced "San") will produce over 15,000,000 bags. Now all this remarkable yield is likely to knock the bottom out of the coffee market. The state of Sao Paulo sees this and, abetted by the general government, it is attempting, a la New Zealand, to help out the coffee grower. The state has already borrowed $15,000,000, and will borrow enough more to buy in open market at least 4,000,000 bags of coffee, which it will store until the market will take it without dangerous congestion, whether it be next year or four years hence. Co-operating with the government is the large New York coffee house of Arbuckle, which agreed to buy and hold at least 400,000 bags, and not sell until the state consented. Later, when it was found that this quantity would not be sufficient to accomplish the object sought, 28 THE ANDEAN LAND these figures were increased. Finally, because of the unsoundness of the policy plus difficulty in getting money to promote the government coffee corner, it practically failed. No. 7 coffee, which is the standard on the New York Coffee Exchange, brings the pro ducer about seven cents a pound at the present time. The average price for a period of years is nearer ten cents. Government and Arbuckle experts agree that the present crop, which will be picked in April and marketed in June, would depress the price to three cents, unless artificial steps were taken to prevent. The consensus among coffee men and econo mists generally, however, is that the state is not only establishing a bad precedent, but will totally fail in any permanent regulation of the coffee supply and demand and the resultant price of coffee. While Brazil is the greatest coffee-producing country in the world, and while the Santos Bourbon brand grown from Mocha seed is a fine coffee, it produces what rates in the market as the most inferior and cheapest coffee and not any of the very best. All Arabian, Java, Mexi can, Guatemalan, other Central American, and Bogota coffees rank superior to Rio in price and quality and are used as blends. The Rio coffees are as rich in caffeine as any, but the flavor is pronounced to be gross by connoisseurs. MATTERS BRAZILIAN 29 In Sao Paulo there are 660,708,500 coffee trees on 16,015 plantations, or fazendas, as the coffee farms are called. These fazendas culti vate 313,254 alqueires. An alqueire equals 8.61 acres. In addition to this acreage already in trees the fazenda owners have ready to plant when there is warrant 408,775 alqueires, so there seems to be no end to possible coffee production in Sao Paulo alone, especially when one con siders there is an immense coffee-growing area as yet untouched. A coffee tree blossoms twice, first in August and then in October. From an elevated view point when the trees are in blossom, a great fazenda like the Dumont, with over five million trees, presents a scene never to be effaced from memory. The flower is white and delicate and gives off a heavy sweetness like the orange. The nearest Sao Paulo ever comes to a winter snow scene is when the myriad coffee orchards are in bloom. A coffee tree bears from one to four pounds. The berries ripen in February and March and are picked in April. Such a fazenda as the Dumont employs five thousand men, and a system of semi-peonage prevails. The Dumont fazenda is the largest in Brazil and is owned by an English syndicate that purchased and united several fazendas. The coffee crop may be injured by heat, drought, and frost. It frosts some every season 30 THE ANDEAN LAND in Sao Paulo, but rarely of sufficient severity to injure the coffee. However, in 1903 a frost killed 6,000,000 trees. They were frozen down to the ground but grew again, and some were bearing this year, while others are more slowly recovering. In 1888 the crop might just as well have failed, for the yellow fever scourge devastated the land and the crop could not be saved. Green coffee went up to thirty-five cents a pound, and more in the United States, and great adulterations and substitutes became common and gave birth to such a distrust in the public mind that the ground coffee trade of the country was ruined. Small wonder. Big grinders bought up stale ship bread, roasted it and ground it. Others made a dough paste of such consistency that it could be roasted to a flint and ground. Then one house, but briefly shrewd, bought a machine that had been invented that would mould a coffee bean out of paste so perfectly that it deceived coffee men. They put tons of spurious coffee on the market. All this contributed to a per manent disbelief in the honesty of coffee. But coffee is not adulterated now. It is too cheap. There are many grades on the market, but they are all coffee. In grading coffee for the market it rates from No. 1 to No. 9, with No. 7 as a standard for fixing the price. Many things operate to establish the grades. There is almost no No. 1. The fine little pea berry is kept MATTERS BRAZILIAN 31 separate and is usually sold as Mocha. Other berries are black and bad; some are white, called "quakers," and these, too, are very bad; other berries are shrivelled, and often the coffee is generally imperfect and dirty with stones and hulls. Fine, large, perfect grains in color and size mark the better grades. Coffee is picked in April. Then it is hulled and then washed so as to remove the parchment-like skin. The interior of the coffee pod contains a spongy matrix that is very rich in saccharine matter, over 95 per cent, but no attempt to save it as a by-product has as yet been successfully made. Preparing coffee for market is interesting. Most of it is sold to consumers in the form of the roasted berry. Green coffee improves in quality, if kept right, for at least four years. The old house of Bacon, Stickney & Co. of Albany, New York, has some green coffee on hand that was bought in 1853. But roasted coffee deteriorates almost at once and the process is short; if exposed to the air it is worthless. However, it may be kept in close cans for sixty days and even longer. Coffee, as roasted in the United States, loses sixteen per cent in weight; as roasted in Brazil it loses more than a third. The Brazilian roasts coffee jet black and con tends that we do not know how to roast it. Our roasters claim that the coffee roasted in Brazil would not keep at all in the United States, 32 THE ANDEAN LAND and if it did keep it would not please our palates. To keep roasted coffee from deteriorating or to reduce the loss of essential oil to a minimum, the great Arbuckle house coats all of its roasted berries with a composition of egg, water, and sugar, thus practically sealing it hermetically. More or less envious competitors declare that this varnishing is for the purpose of concealing defects in the coffee, and for the purpose of giving it a uniform appearance. The Arbuckle house is a wonderful concern and has a high reputation all over the world. It commonly roasts three bags of coffee at once, but has a new hot-blast machine that will roast thirty bags at once. Arbuckle often roasts seven thousand bags a day. The fact probably remains that if the consumer would buy a good grade of green coffee and roast it well at home the highest results would be obtained. But there are no household appliances that are good for much, and not one person in ten thousand can roast coffee perfectly. So we will go on using roasted coffee, even if it has somewhat lost its savor, obtaining our compensation in the belief that its toxic effect will be proportionately lessened, all to the welfare of our livers. Yerba mate is the beverage consumed by common people in most of the South American countries outside the coffee zone and even in Brazil. They attribute healthful properties to it, MATTERS BRAZILIAN 33 and besides, it is cheaper than coffee. In the misiones of Argentina an inferior yerba mate is produced, which is not popular, so in 1903 the importations of this beverage from Brazil and Paraguay by Argentina amounted to $4,000,000 as compared with $1,200,000 paid for coffee and tea the same year. Chile drinks a half million dollars' worth of imported yerba mate annually. The drink is made much like tea. In Germany mate pills are used in certain ailments. Many chemists and physicians say it is a superior drink to coffee and never injurious, and it is predicted a wider use as soon as its merits are known. A fortune may await the man who introduces yerba mate into the United States as a substitute for coffee. The drink is made from the leaves of a tree, and is commonly drunk from a gourd through a delicately woven miniature basket like strainer, which is fastened to a hollow reed, exactly like the stem of a Missouri corncob pipe. The native sucks the tea through the strainer and tube and the leaves are arrested by the wicker strainer and remain in the gourd cup. As a general proposition, South America lacks coal and timber. Of course, there are the fine tropical woods, mahogany and rosewood and Brazilian wood, but these are not widely distributed nor are they good for general pur poses. In all Brazil there are only 12,000 miles of railways, or a little more than the mileage of VOL. I. — 3 34 THE ANDEAN LAND Michigan. Fuel for power is a big item and costs three times what it does in Michigan. It is probable that many of the railroads will be electrified, as water powers are numerous. This would be particularly advisable on the line from Sao Paulo to Rio, fifteen hours' ride. Nobody pretends to understand the monetary system of Brazil, and it is a good deal easier to learn the language, which is Portuguese, than to keep tab on the fluctuations of a milreis, which is the standard. A gold milreis is worth a little more than fifty-four cents, but there are almost no gold milreis. Paper milreis have gone as low as eighteen cents, but have averaged about thirty cents. President Penna, the new president, who, by the way, is the first Monarchist to rule by election over the Republic and who was also opposed to the emancipation of slaves, but who is strong and progressive, has taken the first step which he hopes will lead to the establish ment of a gold basis. Certain gold notes are issued for gold and are redeemable at will in gold on a basis of thirty cents per milreis. They are something like our gold certificates, and will be as stable as the integrity and char acter of the government. They are building new wharves at Rio to cost $40,000,000. Now the cost of discharging a cargo by lighter is about three-quarters the cost of freight from New York to Rio. Captain Ohls, RIO DE JANEIRO Aqueduct, Bay, etc. MATTERS BRAZILIAN 35 of the Tennyson, is an old and skilful navigator, and his opinion is entitled to respect. He says the new wharves will be a failure. There are no slips and ships can only discharge side on. The wind in Rio Harbor has a sweep of fifteen miles and kicks up enough sea to bother and injure a ship lying beam on at the new wharf. Reference to Captain Ohls as an old master recalls that he has been in the Lamport & Holt service twenty-seven years. When he had served them twenty-five years the New York Coffee Exchange gave him a beautiful Tiffany decanter. English lines are famous for holding their men. On the Tennyson the chief engineer had served the same line for thirty-two years, the chief steward for the same time, and fine, old, sunny- faced Purser Rennie has been in Lamport & Holt's service for over forty years. As may be imagined he reads the English service like a bishop and always prays for King Edward before he mentions President Roosevelt. The common language in South America is Spanish with the exception of Portuguese in Brazil, English in British Guiana, French in French Guiana, and Dutch in Dutch Guiana. Rio de Janeiro is the largest Portuguese-speaking city in the world. Bahia is one of the most important ports in Brazil. Santos is the greatest coffee port in the world, but in variety of shipments Bahia excels 36 THE ANDEAN LAND as it does in population. Bahia is about 300,000 and Santos 100,000. Bahia sends out rubber, coffee, cacao, rosewood, sugar, tobacco, cotton, hides, goat skins, tapioca, diamonds, carbons (bortz), and piasaba. The latter is used to make rough brooms, such as those used on ship decks. Bahia is growing apace, like Rio and Buenos. Brazil and the Argentine are careless about immigrants. We had on board a number of Italians who had been refused admittance at New York on account of trachoma, but they seemed sure of admission at Rio. Purser Rennie said he knew of a band of Syrian gypsies who were refused admission at New York. The "king" had a belt made from one hundred whole silver dollars. They went to Brazil and returned to New York with certificates signed by the United States consul that they were Italians or Brazilians, and the entire band worked in that way. Bahia reminds one of Algiers, — about the same elevation, soft colors, modern "Latin" archi tecture, narrow streets, water-casked donkeys, beturbaned and bare-waisted negresses, and all. The town is growing and is fairly clean. They claim that the population has increased 100,000 in ten years, and that there are now 300,000 persons within the city's confines. In the middle of a street near to the park on the water front, where hundreds promenade, MATTERS BRAZILIAN 37 there was a perfectly open and unguarded man hole leading into a sewer twelve feet deep. This tells the story of indolent tropical life, — not much care for anything. I saw an Englishman who was strolling and looking at an ill-proportioned bronze monument bearing a statue of Victory, fall into this manhole. He escaped with a badly bruised thigh and arm. It could have been easily more serious. Nobody paid the smallest attention to the mishap, just as if to fall through that mantrap into a reek ing sewer was an hourly occurrence. The only provision they seemed to have looked out for was that in event of death the sewer was big enough to carry its victim out to the nearby sea. The fruits of Bahia are many, — oranges, bananas, limes, alligator pears, mangoes, and many more bounties of the high-heaven sun are to be seen on every hand. The oranges are large and green colored, sweet and not very woody, but not so good as the big green orange of Samoa; nor are the bananas as good. Bahian mangoes are far inferior in size and quality to those best of all mangoes, the Philippine. They are small and exceedingly fibrous, although the flavor is not bad. I saw nothing of that strange fruit of Sumatra, the evil-smelling but delicious- tasting durian, which seems to be a rare tropical product, not at all well distributed along the equator. 38 THE ANDEAN LAND The diamond fields have made much wealth for Bahia, and there are lovely tropical villas and vilhnos. Bahia's harbor is only partially protected. To the southward there is a wide open roadstead, and the wind and sea have often swept big ships ashore, where their bones lie bleaching on the sloping sands. Obsplete forts frown over the harbor and tatterdemalion soldiers drill on shore, ready to hide in the hills and jungles if serious trouble comes, for the Brazilian is not reputed brave. The common differentiation in South America is that one Chilean can vanquish five Argentines and one Argentine can whip five Brazilians. Brazil has exported as much as $37,000,000 worth of rubber in a single year, but the trade has fallen off and the price locally has gone down. There is much waste in the careless way in which the gum is gathered. They do not use buckets or even "box" the trees as turpentine is gathered in our South, but permit the exudation to fall upon the ground where it is scooped up, dirt and all, in true Brazilian fashion. The rubber shipped from Bahia is generally inferior to the purer caoutchouc of Para. Walking along in the shade, near noon, thermometer 95 degrees, coat off, an American visitor was accosted by a Brazilian. The latter threw out his narrow chest, saluted gravely, ]':»*« ¦ii- *i^&,ii1 g^SJU^^^^^fe^'^i^i^'l^^ BAHIA, BRAZIL MATTERS BRAZILIAN 39 contorted his face, shrugged his shoulders, spread out his hands like a Hebrew comedian, and said in the best English he could summon, "Senor, coat put on." It was not meant as an affront and was not taken as such. In no Bra zilian city does a gentleman walk in the street coatless. In Rio the first-class street cars (there are two classes) are closed to persons without coat, collar, and cravat, and persons carrying bundles are likewise refused admission. Another rule of the country is that few respecta ble women appear in a hotel dining-room or other public room unattended. There is no railroad from Bahia to Rio, seven hundred and fifty miles south. The steamer course lies about thirty miles off shore. When it is very clear the coast mountain range may be seen. For two hundred miles off shore great banks come up much of the way. The water on these banks shallows to seventeen fathoms and bad rocks are sprinkled over the bottom, com pelling great care in navigation. Brazil taxes everybody who leaves the country, temporarily or permanently, thirty milreis (pro nounced "mill-race"), about ten dollars, no matter whether citizen or visitor. This policy is supposed to be for the purpose of preventing emigration from the country. The population of Brazil in 1900 was 14,000,000, roughly speak ing; in 1904, estimated at 17,000,000, and now 40 THE ANDEAN LAND they claim 20,000,000. There is little care paid to the character of immigration. Half the population is composed of negroes, Indians, and half-bloods, of strange mixture. The Indian population of all South America is placed at 4,000,000, of which 1,300,000 are credited to Brazil. Peru has 1,500,000 Indians and thirty- three and one-third per cent of its population are Indians and negroes. Brazil with fifty per cent colored and Peru with thirty-three and one-third per cent colored would seem to have a much graver race problem than the United States, where the Indian and negro form only twelve per cent of the population. Prominent Brazilians tell me that the South American negro is a docile character with almost no tendency to crime. The franchise is safe guarded by both property and educational qualifications. Before a man can vote he must have two hundred milreis and be able to read and write. Illiteracy is most prevalent, claiming eighty-four per cent of the population in Brazil and fifty per cent in Argentina. Educational progress is making more headway in Argentina and Uruguay than in any other South American countries. In Argentina they have adopted the splendid moving school system of Australia, which has no superior in serving sparsely settled regions, and where settlement is widely segregated. MATTERS BRAZILIAN 41 The indebtedness of Brazil is $18 gold per capita. The indebtedness of Argentina, with a population of under 5,000,000, is $100 per capita. The per capita indebtedness of the United States is less than $9, and we pay a less total interest on our public debt than Argentina pays on its. The per capita indebtedness of England (the United Kingdom) was given at $88 in 1904, and is now $110; Canada owes about $90 a head; Australia over $200, while Germany is very low, about $12. The cost of the military arm of the South American republics is quite low, even less than Switzerland, and the army and navy is frequently small and inefficient. In Argentina, Chile, and Peru the policy of conscription is in vogue. Brazil has municipal and interstate taxes not unlike the Italian octroi and even bearing a sug gestion of similarity to the miserable like n taxes of China. This question is being threshed out now by the government and there are numerous federal supreme court decisions against the system. It will be wiped out and must be if Brazil ever hopes to become even approachably great. In Brazil they say, " See Rio and die," as they say in Japan, "See Nikko," and in Italy, "See Naples," and in the days of yellow fever and cholera this has been literally true and in a manner not intended by the proverb. But it 42 THE ANDEAN LAND has been nearly twenty years since the big city, at the debouchement of the "River January," was scourged, and the only memories are stories of the dead that outnumbered the living and choked the streets until they were just dumped into the sea sans ceremony. Now Rio claims a death rate of seventeen to the thousand, which is lower than New York, if one could only place a jot of trust in Brazilian statistics. The city looks clean and smells clean. The great new commercial thoroughfare, Avenida Central, the pride of the better classes and the abused of the lowly, which was shot through the very centre of the most huddled portion of the city with no respect for anything in its Juggernaut course, is a blaze of electricity at night and in the day of sunlight and good air. Constructed within the last five years it is already lined with splendid and pretentious business buildings, making it the commercial heart of the city. The Rua Ouvidor, meaning "where you are," or really "street of gossip," is still the human clearing house of Rio. If you wish to see anybody, go to the Rua Ouvidor and you will not have to wait long. No wheeled traffic of any character is permitted in Ouvidor, so everybody walks, and here one sees the best and the worst in all the Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brazil. The shops are good and the prices high, highest in the world, a characteristic of all South America. PART OF AVENIDA CENTRAL, RIO DE JANEIRO MATTERS BRAZILIAN 43 The harbor and environs of Rio are really indescribable. From a cargo standpoint the Rio harbor is the worst in the world, but the new quai, it is hoped, will go far to correct this condi tion. From an artistic point of view the harbor is unique. There is nothing like it. San Fran cisco has its Golden Gate ; Naples, its Vesuvius, Capri, and Ischia; Sydney, its palisaded en trance; Nagasaki, its mountains in miniature; Yokohama, its Fujiyama; Hong Kong, its heights, and yet none is like Rio. Partisans of other harbors usually give in after a trip to Tijuca and always capitulate after visiting Cor covado. The entrance to the harbor is much wider and easier than at Sydney, which is a little at the expense of protection. Islands are set everywhere in the great basin. Plumes of royal and cocoa palms mark them well. On shore are hills and mountains and peaks and crests. If Rome is a city of seven hills, Rio is a city of a thousand tumuli. The Sugar Loaf, the Organ Mountains, Tijuca, Corcovado, are most in the eye. There is a cog road to the top of Corcovado (meaning the " hunch back"), and it climbs steep grades and crosses dizzy chasms full of tropical growth, — begonias, orchids, palms, salvia, coruba, borboleta, innu merable parasites and saprophytes, cotton trees, and more that I did not know, — while all below is the cidade do Rio Janeiro under weather- 44 THE ANDEAN LAND stained tiles. Great blue butterflies wafted by, and away off one could sometimes see a huge bird lazily silhouetted against the hazy sky, which we were told by one was a condor, and by another a golden eagle, and which was probably neither. What a place for a bug chaser ! One could easily imagine a lepidoptera devotee with his scoop net, heedless of all else, madly pursu ing a wonderful cerulean moth, or a praying bug, or a burglarious binchuca, the latter with antennae like the trunk of an elephant and a stinger like the snout of an ant-eater, blood thirsty, poisonous, and as silent as a politician of the old regime. In the route to Corcovado we crossed two memorable steel bridges, the product of highest engineering. One was the Ponte das Velhas, or "Old Woman's Bridge," and the other was Ponte das Caboclas, or "Bridge of the Mulattress," about which hang stories as unprintable as they probably are untrue. There are hundreds of autos in Rio and most of them are of American make. I saw only one European car, and I saw only one machine, a White Steamer of Cleveland, which was made outside of Michigan. The drive around the bay on the fine new boulevard is an ideal course for autos. Another course takes one through the tunnel to Leme, where one may sup at the very feet of the majestic green and white ocean breakers of the height of those that disillusioned MATTERS BRAZILIAN 45 King Canute. At the City Club, where gather all the English-speaking people, one may dine quite a la Americaine, with additions of papai, abacote, and pinha. Our host in Rio, Mr. A. B. Slater, gerente companhia do Gaz, is one of the important men of Brazil, who are there giving of their genius to solve the scientific-commercial problems of the country. He is an American to be proud of, and it can be said that the tropics have not feazed his physical strength or his intellectual force or dimmed the lustre of his hospitality. When he could n't be with us in person he would put us under the guardianship of Mr. Robert J. Shalders, a Brazilian in type and by birth, but not in name, who graduated at Cornell, 1904, so we were fortunate every moment. Mr. Slater will return to the States just as soon as his big work is done. Although born in Calcutta of American parents, he spent his boyhood in Connecticut playing on the farms of his grand fathers, which were near to each other. Now he owns both those farms, and his own idea is to get back to them and spend his "old boyhood" in pastoral peace. May the realization soon come true and the days under the fine old wooden nutmeg trees be long, and many and happy ones. Rio de Janeiro borrows its morals or lack of them, its amusements and dissipations, and its bold literature from Paris. At the High Life 46 THE ANDEAN LAND gambling club one sees repeated the scenes of Monte Carlo, — a blaze of light, the rattle and clatter, calls of croupiers, and men and women singeing their wings at the flame of the game. The Rio Moulin Rouge quite outdoes the old red mill of Paris, and so the whirligig goes round from night until morning. On Rua Ouvidor the coarsest prints conceivable are dis played on the sidewalk, where the news-vender arranges his wares flat on the pavement. One sees no drunkenness among the natives and very little disorder. The new municipal theatre now building will cost $5,000,000, a fine monument to their hedonistic inclinations. Brazil is not a manufacturing land and seems content to raise coffee and buy clothes. Until quite recently the French monopolized the shoe trade, but now that the Brazilians know the supe riority of Yankee footwear the Gaul is out of the running. Everything is high, high, high, in Brazil except the price of labor which ranges from two to three milreis (sixty to ninety cents) a day. The working classes are generally very, very poor, and the complaint is that there is no money in the country, because they send outside for so many of the necessaries. The legationary residences in Brazil are at Petropolis, a mountain resort about two hours by boat from Rio and then a little time by railroad. The ride is a beautiful one and MATTERS BRAZILIAN 47 Petropolis justifies its claim to good air, coolness, and health. The port of Santos, where all the Sao Paulo coffee is shipped, is a few miles up an estuary into which flows a network of creeks and rivers. The adjacent shores are low, feverish, and covered with a dense tropical forest. Time was, and only a short time ago, when entire crews of ships from captain to cook's boy would die, leaving the ship moored like a haunted morgue with only rats to keep the watch. Now Santos is fairly healthful and does n't quite look the death hole it is reputed to be. Two hours by rail back up in the hills is Sao Paulo, 100,000 population, one of the most beautiful and health ful cities in all Brazil, or in the world for that matter. While we are talking subsidy in the States a fine war is going on among shipowners in the trade between our country and Brazil and Argentina. Several English lines, a Brazilian line, and numerous tramps are involved. It ap pears that Arbuckle went to the Lamport & Holt people and demanded a lower rate on coffee from Rio to New York. After deducting all rebates, and they would shame a railroad company, Arbuckle was paying twenty-five cents a bag. He offered twenty-three cents and guar anteed at that rate to ship a million bags a year. Lamport & Holt thought they were 48 THE ANDEAN LAND certain of their position and refused to make any concession. Arbuckle withdrew his busi ness and employed tramp steamers. The rate on coffee began to decline, until now (1907) it is sixteen to seventeen cents a bag, Santos and Rio to New York. Lamport & Holt claim the coffee reaches the States in an unclean and unwholesome condition. Also Lamport & Holt have begun to retaliate. They have prac tically the only passenger service from New York and their cargo ships are really high grade. The passenger ships refuse now to call at Per- nambuco and may be entirely withdrawn from the service. The Germans say they will put on a service if Lamport & Holt pull out. One of the Lamport & Holt ships, the Terence, had been waiting in Rio harbor a month for a cargo when we were there. With these conditions how much business will a subsidized American line develop ? Our trade with South America is now served by several lines that are at one another's throats. American dollars will earn more elsewhere. Advocates of the subsidy say American banking institutions and trade establishments will follow the inauguration of an American shipping service, but this has not been true in Japan, China, and Australia, although Spreckles' Oce anic line, the Pacific Mail, and the Northern Pacific and Great Northern lines on the Pacific MATTERS BRAZILIAN 49 are the best on those waters, and all fly Old Glory. The hazard of business in South America is still great, and even in Argentina at this writing four states are in a condition of semi-revolt, with Corrientes really up in arms. Anyhow, the subsidy question has two sides. The Latin is seen at his best in South America ; that is to say at his best where he is the dominant element. Like iron ore he shows best results when he is mixed properly. A wholesome amal gamation with the Anglo-Saxon or the Teuton does him the most good, and the only place where the conditions approach perfection for this mixing is in the United States. In South America where he rules unhampered by any thing except himself, he does some things won derfully well and other things just as badly, leaving the average of efficiency none too high. At Rio he has a "baby wheel," where infants that are a burden to their mothers may be chucked into a wheel a la water and received upon the "other side" by a church representa tive. The process is a secret one and nobody sees the mother dispose of her undesirable off spring, and it and the mother part company for ever. The child is reared by the Church and is taught to be useful, which is better for it and for society than if it had been thrown off a dock or into a sewer. No effort, however, seems to be VOL. I. — 4 50 THE ANDEAN LAND made to correct the source of the evil and so illegitimacy runs on in passionate riot. And this seems to be their way. The South American Latin often appears too apt to aim at the effect without trying to remove the cause. An immigrant may go to Brazil with passage paid from anywhere. Once there an attempt is made to hold him by a form of force rather than by shaping conditions so that he can do so well there that he would prefer to stay on his own accord. South American countries, as a general proposition, are not good places for the poor man. The cost of living comfortably is very high, the most excessive in the world, while the individual earning power is not in proportion or nearly so, which makes for a rich and a poor class, with no happy inter mediate upon which to found the best society. A pair of good shoe laces costs twenty-five cents gold in Buenos Ayres, and everything else may be reckoned in much the same ratio to the cost of articles in the United States. We have contended for a long time that a thrifty workingman can earn more, live better, and save more with better prospects for uplift and advancement for his family in the United States than in any other country on earth, and I be come more certain of this all the time. We are accustomed to comparison with the older countries of Europe where population is con- MATTERS BRAZILIAN 51 gested and where natural resources have been drawn upon for centuries, and have sometimes thought that our favorable conditions were due to the newness of things. Evidently we must look elsewhere for a reason, for here are new countries of vast natural wealth, discovered to the world at the same time ours was, and yet the contrasts between them and the United States are greater than any to be found in Europe. We must give large credit to our national policies, and perhaps more to the greater efficiency per man of our average peoples. CHAPTER III THE ARGENTINE AND BEYOND The Argentine — The Locust Plague — Dearth of Rainfall — Undesirables go to South America — Area and Forests — Rio de la Plata — Shoot ing the Martinetta — Buenos Ayres — Great La Prensa — Palermo Park — Patagonia's Passing — The Patagonians — The Tierra del Fuegians — Uruguay — Firm Financial Basis — - A Ban quet in Montevideo — River Plate Competition with American Wheat — British Buyers assert Our Inspection is Bad — Nicholas Mihanovich — Pisciculture in Argentina — Fish Eggs from the United States — The Guanaco. IN Argentina seventy-seven pieces of mail per inhabitant per year are handled as against four for Brazil. Argentina claims to handle more mail than either Canada or Australia. Argentina also has an excellent press, with a well organized telegraphic news service. Many of the newspapers of Argentina are good and some of them are great. Newspaper buildings are modern, complete, and even unique. Some have public libraries, public lecture rooms, pub lic dispensaries, clubs, and cafes for employees and many other features, gathered from ideas 5* ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 53 in effect all over the world. A description of La Prensa's unusual equipment is given else where in this book. Buenos Ayres is the largest Spanish city in the world, just as Rio de Janeiro is the largest Portuguese city in the world, and in more ways than one it is a remarkable city. It is well paved, watered, sewered, lighted, governed, and parked. The city bears no comparison to Rio de Janeiro in picturesqueness, and its great Avenida de Mayo, although older and better fringed with plane (sycamore) trees, is not as well built as the Avenida Central in Rio, nor is it as attractive. Buenos has a population of a little over a mil lion and Rio a little under. South American census statistics generally are often a jumble of guesses and not always good guesses either. Buenos Ayres is a federal city, the same as Washington and Mexico City. The state of Buenos Ayres is the wealthiest and most popu lous of all the Argentine states. It, with the federal city, has about half the population of the Argentine Republic. Business is not good in the Argentine. Very recently (March, 1907) there have been heavy failures, one amounting to over two million dollars gold, and the prospects for the immedi ate future do not look bright. The land has been so devastated by locusts and parched by drought throughout that the crops this year are 54 THE ANDEAN LAND less than one-third. Much stock has starved and there is woe on the pampas. While we were in Buenos Ayres in March, 1907, the drought of months was broken by veritable cloudbursts taxing the city's surface and under drains and flooding everything, although they are prepared for as great a rainfall as five inches at once. This rain did not come in time to save the crops, but it did come most opportunely for pasture, which would have been entirely dead very soon. It would seem that the people of Europe are coming to look upon the Argentine as a land of locusts and drought, for immigration has fallen off a great deal this year, notwithstanding the fact that the stricter immigration laws of the United States have practically turned the flow of undesirable immigrants of the world to South America, which fact has been observed and taken advantage of by governments interested in ridding themselves of certain classes, and also by professional colonizers and immigration trans portation companies. So great is the locust plague in the Argentine that the government has large corps of inspec tors enforcing the locust laws which require landholders to ditch against, kill, and otherwise fight the pests. These inspectors are paid $300 a month silver or about $140 gold. There is much complaint on the part of estancieros (ranch ers) that these inspectors do nothing but ride over GENERAL VIEW OF PART OF BUENOS AYRES Uncompleted Dome at Right is that of Halls of Congress ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 55 the country, quartering themselves upon the people, borrowing horses and doing next to nothing. One estanciero, speaking of them, said to us: "We killed a great number of locusts by burn ing half a league of grass and made ditches around thirty hectares [over sixty acres] of corn and in various parts of our camp [ranch] where there were masses of hoppers, but we would have killed the same number had there been no locust inspectors." Many others told us that the locust extinction laws were a farce. An estanciero named Gus- tave Chaude made this statement: "On February 24, 1907, the locusts passed over Alberdi all the afternoon and all night, travel ling directly with the sun. On February 25, 1907, in the evening, they passed in millions, flying very low, and also millions stopped at Alberdi, devouring everything they could find. On Febru ary 27, 1907, the main body of locusts departed, leaving countless numbers behind, however, which most probably will remain here to die, for ten out of twelve have from one to five maggots in their bodies. I put one hundred of these into a box, covered, and supplied with green food so that I may see the result if the hatching comes off." On March 5, 1907, the Argentine government made the following public locust report : 56 THE ANDEAN LAND " Province of Buenos Ayres : A great swarm of flyers was seen passing over Bayanca in an easterly direction. " Province of Cordoba : The president of the Cor doba locust commission reports that at various parts under his charge there were destroyed 22,969 kilos (twenty-five tons) of flyers. A swarm passed over Tatara Legos March 3, going east. In February, at Villa Allende, Coquin, and Caseros there were buried 3,198 kilos of jumpers. Flyers passed over Talaritos March 2. In Arguello 345 kilos of flyers were destroyed in a week. "At La Cruz in Corrientes province, swarms of flyers passed from east to west February 20. " Province of Tucuman : Over the department of Graneros swarms of flyers have been passing south east to northwest. "Province of Santa Fe: Near Los Toscas big swarms of flyers are passing." And so the report goes on and on. True stories are told of huge flights of locusts alighting on railway tracks and stopping trains. We give this much to show how terribly accursed is the Argentine this year. It is the first backset in some time and lands have had much the same increase in values as the wheat lands of Manitoba and Saskatchewan during the last ten years. This repulse to effort will be felt for many years. Looking far away to the east across the sea from Buenos Ayres, the eye passes (on the map) the Cape of Good Hope and encounters no ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 57 large land until reaching Australia. In point of fact Buenos Ayres is a little further south than Melbourne. One hears a great deal of Rio de la Plata, or the River Plate, which is not a river at all, but a great estuary combining the mouths of the Salado, Uruguay, Parana, and several smaller rivers. If measured far enough out this estuary is one hundred and eighty miles wide, but the measurement most commonly given is further up where the width is one hundred and forty miles. At Montevideo, which is practically on the open sea, the Plate is sixty-five miles wide. From Montevideo to Buenos Ayres is about one hundred miles, and at the latter city the Plate is thirty-one miles wide, then narrowing rapidly until the Parana and Uruguay Rivers come in with the muddy waters of their great drainage basins. A person sailing from Montevideo to Buenos Ayres, upon looking down at the waters, might suppose himself to be on the Missouri, but there are no shores to be seen and the sea may be as rough and wicked as on Lake Erie. A fine river trip, and one quite easily made, is to ascend the Parana to the Alta Parana and then on to the interesting water falls of Yguazu, the greatest in South America, commonly reported as being three miles wide and two hundred feet high. This trip can be pleasantly made in a month. It displays much of the interior. 58 THE ANDEAN LAND The Republica Argentina is composed of the federal district of Buenos Ayres, fourteen prov inces, and ten territories, as follows: Provinces: Buenos Ayres, with an area of 117,720 square miles, or about twice the size of Michigan ; Entre Rios, Santa Fe, Cordoba, Cor rientes, San Luis, Mendoza, San Juan, La Rioja, Catamarca, Santiago del Estero, Tucu man, Salta, and Jujuy. Territories: Misiones, Formosa, Chaco (com monly called the Gran Chaco), La Pampa, Neuquen, Rio Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz, Tierra del Fuego, and Los Andes. The grand total area is 1,135,810 square miles, with a popu lation estimated at five millions. The federal district, comprising the city of Buenos Ayres, has seventy square miles. Santa Cruz is the largest territory, with 109,090 square miles. The smallest territory is Tierra del Fuego, with 8290 square miles, and the smallest state is Tucuman, which is the great sugar-producing region, with 8920 square miles, or a little larger than New Jersey. Sugar cane was raised on 134,000 acres in Tucuman in 1906. The constitution of Argentina is copied some what after the United States Constitution. The president must be a Roman Catholic. State government is supposed to be free and popular, but in fact the central government is continually interfering in purely state affairs, siding with BUENOS AYRES, AVENIDA DE MAYO Showing La Prensa Building and Government Building ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 59 what it may guess to be the dominant element, or with the side most favorable to the party in charge of the national administration at the time. A condition of incipient revolution may be said to exist in some of the states all of the time. Just now (March, 1907), there are four states disaffected, and the situation in Mendoza and Corrientes is so bad as to not only demand the customary governmental " interventor," but also the presence of government troops. Citi zens who are too active as opposing statesmen are put to the lash and others are imprisoned, while still others who are more troublesome are given a very short time in which to leave the country. All of this, of course, affects business and increases materially the hazard of trade, both domestic and foreign. The various prov inces have their own governors and legisla tures, which hold during popular favor, a most unstable term apparently. The territorial gov ernors are appointed by the national executive. In all the Andean provinces minerals are found, including gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, and coal, but the principal mines are in Rioja and Catamarca. Great distance to water and high transportation charges operate against prof itable working, and the mineral resources of Argentina have not really begun development. The province of Buenos Ayres is almost tree less, with only small mimosae along the coast 60 THE ANDEAN LAND and calden in the west which make fair fuel. In Santa Fe, Chaco, Santiago del Estero, Entre Rios, Corrientes, Misiones, and Tucuman there are large forests of cedar (easily worked), que bracho (axe breaker), used for railroad ties; nandubay, for fence posts; lapacho, algarrobo, and other fine material for furniture and ship timber. The ombu is a beautiful shade tree and the ceibo with its deep crimson blossom is most attractive. Wild animals are numerous and include the jaguar or tigre, puma or leon, many wild-cats, the aguara-guazu or maned fox, which is reddish with a black stripe along the back ; gray and red foxes, many weasels, skunks, the nutria, which is called an otter, but has a tail like a rat and is the myopotamis coy pus; seals, opossums, rac coons, vicuna, huanaco, llamas, and alpacas, the last two said to be domesticated vari eties of the preceding two ; many deer, varying in size from the Virginius to a little one eighteen inches in height; armadillos of four kinds; wild guinea pigs, the pampa hare, which is said not to be a hare at all, but rather the dolichotis patagonica ; many monkeys, carpincho, or water hog; vizcacha, or a kind of prairie dog; tapir, peccary, ant-eaters, and still others. The birds of Argentina include the vulture, hawk, owl, ostrich (rhea or nandu), eagle, parrots, condor, woodpecker, ovenbirds, hum- ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 61 ming birds, ibis, flamingo, spoonbill, swallow, pigeons, doves, egrets, storks, wood turkeys, partridge of several kinds, snipe, plover, duck, swan, geese, gulls, albatross, bustard, penguin, and many more, some of which are unclassified. The big grouse called martinetta is much hunted. It is a great bird to run and so slow to fly that snares are set for it into which it is de liberately driven. The real sportsmen, however, have a way of making it take wing. They have two men ride a hundred feet apart and drag a rope between them. This pulls the martinetta off its feet and forces it to fly. The hunter following behind the rope blazes away at a clumsy target and if he does n't shoot a rider or two he has what he regards as fine sport, which is not always marred by the potting of the rope dragger. The finest monument to be seen in South America to any man's ambition and ability is La Prensa and its home in Buenos Ayres. There is n't another newspaper building equipped like it or on the same plan in the world, and as a type of purely Argentine accomplishment it is rare and would take high place anywhere. The building is on the Avenida de Mayo, is very large and has five floors and fine basement. In addition to all of the most modern news paper accessories, including American presses, Mergenthaler linotypes (some of them duplex), 62 THE ANDEAN LAND casting rooms, artists' rooms, photographers' rooms, electroplating plant, separate imposing room, pneumatic tubes, circulating room, busi ness apartments, separate rooms for various edi torial workers, it has many other features. There are cafes, a public and a private library, billiard room, fencing room, and gymnasium, lecture hall, music room; most richly furnished apart ments where distinguished guests are entertained, including bedroom, bath, smoking room, recep tion room, living room ; two such apartments of seven rooms each with kitchen and dining room common to both. The china is especially designed, and the ex quisite wood carving cannot be excelled in the world, as the most skilful German and Swiss carvers did the work. The large lecture room is not baroque or garish, but is as rich and re fined as any room I have ever seen in European palaces. Its murals are by the first masters of Italy and the entire scheme is so subdued and harmonious and so carried out in detail as to leave a permanent impression of satisfaction upon the beholder. There is a law department where two attorneys of admittedly high standing give free legal advice to the poor and defend or prosecute, as the case may be. But the crowning feature is a free dispensary and surgery where an average of ninety poor persons a day are treated or operated upon by the most skilful THE HOME OF LA PRENSA The Famous Argentine Daily ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 63 physicians and surgeons in the Argentine. As in all of the other departments nothing has been spared here in equipment, including the Roentgen ray and every appliance known to modern sur gery. It would be impossible to exaggerate this building. La Prensa 's news service covers the world. It is served in North America by an arrangement reciprocal with the New York Herald. There are rooms for staff meetings and elaborate offices for Ezequiel P. Paz, the proprietor, and Dr. Davila, the editor-in-chief. There are rare ar rangement, cleanliness, and order throughout. In every sense the plant and the paper are unique. La Prensa has a circulation of 110,000 and makes money. In the big library, which is as free as it is perfect, we were shown the first copy, a little single sheet, six columns wide and sixteen inches long. From this humble begin ning great La Prensa has grown in less than forty years. It is doing a work of highest im portance in the Argentine, maintaining a lofty tone and a judicial dignity, combining inci- siveness, fearlessness, and patriotism in its treatment of all questions. La Prensa is the Thunderer of Argentina. There are other good newspapers in Buenos Ayres and it is no reflection to place La Prensa at the top. Their enterprise and their acuteness for news is undeniable. Illustrating this, I shall 64 THE ANDEAN LAND have to tell what befell me there. I did not desire to go to the Argentine to be entertained or to spend my time in acknowledging courtesies. It is a poor way to see a country and its people. One is so apt to see only one small class and one equally insufficient side of things. So I took no letters of introduction. Upon leaving the ship at Buenos Ayres, I, as all other passengers, was compelled to make a statement to the authorities, giving occupation, etc. This I gave as "newspaper man." We had not been in the Grand Hotel an hour before a Spanish-speaking reporter of El Diario came for an interview. It was 2.30, and El Diario issues at 4 o'clock. The young man was very polite and after the interview he asked for a photograph. I told him of my deep regret at not being able to accommodate him. Smiling, he said Ambassador Dudley, the new United States Ambassador to Brazil, was passing through from Peru and had no end of his photographs, which led him to believe that all North Americans went thus armed. I told him to cut off the ambassa dor's whiskers and use the altered picture for me if he wished. It was 3 o'clock when Senor Adolfo Rothkoff left, yet when El Diario reached the street in an hour afterward it contained a half- column interview with the "Yankee periodista." Just as I had retired for the night, a reporter from La Prensa was announced and was received. ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 65 He desired a photograph as well. He was told that if he wished one he would have to make it, and he took the statement seriously. Bowing good-night, I thought of no further break in my rest, when just as slumber softly came, a knock on the door brought the word that La Prensa had returned with the official photographer and helpers. There were four in all. Within ten minutes I had sat on the bedside in pajamas and okata and they had taken a flashlight, which appeared in La Prensa next morning as easily recognizable as newspaper portraits ever are. There followed next day calls from El Pais and La Razon and others, including the leading illustrated paper of Buenos Ayres. Afterwards Senor Emilio B. Morales, of La Razon, called in person. Senor Paz sent his compliments through Senor Juan E. Fitz y Simon, and asked me to be the guest of La Prensa. Senor Fitz y Simon's name sounded very Irish to me, but he could speak only a few words in English. His father had visited the University of Michigan in the interest of Argentine educa tion and his brother had seen Michigan beat Ohio at football. I accepted La Prensa' 's invi tation only to the extent of being shown through the establishment, accompanied by half the staff, bowing and running hither and thither to light a room, or show or tell something. I shall always retain a most pleasant impression of VOL. I.- 66 THE ANDEAN LAND Buenos Ayres newspaper men, even if I am wondering how they knew me not to be an impostor. But North Americans, as they call us, are never impostors, they say. Shall we not endeavor to live up to the reputation ? There are nine public parks in Buenos Ayres, the largest and finest of which is the Third of February Park most commonly called Palermo. This stretches along the River Plate and is the Sunday Mecca of all classes. Adjoining is the race course where Sunday running races are held. On a Sunday afternoon every class in the Argentine may be seen driving in the widest possible range of vehicles on the Palermo boulevard. Where speeding is permitted horses are driven in a mad gallop and automobiles rush and toot and careen and smell along in maddest flight. We saw the boulevard so full that we counted eight vehicles abreast and all in a seeming inextricable tangle. But they would emerge in solemn parade around a circular drive where mounted and armed gendarmes compelled all to slow down and go in single file. The rounds of this double circle must be made twice, which brings all present face to face at least once, permitting a fine inspection of faces, hats, and gowns. Probably the most startling one thing is the emaciated condition of the horses. I did not see one public horse in good fettle, and I rarely CONCERT AND LECTURE ROOM IN LA PRENSA BUILDING, BUENOS AYRES ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 67 saw a private team that an American hack driver would sit behind. Commiseration for the Paris hack horse is felt by all the world, but it is an affluent equine compared with its congener in Buenos Ayres. One of the things hard to reconcile oneself to is the fact that politically and almost geographi cally Patagonia has been wiped off the map, if it can be said to have ever been there in any thing like a tangible form. The region where South America begins to narrow, and which has been known as Patagonia ever since the new world made its bow, has been divided between Chile and Argentina and has been cut up into territories, not one of which, strange and unfor tunate to relate, retains the name of Patagonia. The geographical societies of the world should petition Chile or Argentina to at least preserve the name of the "Land of the Big Paws," which Patagonia means. This could be easily done by changing the name of Chubut or some other territory that has been carved out of Patagonia. There was little myth about the size of the Patagonians. Mr. Keith Cameron, a pioneer and one of the most extensive sheep ranchers both on the mainland and on the Falkland Islands, told me he had seen a Patagonian girl of sixteen weigh eighteen stone, or two hundred and fifty-two pounds. Her mother was much larger, 68 THE ANDEAN LAND but the bright shawl present which was necessary to induce the girl to get on to the scales would not, nor would anything else, make the older woman tempt the witches, so Mr. Cameron did not get her weight. The Patagonians are huge but kindly, and those who live mostly in canoes are strangely undeveloped in the lower limbs, making them resemble the caricatures drawn of big men with little legs, which they really are. The land Indians are more symmetrical and are monsters. As they drop down into Tierra del Fuego, across and south of the Straits of Magel lan, they decline in disposition and intelligence until they are among the lowest human orders of the world. In that bleak land they live almost naked with sometimes a skin about the loins, and subsist more uncertainly than the ancient cave man. Nothing makes them so happy as to capture a whale, and this they cannot do upon their own account, but are in the habit of watch ing until a whale is driven ashore by its mortal enemy, the swordfish, or some- other cause, which happens quite often. Then the Tierra del Fuegian, attacking from land, kills the whale and dines on blubber. Many attempts have been made to civilize the Fuegian, but with little success. Generally when removed from their native environment they die, but some years ago three were kept in England for several years and then returned to their people to whom ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 69 they taught a few of the arts of civilization, and some of the tricks, too. Uruguay and Paraguay, the former on the coast and calling itself the Banda Oriental, and the latter far inland, are sometimes referred to as buffer states and in danger of assimilation by their big neighbors, Brazil and Argentina. This danger does not seem to be imminent, as there are more statesmen and generals in these little countries than in both the big ones. These turbulent statesmen can start a revolution any time more quickly than the average housewife can raise bread, and it would keep a big standing army, and navy as well, to keep them in subjection. Nevertheless, Brazil is sup posed to be eying them hungrily and making preparations. There is independence in the very air of Uru guay, and it is safe to predict that there will be no boundary changes soon unless Uruguay takes a notion to annex a strip of one or both of its oversized neighbors. Uruguay has spent more money for educational purposes per capita than any other South American republic, and its fine capital, Montevideo, meaning " Behold the Mountain," is to-day (1907) the most prosper ous city in South America. With a population of 300,000 it is an attractive place, and from its situation naturally more wholesome than Buenos Ayres. A great sewer system is just 70 THE ANDEAN LAND being finished which will make it, with its fine sea air, the healthiest city on the east coast. Calle 18 de Julio, or 18th of July Street, is the leading thoroughfare. Pocitos and Urbano are fine suburban bathing beaches, patronized not only by residents but by the rich of Buenos Ayres. The first time we were there they were inaugu rating their new president, Dr. Claudio Williman, and the city was ablaze with light while elaborate decorations hung everywhere and the people were in a highly ebullient state. The retiring president, D. Jose Battle y Ordonez, was a popular man, too, and had placed the country upon the most stable financial basis of any in South America. The people did not wish to seem to be glad at his going out nor did they desire to withhold their pleasure from the equally popular new president. This caused a mixture of emotion hard to manage even by the Spanish nature, which has a wider, if shallower, gamut of feeling than that of any other. They credit Ordonez with a great many reforms, and cer tainly he accomplished something, for a United States dollar is only worth ninety cents, and an English sovereign $4.70. This reminds me to state that it is better to carry gold for one's expenses in South America, wherever possible, than paper in any form, whether letter of credit or circular notes or cash. STREET IN MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 71 Uruguay is the smallest of the South American republics. Its area is 72,110 square miles, or a little over half the upper peninsula larger than Michigan, and its population is about one million, nearly a third of which is concentrated in Montevideo. The country produces all of the sub-tropical and temperate fruits and vegetables. We ate luscious peaches and grapes of fine flavor, which ripened in February, and which would be called good even in Michigan or Delaware. Formerly a part of Brazil, the little country revolted in 1825, and its independence was recognized in 1828. It has a larger ratio of native-born population than any other South American republic, and the influence of this may be seen in many directions. There are pub lic schools, with primary education compulsory. The state religion is Roman Catholic, but other religions are tolerated. We were permitted to witness a banquet given by the Spanish minister at the Hotel Oriental, Montevideo. The orchestra played Uruguayan, Spanish, and English national music, but nothing suggesting the United States. There were many courses and wines, much gold lace and formality, clouds of cigar and cigarette smoke, but the speeches were bad and were not well received. During the rendition of all the national airs everybody stood, and for a while it looked as though there might be no banquet, as one musical 72 THE ANDEAN LAND number of that character followed another until it became awkward and tiresome. May I not be permitted to refer to the man ners and habits of the Spanish peoples, without arraigning them too unfairly? Up to the time of our war with Spain, and during it, the Dons were always pleased to refer to us as "Yankee pigs" and similar expressions. But let us see. The Spaniard rarely uncovers his head to a woman, no matter how quickly he may do so to a masculine superior. Likewise he very rarely takes a bath, and it may almost be said of him that he never does unless he gets caught out in the rain or falls off the dock. His table manners may be good form in Spain, and no doubt are, but they are very different from ours. He champs his maxillaries like a Berkshire, is never afraid of cutting his mouth, and eschews any object he may chance not to swallow with the force of a blowgun without reference to precise direction. To be caromed under the ear with a fruit core by your vis-a-vis table companions may go in Andalusia, but it rather startles a Yankee. All this can be said of the so-called higher classes. The lower stratum has no manners at all, either in Spain or South America. If there is a land where there is more real gentility, true simplicity, genuine courtesy, sin cere hospitality, honest consideration, fair toler ation, cleanly personal care, prompt living up to ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 73 obligations, than in the United States, I have it yet to see, always admitting there are many other attractive lands and good peoples. It simply comes of our being true to the heart's core, which breeds a pride and care of self and a regard for our neighbors that grows with us all of the time. In travelling over the world one sees much of the competition of life ; of the race for national prestige; of the conflict never ending between the different peoples who are fighting the earth's material warfare, not to mention the spiritual contests which are going on everywhere, too. The great world's competition at the moment is between the Americans, Germans, and English, with the Japanese becoming a decided factor in their sphere of action, while the French and Italians are doing much and better than they were. Even Spain is awakening, and Spanish ships make the best time between Europe and South America, with Italy second. The German ships are the best, probably, in all respects. The service to South America from England is ac complished in fine ships, but they are poorly managed with reference to pleasing the public. Bad food and bad treatment is the rule on the English ships, and good food and good treat ment is the common condition on the German ships, with the result that the latter are doing the more business. 74 THE ANDEAN LAND The Lamport & Holt English service from New York is really not bad, and the treatment aboard ship could not be improved. The American line North Atlantic ships will soon be so much outclassed that they will seek other routes, and there is already talk of putting them into the South American trade, where they will undoubtedly develop a big business during the travel season. It is noticeable that wherever the British and Germans come into close competition the latter most often win out. I have been watching in stances of this kind in various parts of the world for a number of years and have come to the con clusion that the real reason is to be found in the fact that the German works more hours a day. He starts at least an hour earlier in the morning, works an hour later in the evening, and does n't stop for afternoon tea. Then, again, he is n't living on past prestige, but is going in for present glories. See what he has done in the United States. Emperor William's subjects are our greatest competitors, and they are worthy foe- men in every way. The world understands their politeness much better than it understands the average Englishman's gruff ness and cold ness, no matter how warm the latter may be after you once get your shaft of acquaintance down into his heart formation. Young men in America and Germany are being taught to do ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 75 things thoroughly and upon scientific lines. There is n't a good mining school in all the United Kingdom, and their various engineering schools are far behind those of our country and Germany. However, while the Germans are industrious and persistent and are original in theory and speculation, they are not nearly so inventive in the direction of applied science as the Americans and English, and are even behind the French and Italians in new mechanical ideas. This is a handicap which operates to balance their effectiveness. A prominent young Englishman named Gun- ther, who is one of the largest estancieros in Argentina, but who lives in England, and is a student and a traveller, declared to me with sadness in his voice that England was not going ahead in any way and was going backward in many things. He did not even seem to think that the clever setting on of the Japanese against the Russians by England counted for much, although in the writer's opinion it was one of the master strokes of diplomacy in all the world's history. An English engineer named Crawford has written a book devoted to Uruguay in which he tells most marvellous tales of robbers and ani mals and queer things. Crawford tells of a bird that shot a man, and of shooting at one time over a pig that pointed birds as well as any setter, 76 THE ANDEAN LAND and at another time of using a bulldog as a bird dog that was better than any pointer he ever saw. I had a long talk with Mr. Will Paul, of Ips wich, England, of the corn-buying firm of R. & W. Paul, Ltd. They are the largest corn buyers on the River Plate and also buy very largely of the United States and Danube crop. Last year they imported over 16,000,000 bushels for the London, Harwich, Ipswich, King's Lynn, Yarmouth, Wisbech, and Boston, England, market, so they are among the first corn dealers in Europe. Mr. Paul talked temperately, but earnestly and seriously, about the system of corn inspection in the United States. He said he did not wish to attack individuals or criticise the country's morals, but placed all the blame on the inspec tion system. In the old days of sailing ships, when it required some weeks to carry corn to England, No. 2 corn was inspected at such a grade as would carry for that time without damage, which is to say that it was only thor oughly ripe corn, containing so small a percent age of moisture that it would not heat during passage, that was shipped. With the transfer ence of the corn-carrying trade to steamers and the reduction of the time, there has been such a lowering of grade that now it is often the case that No. 2 corn will heat in a fourteen days' MANNER OF TYING A HORSE, MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 77 ocean voyage and even in ten days. Much corn has been delivered in bad condition, and so com mon has this become that the corn dealers of Europe are now (March, 1907) in conference upon the subject. They would boycott United States corn if they could, but they cannot because the Danube and River Plate crops cannot be depended upon to supply the demand. The Danube crop was a failure last year, and the River Plate crop is a failure this year, conse quently much of the corn for Europe must be obtained in the United States. Such being the case, the foreign corn buyers are patient because they have to be. What they would like to bring about would be the buying of corn on "rye terms," the same as Danube and River Plate corn is bought, which means the delivery of corn in good, sound condition or its rejection. The next best thing for them would be United States governmental inspection, which they are hoping for, especially since the action of the United States in regulating the meat industry. At present the charge is that all inspection is made in the interest of the seller and that there is even no uniformity in this. Bad years, when the corn crop does n't ripen perfectly, the inspec tion seems to be worse than usual. It is charged that in Chicago lower grade certificates have been issued for export corn than for corn for home consumption. It is sometimes the case 78 THE ANDEAN LAND that an elevator is owned by a shipper, in which instance the inspector who grades and issues the certificate is employed by the shipper, and natu rally gives his employer the best end of the bar gain. This is said to be true at Norfolk and at Newport News. At some ports the conditions are better than at others. It is known that at Baltimore a cargo of corn was graded No. 3 and was sent to Philadelphia and was there graded as No. 2, which resulted in the foreign trade boycotting Philadelphia during 1906. Mr. Paul had heard the report and only gave it for what it was worth, that Armour once controlled the grading so completely in Chicago that he was able to run a corn corner by having only such corn as he wished graded as No. 2. Anyhow, there is much dissatisfaction, not alone in corn, but in wheat and oats, and foreign buyers obtain supplies elsewhere when possible. The United States sent experts to Europe to teach the use of corn and increase its introduc tion and consumption abroad. What was the use of this if steps were not taken to protect the quality ? The Agricultural Department is work ing on the problem, but greater progress might be made if Senator Beveridge, who accomplished the meat reform, or some one else of like genius and courage from a big corn State, would look into the matter. In 1906 the United States sup plied 42 per cent of the European market, the ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 79 Plate 44 per cent, and the other countries 14 per cent. With conditions as they should be, the United States ought easily to market every bushel of its surplus corn abroad at best prices. Mr. Paul says there are firms in the United States that pay no attention to inspection and individually guarantee that corn shipped by them shall be delivered sound. The following letter to the author from the Messrs. Paul is so much in point that it is here reproduced : Ipswich, England, December 17, 1908. Dear Mr. Osborn : I am very glad to know that you are still interested in the question of grain inspection in the United States. My conversation with you referred entirely to Indian corn, or maize, which is known in the United States as "corn," and I believe it is on this article that your system of inspection has shown up so badly, although we understand that there has also been great cause for complaint in connection with wheat. However, maize (corn) being an article especially subject to going out of condition on voyage, unreliable certificates are far more serious to the European buyer than for wheat, which seldom goes out of condition, and regarding which it is often only a question of weight and quality. As I think I explained to you, we buy our North American corn mostly on a certificate worded " No. 2 Sail Grade." This term was originated to represent corn that was so dry in condition that it 80 THE ANDEAN LAND would carry with safety by sailing vessel, the average voyage of which was say thirty days. The quality of corn that is now tenderable on the same certificate will in many seasons arrive by steamer of ten or twelve days' voyage, heated and out of condition. You will naturally ask, Why has this deteriora tion on this certificate come about ? It is very easy to answer, and the reason is that the Boards of Commerce at the different large ports under whom inspectors are employed, no longer insist upon the real meaning of the certificate being carried out, but allow their inspectors to pass as No. 2 Sail Grade just what happens to be the average of their crop from year to year. Your system is a failure at the larger ports, such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, etc., but the state of things is ten times worse at some of the smaller ports, where it has been proved that the silo (warehouse or elevator) is owned by the shipper, and the inspector who issues the certificate is in his employ ! In this case the certificate is given for just what the shipper desires, whether the corn is good, bad, or indifferent. The consequence is that the confidence in American shippers has totally broken down with buyers on this side, and they are loath to do any trade with your ports, except where the Iowness of your prices obliges them. This, in my humble judgment, is handicapping the sale of your crop of corn to Europe to the extent of five to ten per cent. As to the remedy, I can suggest two, namely : (i) That all inspectors should be government officials and certificates should be guaranteed by the United States government, they receiving some fee ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 81 from shippers for the issue of their certificates; moisture in corn to be tested analytically. (2) That there should be an International Board, representing the United States shippers and European buyers, under whom the insoectors should be appointed. Hoping for an adjustment of a condition gene rally harmful, we are Yours sincerely, R. & W. Paul, Ltd., Mark Lane, London. Head Office, Ipswich. A handicap of ten or even five per cent upon so great a volume as our corn trade amounts to is huge and hurtful. The matter should have persistent and helpful attention by the Secretary of Agriculture at Washington. The people of the United States have the genius and the energy, and now if they will place and maintain their commercial morals on the highest footing in the world, so that the term "American" as applied to an act or a product of the United States shall mean honesty, honor, reliability, responsibility, and excellence, the problems of the future in America, whether they are moral, commercial, or political, will be easy of solution. There are instances of striking individual business success in Argentina, but they are not very numerous, which makes the accomplishment 82 THE ANDEAN LAND of Nicholas Mihanovich stand out all the more prominently. The name is very Russian, but its owner claims to have been an Austrian. As a boy he came to the River Plate, and after the usual application of economy and industry, he bought a single small boat. That little beginning has grown into the great Navegacion a Vapor Nicholas Mihanovich Sociedad Anonima, with a " flota " of 290 buques (boats) of all kinds. The " M " boats are the best between Monte video and Buenos Ayres, and good boats of the line serve the towns on the Paraguay, Uruguay, Parana, and branch streams to the remotest interior of that section of South America possi ble to be reached by river steamers. They are the " M " boats that carry you to Corrientes and Asuncion and far up the Alta Parana on the way to the falls of Yguazu, one of the natural wonders of South America, and said by those who have not seen Niagara to rival Niagara Falls. One must have fifteen or twenty days to go to and return from Yguazu, and thirty days would be better. The Argentine government is very progressive indeed and seeks to cover all the channels of public endeavor. A Michigan man, E. A. Tulian, is at the head of the new department of fish culture. A hatchery has been completed at Lake Nahual-huapi, and a second hatchery has just been built near Santa Cruz, on the Santa THE FALLS OF YGUAZU ON THE BRAZILIAN-ARGENTINE BORDER ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 83 Cruz River, under the supervision of A. H. Mahone, a relative of the late Gen. William Mahone of West Virginia. The Santa Cruz hatchery was started with 550,000 salmon eggs, 60,000 brook trout eggs, 30,000 rainbow trout eggs> 30,000 salmon trout eggs, and 30,000 land locked salmon eggs from the United States. The Santa Cruz River, Rio Chico, and Lake Argentine will be planted from this hatchery. It is hoped by Argentina that the Santa Cruz will develop into a great salmon stream, and that eventually there will be enough to support a considerable salmon-canning industry. We saw Mr. Mahone. He had gone out on a two-years' contract, but the grippe, that malady of the entire world, laid him low and he could n't shake it off, so he was going home. He told interesting stories of his experience on the Santa Cruz and was particularly enthusiastic about the opportunities for hunting. He shot a number of wild geese from his house windows, and said the guanaco and ostrich irhea) hunting was good. Mr. Mahone saw enormous herds of guanaco, similar to the great numbers of ante lope that once roamed the prairies of our West ern States. The guanaco is an ungulate, and it belongs to the same family as the llama and vicuna, more common in Peru and Bolivia. We saw several. A full-grown guanaco is larger than a Virginia 84 THE ANDEAN LAND deer, and more like a mule deer in size. It has a neck that suggests a giraffe, a head that re sembles a camel, legs like a deer, body like a donkey, and altogether it looks like nothing but a guanaco. It is hardy and gamey and will carry off more lead than a chamois or a deer. The flesh of the young is tender and juicy and the skins are useful, those of the young making fine, soft rugs, which are much in evidence all over the southern half of South America. One guanaco is said to require as much grass as nine sheep, which may be a libel, but serves to make them as unpopular with the sheep raisers as kangaroo once were in Australia before they practically went the way of the buffalo. The guanaco is vulgarly human in a trait most unusual to animals, that of spitting. They apparently spit from motives of pleasure, malice, and defence. In a semi-domestic state, in parks and private preserves, this remarkable practice has led to careful observation. In play with each other or with a game-keeper or with any animal they chance to become friendly with, they will spit with evident delight and as accu rately as a Tennessee gentleman or as a golden- winged woodpecker is said by John Burroughs to spear-like thrust its tongue. On the approach of a stranger, either human or otherwise, they will spit in both aggression and in self-defence. I saw a kindly person endeavor to feed one as ARGENTINA AND BEYOND 85 deer are fed in parks by visitors. The guanaco approached as if docile and pleased to within four feet of the generous gentleman, and then raising its head upon a level with his eyes, the animal shot a bolus of viscous saliva into the man's face, to his fearful surprise and great discomfort, knocking his humane instincts endwise, besides doing other damage to beard, eyebrows, and clothing. This saliva is supposed by the natives to be poisonous and to produce an eruption or a kind of psora, but this has not been well established. After the spitting above referred to, the guanaco did not offer to run away, but seemed to contemplate the act and accuracy of aim with tranquil satisfaction. Its victim did not know at first what had happened or who had assaulted him, and only discovered the enemy as the guanaco was about to fire the other barrel. Some other members of the animal kingdom have habits somewhat similar. The huge sea lion in the fishery building at the Battery, New York City, had during its life a habit of squirting water from its nostrils at spectators it did not like, and there is a fish that kills its food in that manner. The guanaco is a fine, strong animal and up to the present time is said to be more than holding its own. Those who have seen the going of the buffalo, kangaroo, wild pigeon, and other wild life, will wish the guanaco good luck. CHAPTER IV MAKING FOR THE HORN Star-gazing at Sea — The Southern Heavens — A Comparison of Prominent Northern and South ern Stars — The Work of Mills Observatory, University of California, in Chile — Courteous Treatment of Scientists in Chile — Harvard As tronomical Work in Peru — Leaping Porpoises — Speaking the Bark Francis Fisher — The Huge Man-eating Albatross — Battle between Sword- fish and Whale — The Norse Whaler Lange — Modern Whaling in the Antarctic Ocean — " The Rose of the River Plate." IT is n't easy for an inhabitant of the Northern Hemisphere to become accustomed to seeing the sun high in the north at noon and to look for a warm wind from the north and a cold one, and very cold too, from the south. I remember once in an Australian forest, while kangaroo-hunting, and at another time in New Zealand, while searching for a buried city covered by the great eruption of Terawera, that I had my woodcraft set at naught sufficiently to get badly turned around by forgetting that the sun makes a northern diurnal circuit of the heavens south of the line. It looks queer also to see the 86 MAKING FOR THE HORN 87 Pleiades near the horizon and Orion very low in the northern sky. At forty-five degrees south latitude the beautiful Southern Cross is almost directly overhead. Star-gazing at sea is fascinating. The stars of the northern heavens are more numerous and the constellations are more impressive than those south of the line. Nothing in the southern heavens can compare with Ursa Major, and in fact the Big Dipper reigns supreme with Orion in brilliancy and usefulness. Orion, the great hunter of the skies, and the most striking and easily recognizable constellation, is made up of stars of both northern and southern declination, so he is impartial, or rather claims all the firma ment as his realm. The star Rigel, of Orion, has a southern declination, as also has Alnilam, while Betelguese has a northern declination. Canopus is one of the most beautiful stars in the far south, while Sirius is the monarch of the heavens, but not of the dog heavens, as a good dog star should be. Its intense and clear whitish- blue light, so diamond-like, is only exceeded in brilliancy by two planets, Venus and Jupiter. Its declination is 16.6 degrees south. It may be seen in the United States quite low, forty-nine billion miles away. Adara, of Canis Majoris, is another fine southern star, and Tureis, Spica, Kiffa-Borealis, Antares, and Fomalhaut, the last of Piscis Australis, are others. 88 THE ANDEAN LAND One first sees the four stars of the false cross farther north than the true Southern Cross, then Magellan's Clouds and then the true Cross. The pointers for the Southern Cross are the two beautiful Centaurs, and no imagination is needed to see the Cross. Corvus and Leo are not so easy to make out, nor is Cygnus, the Swan, even if it is supposed to fly along the path of the Milky Way. Aldebaran and Arcturus are among the grandest stars of the northern heavens, as are also, of course, Dubhe, Merak, Phecda, Megrez, Alioth, Mizar, and Benetnasch of Ursa Major. The royal Dubhe is always nearest Polaris, the north star, the latter at the tip of the Little Bear's Tail. Kochab is the one big star of Ursa Minor. If one can see Alcor in the Big Dipper he has good eyes, and the an cients used Alcor as a test of sight. One quickly recognizes Cassiopeia's Chair on the opposite side of Polaris from the Dipper and about the same distance away. Sirius is two and a quarter times as large as the sun and has a companion the size of our sun so closely embraced that telescopes cannot now distinguish between the two. In order to obtain, as completely as possible, the radial velocity of stars, as bearing upon the motion of the solar system through space and also upon the structure of the sidereal system, the Mills Observatory, at the summit of Cerro MAKING FOR THE HORN 89 San Cristobal, about a mile and a half from the plaza of Santiago de Chile, was erected by Prof. William H. Wright and Dr. H. K. Palmer, of Lick Observatory, University of California, in 1903. Mr. D. O. Mills generously financed the enterprise. It was regarded as temporary at first and Mr. Mills donated $26,400, the esti mated cost. The expenditures were a few dol lars less. The temporary period of two years expired October, 1905, and then the observatory, having established its usefulness and desira bility, was endowed for five years longer by Mr. Mills, and Professor Wright was succeeded by Dr. Heber D. Curtis, of Lick Observatory, with Mr. George H. Paddock, of the University of Virginia, as his assistant, who are now in charge. So the work of supplementing the de terminations of radial velocities in the Northern Hemisphere by careful observations in the re maining two-sevenths of the sky space left to be covered in the Southern Hemisphere is in expert hands. From Mt. Hamilton, California, the Lick Observatory astronomers have determined the speeds of stars as far south as 30 degrees south latitude, but they have not found it desirable to go much beyond 20 degrees south, and especially in the winter seasons. Now the Mills observers near Santiago have photo graphed the spectra of all the brighter stars south of declination -25 degrees. Upon the 90 THE ANDEAN LAND basis of these observations a working list of one hundred and forty-five stars was made up. The total number of spectograms secured by the Mills expedition in two years is eight hundred, of which six hundred and seventy-six are of stars on the regular list, ninety-two are of stars whose spectra were found to be unsuitable for accurate measurement, and the remaining thirty- two are check plates of Mars, Venus, and the moon. A number of stars were found to have variable velocities, and to be attended by mas sive invisible companions. One discovery of special interest relates to Antares, a star of the first magnitude. Its variable velocity was de tected by a comparison of Mills spectograms made in Chile and California. The authorities of Chile, local and general, have welcomed the Mills expedition and have given it much assistance. All of the parapher nalia, including personal baggage, was ad mitted free of duty. The prefect of police of Santiago, not to be outdone in the details of courtesy, offered a policeman for the protection of the property of the observatory and for the guardianship of the scientists who make lonely night vigils on other mounts. Every afternoon a policeman leaves the cuartel in Santiago, climbs nine hundred feet up the slopes of San Cristobal and returns next morning, and this has been kept up ever since 1903 when the ob- MAKING FOR THE HORN 91 servatory was erected. Senor Don Fernando de Vic Tupper and family were especially helpful to the Yankee astronomers. The United States naval observatory expedition in 1849-52 and the United States government expedition for the transit of Venus in 1882 were equally well re ceived at Santiago. Prof. Edward C. Pickering, director of the Harvard University Observatory, established an observatory for photometric observations of southern stars at Carmen Alto, under the shadows of the volcano El Misti at Arequipa, Peru, in January, 1891, which is still well main tained and has many times justified itself. Previous to the selection of Arequipa Prof. Solon I. Bailey and assistants made experiments at several places in search for the best location. Professor Bailey had a temporary observatory on Mt. Harvard, so named by him, near Chosica, on the Oroya Railroad, and overlooking Lima, Callao, and the ocean nearly thirty miles distant. Professor Bailey's history of Harvard's first Peruvian expedition is in no wise scientific. He is a master of description and popular compo sition. He mentions the dread disease verrugas, and tells of the cloudburst that carried away the Verrugas bridge in 1889, of scorpions, centipedes, and tarantulas, of sorroche, of incidents of the Balmacedan war, and of many other things in the charming style of a human being rather than of 92 THE ANDEAN LAND a professional professor. Professor Bailey did not find it an easy task to locate an observatory and he visited many regions. He reports Val paraiso and vicinity as bad owing to the preva lence of coast clouds ; Santiago and vicinity are very good in Summer and very bad in Winter; Copiapo is better than Santiago; Chanarcillo is better than Copiapo; Pampa Central, back from Antofagasta, better than any of the others. Arequipa was selected as a permanent location, so it must have been regarded as the best of all the places investigated during a search of two years. At the Arequipa station the principal instru ments now are the 24-inch Bruce photographic telescope, the 13-inch Boyden telescope, the 8-inch Bache telescope, and the 4-inch meridian photometer. The Bruce telescope, which was presented to Harvard by the late Miss Catherine W. Bruce of New York, has a photographic doublet of twenty-four inches aperture as an ob jective, and is the largest instrument of its kind yet constructed. For several years and until the material for a determination of the climatic conditions had been collected, Harvard observations were made at a line of meteorological stations beginning at the Pacific and crossing the Andes to the valley of the Amazon. These stations were located at Mollendo, altitude 100 feet; La Joya, 4150 feet; MAKING FOR THE HORN 93 Arequipa, 8060 feet; Alto de los Huesos, 13,300 feet; Mt. Blanc, 15,600 feet; El Misti, 19,200 feet; Vincocaya, 14,600 feet; Puno, 12,500 feet; Cuzco, 11,000 feet, and Santa Ana, 3000 feet. Self-recording instruments were used and the data secured is very valuable. It is now being compiled. Observer R. H. Frost, who has the encourage ment of a charming young wife, is in charge at Harvard's Arequipa station. During the year ending September 30, 1906, the number of photographs taken with the 13-inch Boyden telescope is three hundred and twenty-five, making 11,418 in all, and with the 8-inch Bache telescope two hundred and twenty-seven, making 37,263 in all. The total number of stellar pho tographs taken during the year is 2343. The principal work has been the completion of the measures of the comparison stars of the fifty southern variables, and the continuation of the observations of the sequences of Durchmuste- rung stars in the zones -39 degrees, -49 degrees, and -59 degrees. The Bruce photographic telescope develops the spectra of the faintest stars, such as the ninth and tenth satellites of Saturn. Its great field has developed tempting opportunities for the study of the Magellanic Clouds and the dark spaces in the Milky Way. The number of stars on a Bruce plate with a long exposure often exceeds 300,000. Miss 94 THE ANDEAN LAND Leavitt, who is giving especial attention with the Bruce instrument to the large Magellanic Cloud, has discovered 993 variable stars, making a total of 2122, whereas only 11 29 were known before. In mentioning a few of the ruling north-heaven stars one would be quite recreant if he forgot Castor and Pollux, even if the latter is 336 bil lions of miles and the former 97 billions of miles from the earth. Denebola, of Leo, is 660 bil lions and Arcturus 11 96 billions of miles away. Capella and Vega as well as Algenib, of Pegasus, must not be missed in the twinkling galaxy. Of the planets, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are most used in stellar navigation. Gazing over the rail at that lowest form of sea life, "phosphorescence," and then up into the moonless sky at the other worlds so beautiful and so far away and all so full of marvel, is a fine way to spend a night on the vasty deep. No handsome young man with a pretty girl at his side will dispute this if he has a speck of romance in his soul or sentiment in his heart — and they all have. Not far from Montevideo we passed a school of porpoises, some of which did remarkable stunts. Several leaped out of the water to a height of easily more than ten feet, their bodies shimmering and quivering in the sunlight. Instead of returning to the water gracefully head-on, they seemingly would fail to complete MAKING FOR THE HORN 95 their leap, and would fall vertically from the peak of their effort, making a thunderous report as they struck the sea and throwing a small Niagara of spray. While we were steaming down between forty and fifty south latitude, in the sea of the Flying Dutchman and other phantom things, we were spoken by the bark Francis Fisher. Our steamer, the Oropesa, was the first thing of any kind they had been in hailing distance of since leaving England two months before. Our skipper stood close enough under the stern of the bark so that all could plainly hear the master of the Fisher ask to be reported as "safe and all well." The tars on the bark swarmed to the rail and were all mouth and eyes as they gave us a lusty cheer. It all reminded one of a Marryat or Clark Russell episode, only we took off no shipwrecked lovers. We are again in the zone of the albatross, and this huge man-eating bird cleaves the air in masterful swoops and circles, driving away the Cape hens, molly hawks, and even the frigate birds give him a wide berth. The last time we saw the albatross was in the Tasman Sea, between New Zealand and Australia, where the captain of our ship told us he had captured one with a twenty-four foot spread of wings. The captain of the Oropesa said the largest he had ever heard of was twenty-foot spread and that 96 THE ANDEAN LAND the average was sixteen to eighteen feet. They are a bird of the southern oceans and never, I believe, go further north than thirty-five degrees south latitude. The unfortunate who falls overboard when there are albatross about is at once pounced upon, and nose, eyes, and ears are lopped off by the fearful mandibles of these fierce birds, nor do they desist until life is extinct and the victim is their prey. After we got south of forty degrees bound round the Horn, we began to see whales, and many of them. Sometimes there would be a solitary one, and at other times a pair, while not infrequently we would see a school. Their move ments and moods were always entertaining, whether they were floating quietly or seemingly swimming a race, or most strenuously disporting. Once we saw a tremendous commotion, and a Norwegian whaler aboard said it was a battle between a swordfish and a whale. The distance was too great for accurate observation, even with glasses. Finally the contest closed. Appar ently the swordfish had thrust the leviathan to the hilt, and after vain efforts to withdraw had given it up. Thus, locked in deadly strife, both were victims, as is often the case in mortal conflict between horned animals on land. Our Norwegian friend, whose name was Lange, was very interesting. He came aboard at the Falklands and announced that he was a MAN-EATING ALBATROSS, PACIFIC OCEAN Near Straits of Magellan MAKING FOR THE HORN 97 poor Norwegian Eskimo, and that he had been imbibing whale oil. His broken English and his antics were funny. Going into the second-class social hall he espied a large woman, and at once addressed her in Ole Olson dialect, "What a fine fat woman." Some one objected to this on the part of the good woman, and demanded that the son of a viking apologize and retire, which Lange was quick to do with the words : " I don'd meant no harm ; all I t'ought vos you vos so blenty." Next day he was normal and a fine example of the Norwegian whom you may always take to be honest until he proves otherwise, as con trasted with the Japanese, who must be regarded as dishonest until he proves otherwise. Lange had been with his four whaling steamers down between the Shetland Islands and Decep tion Island, south of Cape Horn in the Antarctic regions, for some months. In four months he had taken two hundred and fifty-two whales on the edge of the Antarctic Sea, and he was on his way to Punta Arenas for more ships, having filled all of his with oil. There is a great revival of whaling, both north and south, and the Japs also are going into it in a big way north of Sag- halien. Modern whaling is very different from the old way, and is mostly followed by Nor wegians, who are admittedly the most expert now, as American whalers were during the old VOL. I. — 7 98 THE ANDEAN LAND regime. The whale is shot with a whale gun that will throw a harpoon to which a bomb is at tached, for a distance of 30 fathoms, or 180 feet, a good half-block, with accuracy. The forward part of the whale is aimed at and the bomb ex plodes five seconds after the harpoon is fired. The line to the harpoon passes over a low mast rigged for the purpose on the small steam whale- boat and then down through the bottom of the boat. On the harpoon line is a friction drag which makes the whale earn every foot of the way while sounding. Once dead, and the whale usually does not live long after the bomb ex plodes, the first thing to do is to tie on the jaws which begin to detach in ten minutes after death and would soon disappear with a lot of baleen. The next thing they now do is to attach an air hose and pump up the whale under the skin, the same as they used to do with cattle at the New Orleans abattoirs, so that it will float well. When they get time afterwards the whale is towed to the trying-out works, which are most likely on a steamer quite near at hand, but may be on an island which is used temporarily or otherwise as a base of operations. New uses have been found for both whale oil and whale bone, and good prices are obtained at the pres ent time for both. A large percentage of white whalebone is obtained in the Antarctic seas. The largest whale Lange's fleet had taken lately MAKING FOR THE HORN 99 was ninety-seven feet long. Several between eighty and ninety feet had been killed. The Japanese, hard pressed as they always are for sufficient food, eat both the blubber and meat of the whale, and corn the latter in large quantities for consumption throughout their country. Most of the New England whaling fleet has been sold to the Japs, and Norwegian whale cutters are much in demand. It will not take the little brown men long to learn the art, and then the man from the land of fjords can go his way. Modern cutting up is done by machinery. A whaleboat of the period is a stocky, pow erful steam launch with lots of freeboard so that it can stand the heaviest weather. It is about fifty feet long, and in each instance has been built in Europe and has cruised to the Cape Horn region under its own steam. A whaling fleet usually consists of a large steamer for the trying-out works and oil cisterns, a sailing vessel to carry coal and oil barrels, and four to six steam whaleboats. The large steamer carries also a condensing plant with an average capacity of twenty tons of fresh water daily, which is used in trying-out. In pursuing the whale the old-fashioned way obtains. A whale always sounds three times before taking to his heels. The whalers get as near as possible and endeavor to shoot at the second sounding. 100 THE ANDEAN LAND To indicate the revival in whaling it may be stated that persons in the sheep industry at Punta Arenas, Chile, after successfully trying out a whale at their tallow works, organized a whaling company, and their half million dollars' worth of shares were oversubscribed locally in a week. There is n't so much sealing in southern waters as formerly, because Argentina and Chile protect their waters and charge a high license. There is still considerable pelagic sealing, and the Canadians, who are very active in it, make it a diplomatic problem yet to be solved. On the way around the end of South America we encountered a portion of a so-called American circus, conducted in a very small way as com pared with Barnum and Bailey, by one Frank Brown, who carried an English ensign over his taffrail. There was an alleged French princess, but just how she could be a princess in a fine and courageous republic was not accurately dia gramed. Nevertheless, she bore the air of a princess anyhow, and in her ambition to rule she had as subjects an elephant and a lion, over which she swayed a perfect mastery. The most modest woman on the ship, quiet and refined in manner, reserved in demeanor, with big, Juanitaesque eyes, "where the love light longs to dwell," was the Senorita Rosita de la Plata, or the " Rose of the River Plate." MAKING FOR THE HORN 101 She was so proper in every detailed way that most of the passengers, who are always guessing at their fellows, came to the conclusion that the Sefiorita Rosita had just finished at a convent and was unused to the world's crude and cruel ways. Many a young buck going out from England and Holland and other European homelands tried to win a glance or earn a smile, but the shyness of the young woman with a face like a Cenci repelled them only to kindle anew their desires and make them redouble their efforts. But all failed. When their cisterns of disappointment would scarce hold more, the senorita's secret leaked out, which proved, indeed, that appearance and avocation are not always related. She was an equestrienne in Frank Brown's "Circo Americano." But if ever gentle woman leaped through the burning hoop from the dorsal vertebrae of a whitewashed horse as the band played quick music and the clown paused in his wicked wit, it was that same "Rose of the River Plate." CHAPTER V THE FALKLAND ISLANDS Senator Rowen, American Consul — Port Stanley — Sheep-raising the Sole Industry — Government Bounty for Killing Wild Geese — Wild Cattle — Remarkable Tussac — The Falklands under Span ish, French, American, and English Flags — A Half -completed Naval Base ¦ — English Colonial Paternalism — Prosperous Colonial Savings Bank — Sheep Lice Laws — Geography and History of the Falklands — Flora, Fauna, Geology, and Topography — The Wild Sea between the Falk lands and the Straits of Magellan. /TNHE Falkland Islands are in latitude 52 degrees, 30 minutes, or about the same dis tance south that James' Bay, in the south end of Hudson Bay, is north. The day we sailed into Port Stanley, the leading town on the islands, the wind blew icy cold right out of the Antarctic Ocean, and clothing, such as one would wear the bitterest day of a Lake Superior Winter, was none too warm, although it was March, which corresponds to our September. Possibly the fact that we had come fresh from the tropics made it seem colder. Nevertheless, the gale carried decided marrow piercing qualities. THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 103 Port Stanley, the chief port of the islands, is on East Falkland Island, and has a small but completely landlocked harbor. Passing in by Death's Head we saw the masts of a big Ameri can sailing ship that had gone on the rocks. Once anchored off the town our eyes caught Old Glory whipping and cracking bravely in the storm, and on landing we walked over the hulk of the smart American bark Snow Squalh, which, so the story is told there, ran into Port Stanley after having suffered a long chase by the pri vateer Alabama. She had carried sail so heavily during the pursuit that she was strained and leaking badly and never was able to leave the Falklands. Her bones are used as a landing wharf, and many a good Yankee takes off his hat as he crosses over in memory of those days when the homeland was fighting for life, and brave lives were given by land and sea. A jolly Irishman, with a face like rare beef, named John E. Rowen, and hailing from Clarion, Iowa, is American consul at Port Stanley, and keeps the flag flying. He gets a salary of two thousand dollars a year, has been there eleven years, and had n't seen an American ship in port for two years. But when he is needed he is wanted badly. Rowen has taken charge of three mutinous ships and has helped several wrecked ships and their crews since his exile on these lonely shores, ten thousand miles 104 THE ANDEAN LAND from Washington. He stands well with the Brit ish governor of the islands, and with all hands, in fact, and is always at his post, a competent consul. He was a State senator in Iowa and owes his Falkland appointment to the fact that when Senator Allison was a sort of candidate for President, Rowen told a Chicago Tribune reporter that his first, second, and third choice for President was Iowa's grand old man. Rowen was a sort of Irish agitator and or ganizer in Iowa, and proclaims that his father was an Ulster man, and that he has enough Irish blood in him to start a blood factory, and that if he knew of " any other kind of blood in his bloody body " he would let it out or cut off the offending member that contained it. It is worth his salary to him to be able to say, when they stir him up down there, that the super structure of British society is based on caste, while that of America is based on individual merit. Then he ends by advocating Anglo- American union — while he is consul on a British island. It also helps mollify him some to have his daughter married to one of the richest sheep ranchers on the island — an Englishman — and live in the "Mansion House," by which fine-sounding name the senator-consul calls his daughter's big home on the sheep ranch of 100,000 acres and 40,000 sheep. The consul had a grudge against Frank Carpenter, a press AMERICAN CONSULATE, PORT STANLEY, FALKLAND ISLANDS THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 105 syndicate writer and geographical reader au thor, who wrote bad things about the climate of the Falklands to the effect that the sun never shines and cold winds always blow. We landed in a gale that drove a cold gray spume before it in a piercing way, but Consul Rowen brought witnesses to prove that the day before had been as bright-skyed as northern Egypt, and the day before that was so sunny and fine that all hands had gone in white to a picnic some miles from Port Stanley, where the open ocean beats now sadly and then savagely up against the rocks of Corpse Point. In proclaiming the fertility of the Falkland soil the consul said when he first went there he had a garden, as he still has, and a fine one. The cabbages headed perfectly, and in the Autumn month of March they were ready for the kraut barrel. His old Scotch gardener carefully gar nered them by cutting them off the stock and leaving the roots in the ground. Consul Rowen was inclined to the Iowa method of pulling them up and then burying them heads down. But the gardener demurred and said more cab bages would grow on the stubs that were left in the earth. "True enough," said the consul, "we not only raised fine heads on the same roots the next year, but a third crop also." The ground seldom freezes and Consul Rowen 106 THE ANDEAN LAND said the greatest depth the frost had penetrated during his residence was an inch and a half, so they never dig their potatoes until they wish to use them. Sheep-raising is the one great industry of the Falklands, and there are nearly a million sheep on the islands. It is estimated that five acres are required to sustain a sheep there, but some of the ranches allow only two and a half acres, which is quite enough if the wild geese can be kept away. One goose will eat as much as a sheep, they claim, and certainly multitudes of them, "lone wandering but not lost," find their way to the Falklands and southern Argentine. Such a nuisance are they that they rank almost equal to the guanaco and are worse than the mountain lion in Patagonia as a sheep pest. In the Falklands they are the sheep's one great enemy. The colonial government of the Falk lands gives a bounty on goose beaks, which does not have much effect beyond showing the sym pathy and good will of the governor-general. I have a copy of the official Gazette of the Falk land Islands. Among other commands of His Excellency the Governor, is order No. 13, which reads as follows: " Order of His Excellency the Governor, in coun cil, with regard to the purchase of geese beaks : In pursuance of powers in him vested by Ordinance III of 1905, His Excellency the Governor, by and with THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 107 the advice of the executive council, is pleased to di rect as follows : On and after the first day of January and during the remainder of the current year (1907) the number of geese beaks which may be purchased on the East and West Falkland Islands, respectively, shall be — East Falkland, not exceeding thirty-seven thousand, five hundred ; West Falkland, not exceed ing thirty-seven thousand, five hundred (a total of seventy-five thousand). Made in executive council, at Government House, Stanley, this fifth day of January, 1907, H. E. W. Grant, Colonial Sec retary." The bounty is ten shillings a hundred, which would be about two and a half cents a goose. Last year the colony bought fifty thousand beaks, which would be twenty-five geese for every man, woman, and child on the islands, and this slaughter made no apparent effect. The bounty will nearly pay for ammunition, and where the geese are trapped, netted or poisoned, there would be a profit. Few are poisoned, however, as it spoils the meat, which is normally very good, and the feathers have some value, too. The geese nest in myriads on the islands. In addition to eating much grass, they find a berry called locally the "diddledy- dee" berry, which is supposed to have first at tracted them to the Falklands. There are other places in the world where geese are a nuisance on account of their destruc- tiveness, but I know of no other place where 108 THE ANDEAN LAND goose-killing is sought to be stimulated by a bounty. In addition to geese, Cape hens, molly hawks, coots, cormorants, and many other aquatic birds, there are large penguin rookeries on many of the Falkland Islands. These are carefully pro tected by law and the law is enforced. Until very recent years the Falkland Islands were overrun by wild cattle. The early voyagers carried cattle to the islands and they multiplied and devoluted to a wild state. The succulent tussac grass supplied abundant food and the cattle flourished until the sheep came. The sheep ate not only the top of the tussac grass but the roots as well, thus destroying on the larger islands much of this fine forage, and making it hard for the wild cattle to subsist. However, some of the larger ranchers have protected herds, which furnish good sport for both lasso and gun. Mr. Keith Cameron told me his herd of wild cattle consists of several hundred and is holding its own. Mr. Cameron has sixty thousand acres and twenty-five thousand sheep on his Falkland ranch, and was visiting it for the first time in five years. His wild cattle roam over the ranch and not far beyond. They are ferocious when wounded and will charge furiously. With shaggy necks and long hair over their faces, like some of the cattle of the Scotch Highlands, they look wicked enough when aroused so that the THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 109 angry gnnt of their rolling eyes may be seen through the hirsute veil. Nothing so wild is ever seen at a bullfight even when the bull is goaded into a destructive frenzy. Mr. Cameron went first to the Falklands forty years ago, and soon after found his way to Patagonia. Besides the two chief islands there are more than two hundred smaller islands in the Falk land group. Upon most of these tussac grass still grows and is harvested as a fine hay. The history of the islands is varied and in teresting. First France had them, then Spain, then England, and for ever so brief a time American whalers from the United States held dominion and scarcely knew it. The latter is uncommon knowledge and does not appear in any popular history of the United States. Con sul Rowen says he learned the fact from the Colonial archives. It appears that about the time of the Revolutionary War there were many English and Colonial whalers rendezvousing at the Falklands and the latter outnumbered the former. It was almost 1800 before the news of the war and its outcome intelligently reached the remote archipelago. Then the Tories among the English left the whaling settlement to the newly created Yankee nation, and "young glory" with its thirteen stars was hoisted. Not much time elapsed before the lawless greasers who were the land inhabitants of the islands came 110 THE ANDEAN LAND to know that the new masters were weak in both numbers and support. So they attacked the Yankees in overwhelming numbers and drove them away. In the course of time Uncle Sam heard of it, and although he had much on his hands for a very young man, he sent a frigate down and shot up the greasers enough to inspire respect. The next we hear of the Falklands is 1830, when the Spanish and Portuguese gauchos planned and executed a massacre of an English settlement which had nicely taken root. The gauchos did not relish the encroachment of the gringos upon their wild-cattle preserve. The local story (inaccurate) is that only two half- breed women escaped. They made their way in a small boat to Hog Island, and there they signalled a passing English warship, and guided the officers to the caves where the murderous gauchos dwelt. Such of them as escaped the cutlasses of the British bluejackets were taken to Montevideo and properly shot in the plaza. Since that time the English have remained in undisturbed possession, and remote' as the islands are they are a profitable colony, even if the popu lation is only about two thousand. Much work has been done toward making Port Stanley a naval base for the British South Atlantic squad ron, but since the withdrawal of this squadron the undertaking has been abandoned, and the THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 111 work remains a monument to what now seems to have been a mistaken policy. It is n't often that the British government starts any such business without carrying it to completion. Consul Rowen had a great scheme of securing the improvements for the use of our South Atlantic squadron, or at least of obtaining per mission for target practice there. Just as he worked up some interest in others and a great deal of personal enthusiasm our government withdrew the American South Atlantic squadron, and the naval base seems destined "back to its earth again," unused. The withdrawal of the squadrons of both nations was probably the result of a mutual agreement. Since the Boer war, Great Britain has been retrenching in every direction that would not be too noticeable or leave a suspicion of especial weakness. Until recently the sheep raisers on the Falk lands rented their lands from the colonial gov ernment, but recently a policy of sale has been inaugurated. The price averages a shilling an acre, and if the purchaser desires he may pay one-tenth cash and four per cent on the remainder for thirty years, in which event he may have a clear deed without making any further payment on the principal. Most of the ranchers have chosen to pay cash in full. The sheep business is profitable. Only the wool is of first account, next the tallow, and now that frozen meats are 112 THE ANDEAN LAND so much in demand the carcass is figured on for some profit. Mutton is called "good old 365," and sure enough, it is eaten every day of the year. The Falkland Islands colonial government, acting directly upon crown authority and policy, seems to be almost as paternal as the New Zealand colonial government. It deals in land, has a savings bank, cures sheep of lice, and does everything it deems necessary for the good of the colonists. The movement of icebergs from the Antarctic region has been giving a good deal of trouble and the colonials are en deavoring to more accurately define the iceberg zone. During the year ending September 30, 1906, the colonial savings bank opened 46 new ac counts and closed 53, leaving 351 depositors out of a population of 2000. The deposits amount to £52,661 4 j\ 5 d.,or about £150 per depositor, or £26 6 s. jd. for every man, woman, and child in the islands. The income of the bank was £1650 16 s. $d., and the expenses were £1139 %s- 5^-> leaving a profit of £511 Ss. 3d. The bank invested up to £49,968 12 s. 10 d., leaving an uninvested balance of £2742 1 1 s. yd. The investments were in consols at two and a half per cent and bonds bearing three and a half to four per cent of the Barbadoes, British Guiana, Canada, Cape, Ceylon, Gold THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 113 Coast, Jamaica, Mauritius, Natal, Australian states, New Zealand, Transvaal, and Zanzibar. I give this short summary in order to show what a British colonial savings b,ank among a population of only two thousand did in one year, and not an especially good year either, as shown by previous reports. We are apt to criticise New Zealand as advanced and unsafe, but upon in vestigation we find that not only is the govern ment of Great Britain doing many of the same things, but we are doing them ourselves. Uncle Sam builds dredges and warships, conducts a vast system of internal improvements, operates the mail service, and does all of it well. During the trying War of the Rebellion we had two million men in the field. We are building the Panama Canal. Why, then, can we not own and operate telegraph and express lines and the railroads ? Our railroads under private manage ment are the most dangerous in the world. Man bends every energy to profit and thinks of little else. The railroads could not be worse under national operation. Almost an unanswer able argument can be made for governmental ownership, and the chief thing said against it is that it is not a function of government and' that the government cannot do it, and that individual effort, development, and initiative will suffer. Uncle Sam can do anything that he undertakes to do that is morally right, and a more unselfish 114 THE ANDEAN LAND individual initiative will follow the doing of things for the government. No higher citizen ship could be hoped for than would grow out of honest, faithful, efficient, patriotic government service. The Falkland government requires every sheep owner to dip his sheep between March i and July i, or pay a fine of two shillings for each sheep not dipped. This means a good deal of work on such ranches as James Fenton's, where forty thousand sheep roam over one hundred thousand acres, and on the Cameron ranch. Sheep lice must be kept down. Every owner may be fined fifty pounds for every month's refusal to dip, and he must not keep infected sheep. There are sheep lice inspectors who pass upon the quality of the "dip," and who may extend the time for dipping ewes, so as not to interfere with the lambing time. There are other stringent lice laws, and in every way possible the sheep industry is guarded. Quite a business is done in "boiling down" sheep carcasses, and the resultant product of tallow finds a ready market. From time to time some of the smaller islands of the group are sold by auction to private persons by the colonial government. While we were there a twenty-one year lease of Kidney Island, comprising one hundred and fifteen acres, was being advertised to be sold March 23, / THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 115 1907. The following conditions are interesting as showing the guardianship of the colony over its leased property: "The lessee will not be allowed to keep stock on the island except under such conditions as may be approved by the governor in council. The lessee will be required to supply the inhabitants of Stanley with tussac in such quantities and at such prices as may be fixed by the governor. The lessee will not be re quired to supply more than three hundred bundles of tussac during each of the months of April to August, inclusive, and two hundred bundles during each of the other months in any one year. The weight of a bundle shall not be less than twenty-six pounds, and the price fixed will not be less than sixpence a bundle. The penguin rookeries on the island are not to be disturbed. The lease for twenty-one years, at an annual rental of one penny (two cents) per acre, to be paid in advance, will be put up to auction at the upset price of five pounds. The purchaser shall pay cash and will be given possession as soon as pay ment is made." Town lands and lots are auctioned in the same way. Consul Rowen has not been able to get used to Christmas coming in midsummer any more than to the character of the natives on the main land, some four hundred and forty miles away. These natives voyage to Stanley once in a while to trade peltries. I saw a queerly spotted skin on the floor of the consul's reception room, where 116 THE ANDEAN LAND he serves good sherry and cake to callers. The spots did n't fit and seemed to be arranged rather more arbitrarily and less harmoniously than Nature does things, so I asked the consul the name of the animal that once proudly wore the hide. His face could n't get any redder than normal, so he coughed in lieu of a blush and replied that he did n't know whether it was a pig, a hyena, or a tiger. "I bought it from a greaser for a leopard," he continued, "but the pesky spots wear off and wash off in a manner to knock clear out of the box the adage that a leopard cannot change its spots. Fact is, the greaser painted 'em on. I would n't care if the cussed Britishers did n't come around and laugh at me for a Yankee being done up by a bone-headed Portugee. But I'll get even with somebody. I '11 make soup of the thing, and feed it to the fellows that laugh, but I won't do it until I am ready to leave per manently, by which time the thing may be worn out." There is one other American living on the Falkland Islands. He is an old tar from Maine, who has a little tug and totes tussac from the smaller islands to Port Stanley, living much to himself and keeping strictly away from the consulate. The Falkland Islands are not often referred to in popular literature, and description and data THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 117 are brief in technical works. Their exact loca tion in the Ethiopic ocean places them between 51 ° and 520 30' south latitude, and 570 30' and 61 ° 30' west longitude. The group consists of two principal islands, the East and West Falk land, with over two hundred others of different sizes clustered around them and in the straits between them. The greatest length of East Falkland is about 95 miles, the mean 85; the greatest breadth about 53 miles ; the mean may be averaged at 40 miles. West Falkland is about 80 miles in length ; the width varies considerably, but 40 miles may be considered the greatest, and 25 miles the mean. The remaining islands vary considerably, from 16 miles in length by 8 miles in breadth to mere islets of half a mile in diameter. The sovereignty of the Falklands is now vested in the British crown, but the title has been subject to much dispute and has occasioned considerable discussion. It has been asserted that Americus Vespucius, then employed by the king of Portugal, saw these islands in 1502; but if the account of Americus himself is authentic, he could not have explored farther south than the right bank of La Plata. If the Portuguese, or any other people, actually traced, or even discovered, por tions of the coast south of the Plate before 151 2, it appears strange that so remarkable an estuary, 118 THE ANDEAN LAND one hundred and twenty miles across, should have been overlooked, especially as soundings extend two hundred miles seaward of its en trance ; and that the world should have no clear record of its having been discovered prior to the voyage of Juan de Solis, in 1512. Vespucius has already robbed Columbus, and his predecessor Cabot, of the great honor of affixing their names to the New World ; shall he also be tacitly per mitted to claim even the trifling distinction of discovering the Falkland Islands, when it is evi dent he could not have seen them ? On the fourteenth of August, 1592, John Davis, who sailed with Cavendish on his second voyage, but separated from him in May, 1592, discovered the islands, now called Falklands. In 1683-84, Dampier and Cowley saw three islands in latitude 51 ° to 510 20' south, which they (correctly) supposed to be those seen and named by Sebald de Wurt. This land was called by the editor of Cowley's narrative Pepys' Island, in compliment to the then Secretary of the Admiralty. Sir Richard Hawkins sailed along the northern shores of these islands in 1 594 and he, ignorant of Davis's discovery, named them Hawkins's Maiden Land. His account appearing first and prominently before the public procured for them that name, by which they were known, until Strong, in 1690, sailed through, and an- THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 119 chored in the channel, which he named Falk land Sound. How it happened that the name Falkland, originally given to the sound alone, obliterated Hawkins, and has never yielded to Davis, is now a matter of very trifling impor tance. Several ships of St. Malo passed near the east ern Falklands between the years 1706 and 1714, from whose accounts M. Frezier compiled his chart, published in 171 7. In consequence of the visits of these ships of St. Malo, the French named the islands Les Malouines. The Span iards adopted the French name, slightly altered by changing Malouines into Malvinas, and they are so known by them to-day. During the early part of the last century France maintained a lucrative commerce with Chile and Peru by way of Cape Horn, and the advantages of a port at the eastern extremity of the Falklands did not escape its active dis cernment. At the commencement of 1763 the court of France determined to form an establish ment there. De Bougainville proposed to com mence it at his own expense, and accordingly set out from St. Malo with an armament and settlers. On the seventeenth of March, 1764, having arrived at the Falklands, De Bougainville de cided to place his establishment at Port Louis, and forthwith commenced operations. On the twenty-third of January, 1765, these 120 THE ANDEAN LAND islands were taken possession of for the British crown by Commodore Byron, and in conse quence of his favorable report, Captain Mac- Bride was sent out in H. M. S. Jason, to begin their colonization. He arrived at Port Egmont in January, 1776. Spain laid claim to the islands immediately after the French settlement, which was given up to Spain on April 1, 1767. Spain indemnified the settlers. In 1770 a Spanish armament at tacked the British colony at Port Egmont, and obliged it to surrender, but it was restored by the Spanish government. It was forsaken, however, in 1774, but the flag of possession was left flying. Spain afterwards withdrew from the islands and left them uninhabited, probably at the com mencement of the present century, and thus there was no person left who claimed even the shadow of authority over them, unless the pres ence of American whalers formed a basis for a claim by the United States. They were the actual occupants, hoisted the American flag, and were in authority. The United States did not con sider the Falklands of any value and never vitalized their rights. From these facts England contends that if discovery and prior occupation give a title to new and uninhabited countries, they undoubtedly belong to Great Britain; for Davis first dis covered them; Hawkins first named them; THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 121 Strong first landed on them; and (excepting the French) Byron took possession of them and (again excepting the French) MacBride first colonized them. With respect to the French claim, it was, as before stated, resigned forever to Spain. The right of sovereignty, therefore, rests between Spain and England; and Spain's only claim, having deserted them once, now rests on the unstable foundation of a papal bull, according to English version. The islands, after British dispossession, re mained uninhabited and unclaimed until the month of November, 1820, during the South American war of independence, when Com modore Jewett, then commanding the frigate Heroine, took formal possession of the islands in the name and by the authority of the United Provinces of South America, or government of La Plata, otherwise Buenos Ayres. This seat of the Argentine Republic was scarcely known in Europe for many years, and it is difficult for the English to see upon what reasonable grounds they rested their claim. In 1823 the Buenos Ayres government took another step in the appointment of a "com- mandante de las Malvinas," and in the same year Don Louis Vernet, a German by birth, solicited and obtained from the Argentine the fishery and cattle rights on the eastern island, and land for a settlement. This settlement did 122 THE ANDEAN LAND not prosper, and in the next year M. Vernet sailed himself in a second expedition. In 1828 the government of Buenos Ayres granted to him (with certain exceptions) the right of prop erty in the Falkland Islands and in Staten Land, with entire and sole right to all its soil, cattle, horses, hogs, fisheries, etc. The total number of persons then on the island consisted of about one hundred; including five Carruas Indians and twenty-five gauchos. The gauchos are the hunters or cowboys of South America, cele brated for their horsemanship, and for the use of the bolas and the lasso, with which they catch wild horses and cattle. There were two Dutch families, the women of which milked wild cows and made butter; two or three Englishmen, a German family; and the remainder were Span iards and Portuguese, pretending to follow some trade, but doing little or nothing. The gauchos were chiefly Argentines, but their capitaz or leader was a Frenchman. In 1829 Vernet warned off some United States sealers, and in 1831, upon their repeating the sealing incursion, of which he had complained, he detained them by force. This act, and the circumstances arising out of it, drew upon him and his unfortunate colony the worthy indig nation of Capt. Silas Duncan, of the United States corvette Lexington, who attacked and surprised and made prisoners many of the offi- THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 123 cious Falklanders and destroyed enough prop erty and buildings to make amends. M. Vernet was at the time absent at Buenos Ayres, attend ing the trial of the sealers in question, — but one Brisbane, who represented him, and several others were put into irons and carried away on board the Lexington to Buenos Ayres, where they were delivered up to the Argentine govern ment, in February, 1832. The United States government very properly supported Captain Duncan and formally demanded a full repara tion of the wrongs done to their citizens. While the United States and Buenos Ayres were discussing the question at issue, Great Britain, following up the warning she had given to Buenos Ayres, thought it an opportune occa sion and issued orders to the commander-in- chief on the South American station to reassert English sovereignty of the Falklands. Accord ingly, Commodore Onslow, in H. M. S. Clio, hoisted the British flag at Port Louis, January 2, 1833, while, about the same time, H. M. S. Tyne anchored in Port Egmont on the western island. The small Argentine garrison quietly withdrew and sailed for the Plate. Shortly afterwards the English garrison that was left in charge mutinied and barbarously murdered the commanding officer. The muti neers then departed, leaving the flag in charge of an Irishman, who had been Vernet's storekeeper. 124 THE ANDEAN LAND In March, 1833, Captain (afterwards Ad miral) FitzRoy, in the Beagle, anchored in Berkeley Sound. He found the island in a very disordered state from the want of government, almost a haunt of pirates. During FitzRoy's stay, Brisbane returned as the agent for Vernet's private affairs. The whole colony was a miser able ruin. On the sixth of April, FitzRoy left, with dismal forebodings from the disordered state of society, and these were exceeded by the sad reality. It appears that eight gauchos and Indians of bad character, on August 26, 1833, had attacked and brutally murdered Brisbane, Dick son, the person in charge for the British, and three other prominent people, after which they pillaged the houses and plundered the place of whatever it contained and drove off all the cattle and horses laden with their booty. Thirteen un armed men, three women, and two children re mained in the town two days with the murderers, and then escaped to one of the islands in the bay where, until relieved by the English sealer Hopeful, they lived upon birds' eggs and fish. The murderers were subsequently caught and sent to Buenos Ayres, where they were shot in public. On March 10, 1834, Captain FitzRoy again visited Berkeley Sound. The settlement looked more gloomy than ever, and not far from the house where he had lived, they found, to their THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 125 horror, the feet of Brisbane protruding from the ground. So shallow was his grave that dogs had disturbed his remains and fed upon his corpse. This was the fate of an industrious, honest, and faithful man. At the beginning of the year 1834, Lieut. Henry Smith, B. R. N., was appointed governor of the Falklands. Accompanied by a small party as the nucleus of a future colony, Smith reinvested the old settlement at the head of Berk eley Sound and fixed upon it as headquarters. On August 23, 1 841, Lieut. R. C. Moody, B. R. N., was appointed lieutenant-governor, and arrived in Port Louis January 15, 1842. He was energetic and endeavored to draw attention to and develop the resources of the Falkland Islands. The seat of government was removed from Port Louis, at the head of Berkeley Sound, to Stanley Harbor, in Port William. The former is an excellent and easily reached anchor age, but is farther from the line of ship's course than Port Stanley. The principal feature in the recent progress of the Falkland Islands is the occupation of a por tion of East Falkland by a commercial company. In the year 1844, Samuel F. Lafone, who had been extensively engaged in the hide and cattle trade on the River Plate, after some prelimi naries, entered into negotiations with the British government. In 1845 he made a contract to 126 THE ANDEAN LAND purchase the southern portion of East Falkland, the islands adjacent, and Beauchene Island, and the cattle upon the Falklands, upon the payment of ten thousand pounds at the period and twenty thousand pounds in ten years from January i, 1852. In May, 1851, a company was formed in London to carry out more fully the scheme of turning to advantage the islands and their herds of wild cattle. It was incorporated by royal charter, and purchased Mr. Lafone's interest for thirty thousand pounds. Subsequently, an ex tension of the term of dominion over the wild cattle was granted until January, i860. The whole of the available land for grazing, in both East and West Falkland Islands, had, in 1874, passed into the hands of private individuals. The company's chief locality is at Stanley, but their operations are conducted in different por tions of their domain. The population of the Falklands in 1881 was 1543, as compared with 950 in 1872, the islands of any size being now nearly all inhabited, with a total population in 1907 of about 2000 souls. The whole group of the Falkland Islands is deeply and variously indented by sounds, bays, harbors, creeks, and inlets. Perhaps there is no spot in the whole world so singularly irregular in its coast line, and so full of harbors and creeks, as the Falkland Islands. This formation dimin ishes the area considerably, but at the same THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 127 time it presents more than counter-balancing ad vantages. The area of East Falkland may be roughly computed at about 3000 square miles; the area of West Falkland may be estimated at about 2000 square miles; and the whole group, East and West Falkland, with all the surround ing islands, at about 6000 square miles. The two principal islands are divided by a strait containing several small islands, and its navi gation requires great care, for though well surveyed and having all known dangers clearly defined upon the charts, the currents are very strong and the wind increases with unusual rapidity. The administration of the islands is conducted by a governor, who resides at Stanley, aided by the usual staff of officials. A small detachment of British troops, under the command of an officer, was once stationed in the settlement, and it was formerly the duty of the admiral of the South Atlantic squadron to visit the colony peri odically for the protection of commerce. These islands, though by geographical position of the greatest importance to the mercantile world, which will be much reduced by the com pletion of the Panama Canal, were but little re garded up to 1 851, and there is next to no popular knowledge of them even up to the present. With the cutting off of the Cape Horn travel the Falk lands will be more lonely than ever. 128 THE ANDEAN LAND At Port Stanley, ships can be well provided for in nearly every way much cheaper than at any of the ports in South America, a fact that cannot be too widely known to mariners, seeing that these islands are situated exactly where their numerous and splendid harbors, particu larly that of Stanley, afford protection and op portunity for the repairing of injuries sustained by shipping passing in the vicinity of Cape Horn where a larger amount of annual injury is done by severe weather than in any other locality in the world. The southern portions of East Falkland are so low that they are hardly perceptible from the deck of a ship at five miles distance. The western island is more marked, some of the hills rising to the dignity of mountains between 2000 and 3000 feet above the sea level. The highest peak is Mount Osborn. There are no trees whatever upon any of these islands, and only two or three varieties of in digenous shrubs from one to eight feet in height. What they term the tea plant {myrtus nummu- ralia) is abundant, the leaves being used for making a decoction somewhat similar to tea. The berry of this shrub is of a rose color and the flavor is appreciated. Celery, which is an ex cellent anti-scorbutic, grows in wild luxuriance, and European vegetables thrive well wherever they have been tried. Cereals have been grown, THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 129 but the absence of sufficient sun for ripening them precludes the prospect of their being culti vated with success. Peat of good quality exists everywhere and is generally used for fuel. Sub stances having somewhat the appearance of coal have been found in various localities, but from their analyses and from the opinion of geologists, there is every reason to suppose that bituminous coal does not exist. Cattle and sheep of European breeds appear to thrive remarkably well. The former are small but improving in size from bulls introduced by the Falkland Islands Company. Their flock of cheviot sheep yield fleeces weighing as high as ten or twelve pounds and as good mutton as any in the world. Port Stanley has become the best port of refuge for ships between Valparaiso, on the west coast of South America, and Monte video, upon the eastern side. In order to attract more shipping, and thereby more consumers for their otherwise unprofitable staple, the Falkland Islands Company have establishments at Stanley for the supply and repair of ships, upon the low est scale that can be adopted without loss; and they seem determined to spare no effort to carry out their object, which has been materially as sisted by the British government having placed a lighthouse at the eastern extremity of East Falkland, which makes the splendid harbor of Stanley accessible by night or day. 130 THE ANDEAN LAND The Falkland Islands have no aboriginal na tive inhabitants. Among their meagre fauna are wild cattle, wild pigs, rabbits, rats, and a species of half wolf half fox, now almost exterminated. Water fowl of many sorts are abundant, afford ing both amusement and good eating for the inhabitants of Stanley. Penguins contribute eggs in great abundance, which have a somewhat fishy flavor. They have of late years become in demand for their oil. Seals were formerly very plentiful on the shores of the islands, and whales in their vicinity, but they are both becoming scarcer, on account of being so much sought after. Fish are very abundant in the creeks, and efforts have been made to salt a species of mullet for the markets of South America; but whether from the climate being unsuitable, or some peculiarity in the fish, they assume a color that is prejudicial to their sale. Fresh water is abundant upon the two large islands, but not so upon many of the smaller ones, which lack renders them for the most part unfit for grazing purposes. The country in the northern part of the eastern island is rather mountainous. The highest part of this region is called St. Simon, 1600 feet, and is at no great distance from Berkeley Sound. A chain of very rugged-topped mountains, called the Wickham Heights, extends due east and west from Port William to Port Sussex, nearly THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 131 across the northern portion of the island, to the southward of Mount St. Simon, above mentioned. The height of this range varies from 1400 to 2300 feet, increasing toward the west side ; and as the quartz rock crops out nearly vertically, and with great irregularity, this range can only be crossed at certain places, which constitutes a feature of some importance in relation to the herding of cattle. The contrast between the country north and south of the Wickham Heights is remarkable. The tops of the mountains are thickly strewn with large bowlders, or detached stones, of which quantities have fallen in some places in lines along their sides, looking like rivers of stones; these are alternated with extensive tracts of marshy ground, descending from the very tops of the mountains, where many large fresh water ponds are found, from one to two feet deep. The best ground is at the foot of the mountains, and of this there is an abundance fit for cultiva tion, in plains stretching from five to fifteen miles along the margin of the sea. In the south ern peninsula, called Lafonia, there is hardly a rising ground that can be called a hill. Excellent fresh water is found everywhere, and may be procured either by digging or from the rivulets, which flow from the interior toward the sea, through valleys covered with a rich vegetation. There are but few rivers in the Falklands. 132 THE ANDEAN LAND The San Carlos, in East Falkland, is the largest. It is very winding and about thirty miles in length, navigable for boats to a distance of about eight miles, and for that distance the width may be averaged at one hundred yards. The sources of the San Carlos appear to be many small streams, draining all the country to the west and southwest of the western extremity of Port San Salvador, also part of the country northward. It is in general a deep stream with high banks. The bed is of a red sand, gravel, and, in spots, muddy. The Arroyo Malo, or Matson River, drains the long valley separating the Simon Range from the Wickham Heights. It rises at the foot of Mount Osborn and, running in an easterly direction, falls into an arm of Port San Salvador, a distance of eighteen miles. It is not navigable, and as it is a mountain stream, it often becomes difficult and dangerous to cross, by reason of sudden floods swelling it into a deep and rapid torrent. The western island is divided from the eastern by Falkland Sound, or rather Strait. The northwestern side of the island has been much frequented by whale fishers and sealers, and still continues to be so, though the indis criminate slaughter of these animals has much reduced their numbers and rendered the fishery less lucrative than formerly. Their chief rendez vous is at New Island. THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 133 From the coast the western island appears upon the whole to be more hilly, and the hills to be more humpy, rounded, and isolated than those in East Falkland. They appear to possess the same general quartzy character, and their height may be assumed as varying from 800 to 2200 feet. The highest peak is Mount Adam, 2315 feet, in the northwestern part of the island. The principal range, the Hornby Hills, is on the eastern side of the island, and runs in a contrary direction to those in East Falkland, its general bearing being north and south, and extending from White Rock Harbor to Fox Bay, parallel to the coast line. Mount Maria, at the back of Port Howard, is 2270 feet in height. There is also a very remarkable rugged ridge of quartz rock, about 150 feet in height, which rises ab ruptly from the sea, and follows the coast line from above Port Howard to Fox Bay, a distance of about forty miles. Between this ridge and the range of hills is a longitudinal valley, inter sected occasionally by high land, forming the roots of the range. Along the north coast of West Falkland are several long islands extending east and west, with narrow openings between them, of which Tamar Pass and the entrance to Port Egmont are the most remarkable. Upon these islands are isolated hills, of conical and lumpy forms, rising abruptly from gently undu lating ground. The islands farther to the 134 THE ANDEAN LAND westward, called the Jasons, are hills of this abrupt character, and from 800 to 1200 feet in height. The west coast of West Falkland, until Captain FitzRoy's survey, was not much known except to whalers and sealers. It is more variously and deeply indented by the sea than even the coast of East Falkland. The hills on the south coast of West Falkland appear to be in masses, and their termination at the coast line to be in lofty rugged cliffs. The Chartres River, about the same size as the San Carlos, in East Falkland, falls into King George's Bay. Most of the islands have many small fresh water lakes or ponds, varying in size from thirty yards to three or four miles in circumference. There are also innumerable springs and rivulets. Arthur Bailey, an English surveyor-general, who visited West Falkland in the Fram in June, 1867, estimated the total number of wild cattle on the island at the time to be about five thousand. In 1867 there was not a settler on West Falkland, and a proclamation was issued to the effect that any person applying to the colonial government could obtain a license, on payment of five pounds for each six thousand acres, to occupy a station on West Falkland for one year, and, any time before the expiration of the license, certain conditions having been complied with, could obtain a lease for twenty years, at an annual rent of ten pounds per six THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 135 thousand acres. The effect of this proclamation was that in 1 868 the whole of the available land on the island had passed into the hands of private individuals, for the small sum of one thousand, three hundred and fifty pounds. One of the most remarkable of the plants that grow on the Falklands is the tussac, which is a gigantic, sedgy grass. The average length of the blade is seven feet and of the stalk four to six feet. The plants grow in bunches, close together, and as many as two hundred and fifty roots spring up from one bunch. In old plants, the decayed roots of successive shoots form a cushion of dry entangled fibres, which raise the bunch from the ground. This cushion sometimes attains a height of six or seven feet and four or five feet in diameter, so that a person standing in a patch of old tussac may be quite sheltered or concealed. It grows with great luxuriance on the coasts, down to high water mark. Cattle and horses feed on it with the greatest avidity and speedily become fat. About three or four inches of the roots are very agreeable to man, being crisp and of a nutty flavor, not unlike celery. This was the food of two Americans who were marooned by accident upon the western island, for four teen months. It is an exceedingly valuable plant to the colony. The grass, growing in large tufts upon the high base of decayed roots, resembles at a great distance a diminutive grove 136 THE ANDEAN LAND of thickly clustered palms; and from the dark green and luxuriant appearance given to the smaller islands clothed with tussac, the richness of tropical vegetation is forcibly presented to the imagination. The only approach to a tree is the Falkland Island box tree, a species of veronica, which grows to a height of perhaps three feet, and affords no protection to man or beast. The large, round gum plant, common in Patagonia, is abundantly found, and, when dried, is useful for kindling fires, being extremely combustible. A gum exudes from it which is called balsam and is used as a curative. European vegetables thrive exceedingly well, and every house in Stanley has its plot of garden ground attached, the shipping offering a ready and profitable market for their surplus produce. The Falklands have Cape Horn weather. Wind is the principal evil. A region more ex posed to storms, both in the Summer and Winter, it would be difficult to find. The winds are vari able and seldom at rest while the sun is above the horizon. They are very violent at times. During the Summer a calm day is an extraordi nary event. Generally speaking, the nights are less windy than the days, but neither by night nor by day nor at any season of the year are these islands exempt from sudden and very severe squalls, or from the gales which blow heavily, though they do not usually last many hours. It THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 137 has been stated by De Bougainville and others that in Summer the wind freshens as the sun rises, and dies away at sunset. The nights are clear, with a beautiful showing of stars. The Magellan was driven from her anchorage, though close to a weather shore, in the narrowest part of Berkeley Sound, and totally wrecked in Johnson Harbor, about midnight, January 12, 1833. The prevalent direction of the wind is westerly, having almost the constancy of the trade wind of the tropical zone. Gales in general com mence in the northwest and draw or fly round to the southwest, and it may be remarked that when rain accompanies a northwest wind, it soon shifts into the southwest quarter and blows hard. Northerly winds bring cloudy weather; and when very light, are often accompanied by a thick fog. Northeast and northerly winds bring gloomy, overcast weather, with much rain ; some times they blow hard and hang in the north- northeast, but it is more common for them to draw round to the westward. Southeasterly winds also bring much rain; they are not fre quent, but they blow hard, and as the gale in creases it hauls southward. Though fogs occur with light easterly or northerly winds, they do not often last through the day. Gales of wind, as well as squalls, are more sudden, and blow more furiously from the southern quarter, be tween southwest and southeast, than from other 138 THE ANDEAN LAND directions. Wind from the east is rarely lasting or strong; it generally brings fine weather and may be expected in April, May, June, and July, rather than at other times ; but intervals of fine weather, short indeed, with light breezes from east-southeast to east-northeast, occur occasion ally throughout the year. Neither lightning nor thunder is at all common ; but when the former occurs, easterly winds are expected to follow. If lightning should be seen in the southeast while the barometer is low, a hard gale from that quarter may be expected. Southeasterly and southerly gales last longer than those from the westward, and they dash a very heavy sea upon the southern shores. In the Winter generally there is not so much wind as in the Summer, and in the former season the weather, though colder, is more settled and more dry. In different years seasons vary so much that those who have been longest about the islands hardly venture to predict what weather will be found during any particular month. All they say is, that January, February, and March, though warmest, are the windiest months; and that May, June, July, though cold, are much less stormy. Dry weather may be looked for in September, October, and November. Every material change in the weather is foretold by the barometer, if its movements are tolerably understood and fre quently observed. THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 139 The temperature may be considered equable. It is never hot, neither is it ever very cold ; but the average is low ; and in consequence of frequent rain and wind, a really moderate degree of cold is much more noticed than would probably be the case if the weather were dry and serene. The climate is exceedingly healthy. On a calm day the sun has considerable power, but at other times the heat is neutralized by the keen wind, and it is only here and there in sheltered nooks that grain can be ripened or flowers brought to any perfection. Seaweed or kelp (focus giganteus of Solander), as an indication of shoal water, is invaluable here. Lying upon the water, the upper leaves and stalks show, almost as well as a buoy, where there is a possibility of hidden danger. Long stems with leaves, lying regularly along the sur face of the sea, are generally attached to rocky places or else to large stones. The good service it thus affords to vessels navigating near this stormy land is evident, and it surely has saved many from being wrecked. Berkeley Sound is situated at the northeast ern extremity of the Falkland group. A gov ernor named Moody marked out the plan of a town there, to be called Anson, after the great circumnavigator; but after deliberation it was determined to have the principal settlement at Port William. Berkeley Sound is the Puerto de 140 THE ANDEAN LAND la Soledad of the Spaniards, and the Acarron Bay of the French. It was at this harbor that the latter, under M. de Bougainville, had their settlement in 1764. The sound is four miles wide at the entrance, and upwards of fifteen miles in length, terminating in the three excellent an chorages of Johnson Harbor, Stag Road, and Port Louis. It was considered to be the only place on the east coast that could be entered at night. However, the lighthouse at Port William facilitates the entrance to the principal port. The settlement at Port Louis is securely situ ated along the edge of a small bay which has a narrow entrance from the sound. The buildings constructed by the Spaniards were remarkable for their thick walls of stone. They are strag gling, covering a space half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. Among them are the ruins of one used as a church and another as a hospital. Off the northeast point of the sound is a ledge above water, called Volunteer Rocks, upon which the French frigate Uranic was wrecked in Feb ruary, 1820. Sea Lion Rocks are on the north side, behind which is Johnson's Harbor. Cape Pembroke is the easternmost extremity of the Falkland Islands, and the southern side of the entrance of Port William, in which is Stanley, the present seat of government. The lighthouse is an iron tower, sixty feet high, THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 141 painted in red and white bands, which shows a fixed bright light in all directions seaward, at an elevation of one hundred and ten feet, visible for fourteen miles. The landing on all the beaches is bad, in con sequence of the scattered fragments of quartz rock, from one to three feet long, which will greatly injure a boat. Stanley Harbor, the seat of government, is on the south side of Port William. It is now pro vided with many advantages for the refitment and refreshment of passing vessels. The great est drawback was the want of running water near the settlement, but this has been obviated by several wells, and a reservoir is also con structed. Wild fowl and fish are very abundant. Wood cannot be obtained, but there is plenty of good peat to be had. During the night of Nov ember 30, 1878, an avalanche of peat nearly overwhelmed the town of Stanley. The Falklands are the only inhabited lands that are under much the same physical condi tions as Cape Horn. From the fact that life is possible and even tolerable there, it may be con cluded that the tag end of South America is in habitable for civilized people, but not attractive. Whalers and sealers live farther to the south, even, but there are those who grimly contend that whalers and sealers, if civilized, are in a class by themselves. 142 THE ANDEAN LAND The curtains of night were unfolding with never a star to pin them as the Oropesa steamed out of the winding channel to Port Stanley into the boisterous sea that leaps and lashes between the islands and the Atlantic mouth of the Straits of Magellan, with much such a surge and sweep as the conscienceless Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia. It was Uncle Dick Seddon, while Premier of New Zealand, who said that every mile of the twelve hundred that separate that country and Australia was a reason why it should not join the federation that now unites all the Australian states and Tasmania. As we rounded the first headland, the last thing we saw of Port Stanley was the stocky figure of a man standing on the bones of the smart American bark that gave her heels suc cessfully to the Alabama, only to die of over exertion, quite typical of more than one American who starts in as a boy to run from the privateer poverty, more of a wolf-pirate than a privateer, and keeps on running even after reaching the harbor of independence, only to leave his bones bleaching on the shore of the cruel sea of over work, because gold is sweet in the purse. There was no sunset that night, but it did n't take much imagination to see a glow in the sodden sky reflected by the beaming face of the kindly American consul, who might not see another THE FALKLAND ISLANDS 143 fellow countryman for many, many days. When the night fell dark as it can only be in the far southern ocean, the seas jumped at the throat of our ship as if to throttle it and we were glad to hasten below and between blankets to escape the " Swell and the sweep of the vast blown deep, And the wail of the storm's affright." CHAPTER VI THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN AND CAPE HORN The Straits of Magellan — Wild Writhing Channels — An Unknown Region — Mount Sarmiento — Darwin's Description — Cape Virgins — Cape Pillar — The Evangelistas — Punta Arenas — Originally a Penal Colony — Tierra del Fuego — Indians of the Land of Fire — Worst Weather in the Inhabited World — Bravery of the Patagoni ans — The Patagonian Channel — Cape Horn — A Storm at the Tag End of the World. EVER since 1520 when Magellan discovered the straits that bear his name with a variety of spellings, and thought he had found the only channel that pierced the western continents, which might extend as far south as north of the passage, so far as he knew, they have been the fascination of travellers and the bete noire of navigators. Magellan soon sailed away to the Philippines and was massacred by the fierce natives of Cebu before he had an opportunity to learn of the black and bleak waters of Cape Horn. To this day all of the almost countless estuaries of the straits cannot be said to have been explored and mapped thoroughly. Across a tempestuous sea for four hundred and forty 144 STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 145 miles from the Falklands one sails on the ordi nary steamer for two nights and a day, when, in the gray of a Newfoundland morning, amidst the spume and mistral of the hungry southern ocean, Cape Virgins, marking the northeastern entrance to the straits, is seen. The cape is 135 feet high, and has a boldness exaggerated by the level land about it. If the morning is remarkably clear, the landmark may be distinguished from the crow's nest when twenty or twenty-five miles dis tant, and the phenomenon of a double horizon is seen. Some distance further south and mark ing more truly the geographical beginning of the Atlantic side of the straits, but not so important to navigators, is Cape Dungeness. Across the mouth of the straits, some fourteen miles, is Cape Espiritu Santo, 190 feet high. Cape Virgins and Cape Espiritu Santo have enough resemblance to embarrass a sailor if he has overreached, and their white cliffs and low shingle points have bothered more than one skipper. Cape Espiritu Santo is the seaward termination of a range of hills running from 200 to 900 feet in height and extending northeast and southwest from the promontories that form the first narrows to Cape Boqueron, on the Tierra del Fuego side, opposite Port Famine. From Cape Virgins to the first narrows the mainland is gently undulating and covered with grass. The first narrows have a gate-like en voi,. I. — IO 146 THE ANDEAN LAND trance, not unlike the end of Big Lake George in St. Mary's River, between lakes Superior and Huron. They are twenty miles long and have a navigable width of two miles. In the Spring, September and October, the tide chokes into these narrows and rises to a height of fifty feet, making a current similar to the rushing waters in the Bay of Fundy, or the wild surges in the maelstrom region near the Lofoten Islands, off the coast of Norway. Through the navigable channel this tide runs from five to eight knots an hour, and to stem it a sailing ship must have very favorable wind conditions. From the first narrows it is eighteen miles through a widening called Phillips Bay to the second narrows, and the shores resemble certain reaches of the St. Lawrence below Rimouski. The least depth in the navigable channel of the straits, is six fathoms. The second narrows are twelve miles long and three to four miles wide, with a spring tide of twenty-three feet and a current of three to six knots. The channel through the second narrows is quite straight until Cape St. Vincent is reached, named by some person lacking in originality, who thought he saw in the cape a resemblance to Cape St. Vincent, Portugal. Thence the straits are full of shoals and the channel winds in and out like a writhing serpent for fifteen miles, after which it is again quite straight to Punta Arenas ; STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 147 (Sandy Point), in Chile territory on the main land, and not only the southernmost town in the world, but the only town of any importance on the straits. There are pretentious ranches and small trading settlements, but no other town. Before reaching Punta Arenas, the straits seem to be completely blocked by the mountains on Dawson Island. Most prominent is Mt. San Felipe, and over it the bold peak of Mt. Tarn, making a rich prospect from the anchorage off Punta Arenas. Elizabeth Island, named by Drake, is seen after passing the second narrows. About fourteen miles from Punta Arenas is Cape Negro, and here is the last spur of the Andes, clothed with stunted beech and with underbrush of the magnolia family. Until Punta Arenas is reached, the shores on both sides of the straits are treeless and resemble the plains of northern Siberia before the tundra begins. On the mainland across from Phillips Bay, a range of hills reaching an altitude of 831 feet stretch between the first and second narrows. Between Cape St. Vincent and Cape Negro there are a number of low islands, including St. Maria, St. Magdalen, and Quartermaster. Back of Punta Arenas to the west is Mt. Fenton, 1990 feet high, and a number of other isolated mounts, varying from 990 to 2050 feet. Upon leaving Punta Arenas and proceeding toward the Pacific Ocean, the shores of the 148 THE ANDEAN LAND straits become bolder and more picturesque, with snow-covered mountains and glaciers, re sembling now a section of Alaskan coast, then presenting a similarity to the Norwegian fjords, with bits that even suggest the Inland Sea of Japan, or sketches of the Dalmatian shores of the Adriatic, with their islands and Dinaric Alps. There are many islands here also, and one could easily forget that he was at the tag end of South America, and fancy himself in the St. Lawrence or Georgian Bay, if the waters were less dull and opaque. Across from Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, there are low grassy hills and lagoons, with a brackish lake of some size. On the Fuego side, midway between this lake and Cape Monmouth, is Porvenir Bay, a narrow and rather long indentation that suggests a river. Then comes Cape Boqueron on the island shore, and a deep, shallow bay of consider able size named Useless Bay, which lengthwise is almost east and west, slightly northeast, and on further south is Admiralty Sound, some thirty miles long and varying from four miles in width to ten or twelve. The steamer channel, however, follows the mainland side around Brunswick Peninsula, necessitating a sweeping detour of seventy miles out of the way. After Punta Arenas on the mainland side, we pass Punta Ghayrabo, Punta Santa Maria, and Agua Fresca Bay, all of small interest. STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 149 Cape Valentyn, on Dawson Island, marks the entrance to Admiralty Sound, and Cape Boqueron is the gatepost of Useless Bay. Mt. Graves, 1540 feet high, on Dawson Island, makes a brave showing. Preservation Cove is straight west of Mt. Graves and is reached before Lomas Bay, both on the Dawson Island shores. On the mainland, a little south of west of Cape Valentyn, is Carreras Bay, and near it Santa Anna Point, a sharp projection of the mainland. Only a short distance south of Santa Anna Point and about twenty-five miles from Punta Arenas is Port Famine, directly across the straits from Preservation Cove. Sarmiento established a colony here in 1580 and left it for eight years, during which nearly all the members starved to death, and the place has been abandoned ever since. The decided change in the character of the scenery begins at Port Famine. The straits channel, from Port Famine to Cape San Isidro, is called Famine Reach. Then come Joachim Point and San Antonio Point, narrow projections of Dawson Island, between which is San Nicholas Bay. On the mainland is fine mountain scenery. Nodales Peak, 2515 feet, and Mt. Victoria, 2910 feet, are especially in the eye. The range of which they are a part has many other peaks, one of which is 3210 feet, and several are over 3000 feet, towering into the low clouds and looking much higher than they are, 150 THE ANDEAN LAND because of their proximity and the comparatively low intervening area. From a point opposite Rosa Bay and Cape Froward, at the commencement of the Froward Beach, Mt. Sarmiento and Mt. Buckland, of Tierra del Fuego, come into view if the atmos pheric conditions are proper, a highly important matter in this zone of fog and thick weather. Mt. Sarmiento is the Fujiyama, Pike's Peak, Orizaba, Aconcagua, and Mont Blanc, all in one, of Magellan's Straits, the most prominent and beautiful, majestic and best known of all the mountains that act as sentinels for the outposts of a continent. The distance of Sarmiento from here is about forty miles, and its altitude is 7300 feet, with a broad base and two very distinct peaks about a quarter of a mile apart. When the temperature is low and the wind is northeast or southeast Sarmiento is apt to be clear, but otherwise it is hidden in vapor, which is for the greater portion of the time. Darwin saw Sarmiento during his memorable voyage on H. M. S. Beagle and gives this con densed description: " In the morning we were delighted to see the veil of mist gradually rise from Sarmiento and display it to view. Its base, for about an eighth of its total height is covered with dusky woods, and above this a field of snow extends to the summit. These vast piles of snow, which never melt and which seem destined STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 151 to last as long as the world holds together, present a noble and even sublime spectacle. The outline of the mountain was admirably clear and defined. Ow ing to the abundance of light reflected from the white and glittering surface no shadows were cast on any part, and those lines which intersected the sky could alone be distinguished; hence the mass stood out in the boldest relief. Several glaciers descend in a winding course from the upper great expanse of snow to the seacoast; they may be likened to great frozen Niagaras, and perhaps these cataracts of blue ice are fully as beautiful as the moving ones of waters." It may be more truthful than reverential to state a fact of common knowledge that " cataracts of blue ice " move as certainly as those of water, if less swiftly, and Darwin may have considered this in his pretty word play as being, quite well enough known to permit the license, which would be unnoticeable were it not for his fine distinction between "noble" and "sublime" in describing the aspect of the snow fields. Con tinuing to quote from Darwin, the following upon Tierra del Fuego is given : "The country may be described as a mountainous land, partly submerged in the sea, so that deep in lets and bays occupy the place where valleys should exist. The mountain sides, except on the exposed western coast, are covered from the water's edge up ward with one great forest. The trees reach to an elevation of between 1000 to 1500 feet, and are sue- 152 THE ANDEAN LAND ceeded by a band of peat, with minute alpine plants, and the peat is succeeded by the line of perpetual snow. Level land is scarcely to be found. The zoology of Tierra del Fuego is very poor. Of mam malia, besides whales and seals, there are, one bat, a kind of mouse, two true mice, two foxes, a sea otter, the guanaco, and a deer. Most of these animals inhabit only the drier eastern parts of the country. " It is to be feared that Professor Darwin did not do a great deal of personal exploration or investigation in Tierra del Fuego. His state ment as to level lands is particularly erroneous, as sheep ranchers have found much excellent and profitable pasturage. The "Land of Fire" is still much of a terra incognita. There are deli cate mosses and ferns, numerous aquatic birds, and, in fact, the flora and fauna of Tierra del Fuego offer a rich field for original research. Dawson Island is separated from Tierra del Fuego by Gabriel Channel and Cascade Reach. Nowhere in the world are there more islands and bays and sounds and freaky coast lines in the same distance than along Magellan Straits and tributary waters, including the Patagonian chan nels. One might cruise in a small yacht almost endlessly, with new waters daily. The winds are strong and often dangerous, but there are many harbors. After Dawson Island come Clarence Island, with Mt. Pond, 2500 feet, Pond Bay, Pedro Sound, Lyell Sound, Green- STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 153 ough Peninsula, Mercury Sound, Cape Turn, Dyneley Sound; and separated from Tierra del Fuego by Cockburn Channel and Adelaide Pas sage, through which one may sail westward to the Pacific Ocean by way of Melville Sound, and out past Stoke's Bay and the many interesting Grafton Islands, the main channel for ships continues between Brunswick Peninsula and Clarence Island, past the entrance to Barbara Channel, which separates Clarence Island from Santa Inez Island. The shores of the latter wind in and out with points, bays, and sounds, begin ning with Cape Edgeworth, after which come Choiseul Bay, Whale Sound, Ulloa Peninsula, Snow Sound, Cape Hunter, Snow Inlet, Hum phrey Cave, and Arathon Bay, besides many headlands and bays which are nameless to all except the Fuegians. At the mouth of Barbara Channel is Cayetan Island, opposite which and forcing the ship channel towards the mainland are the Charles Islands, and smaller nameless islands. After these, in the channel is Carlos Island, at the northwest end of which is Jerome Channel, between Brunswick and Cordova Pen insulas, leading up by Lago de la Botella and on to Otway Water, parts of which are nearly a lake and almost make an island of Munos Gamero Peninsula. On Brunswick Peninsula, mainland side, the channel passes from a point opposite Pedro 154 THE ANDEAN LAND Sound, on Clarence Island, Snug Bay, Woods Bay, Cape Holland, Cape Coventry, Fortescue Bay, Cape Gallant, and York Point, the last near the entrance to Jerome Channel. All along the Brunswick Peninsula shore are mountains, among which, after Snug Bay, are Mt. Three Peaks, 3700 feet; Mt. Cross, 2460 feet; and Bachelor Peaks, 3265 feet, the latter between York Point and the entrance to Jerome Channel. Mt. Buckland, 4000 feet, may still be seen almost in line with Sarmiento. The shores of Cordova Peninsula, beginning with Jerome Channel, are close to the ship chan nel and look as though some Titan had cut them out with a cosmic scroll saw. After that portion of the channel called Froward Reach, and be tween Cape Coventry and York Point, is English Reach; then comes Crooked Reach; after it comes Long Reach and then Sea Reach, to the Pacific Ocean. On the Cordova Peninsula shore are Lion Bay, Cape Notch, Glacier Bay, Playa Parda Inlet, Marion Cove, the peninsula finish ing at Cape Monday. In the channel opposite Playa Parda Inlet is Shelter Island. On Cor dova Peninsula are several fine mountains, includ ing Mt. Waldron, 1 800 feet, and Mt. Wyndham, 4000 feet. Continuing from Cape Monday, we pass Santa Anna Islands, at the entrance to the Gulf of Xaultegua, on the mainland side of the channel, and see Finger Peak, 3190 feet, and STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 155 other mountains. On the same side of the ship channel, after Santa Anna Islands, come Crip ples' Channel, Cape Providence, Providence Island, Tamar Islands, with Cape Tamar and Point Tamar, and then Beaufort Bay, imme diately after which is Smith Channel, between Phillips and Fairway Islets, the entrance to the Patagonian channels, through which one may sail in landlocked waters for three hundred and sixty miles through Sarmiento, Innocentes, Con- cepcion, Wide, and Messier Channels to the Gulf of Penas, toward Valparaiso, in one of the most enchanting scenic regions of the world, full of gloomy grandeur. Cape Phillip marks the begin ning of Adelaide Archipelago, and here the straits widen and the throb of the bosom of the Pacific is unmistakably felt. The ship channel is nearer to Desolation Island, a big piece of segregated land at the south, which is separated from Santa Inez Island by a narrow channel, connecting with the ocean. The shore of Deso lation Island is marked by Upright Bay, Cape Upright, Alquilqua Bay, Puchachailgus Inlet, Valentine Harbor, Hamilton Head, innumer able other points and bays, and lastly the famous Cape Pillar, 1395 feet high, marking the south entrance to the Straits of Magellan, on the Pacific Ocean side. Far away to the northwest, like spectres, black and stern, are Sugar Loaf and the three Evangelistas, faithfully keeping 156 THE ANDEAN LAND their lonesome vigil where straits and ocean join to the north. To my mind these columnar gran ite rocks are the most impressive sight connected with the straits, more so than Mt. Sarmiento or any of the other mountains; and indeed they perform the most important service to mariners of any of the monitors, not even excepting their companion watchmen, Cape Pillar or Capes Virgins and Espiritu Santo, on the Atlantic side. The distance in a straight line from Cape Virgins to Cape Pillar is two hundred and forty miles, but the channel usually taken by ships through the Straits of Magellan is between three hundred and four hundred miles. The Brunswick Peninsula projection alone adds sev enty miles, and there are almost uncountable other twists and turns, long and short. Old voyagers in sailing ships were wont to consume eighty days in making the passage through the straits, and counted themselves lucky if they got through in that time from east to west. The prevailing winds are west to east, and a sailing ship going from the Pacific to the Atlantic is practically assured of a fair passage with winds abaft the beam during the Summer time, Octo ber to March. In the Winter the winds are most uncertain, and not only are the changes rapid, but the winds back and veer in williwaws of varying force, keeping a skipper at his wits' STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 157 ends, with all of his skill in seamanship in use every moment and his nerves and sinews con stantly alert. The British pilot book for the straits says that from Cape Froward west no portion of the globe inhabited by man has worse weather, for the whole year. The British ships Nassau and Sylvia, surveying, charting, sounding, and ex ploring in the straits, kept careful meteorological records, and report eleven hours of rain, hail, or snow as a daily average from April to October. In spite of this inclemency, the climate is not unhealthy, and along the shores of the straits there is a white population of between twenty and thirty thousand engaged in sheep-raising and mining. Punta Arenas is in Chile territory and is the most southerly town in the world, about latitude 530. It has a population of fifteen thousand and is a flourishing place, its recent growth present ing an appearance of newness. Buildings of adobe, brick, and wood, nearly all with corru gated iron roofs, give a crazy-quilt architectural appearance. The town is one hundred and twenty miles from Cape Virgins. It is quite as often called Sandy Point, the English for Punta Arenas, as it is spoken of by its Spanish name. The winds blow night and day, cool and damp, and only lessen to gather force for a greater velocity, which sometimes reaches the dignity 158 THE ANDEAN LAND of a hurricane, that drives the corrugated iron roofs through the air like so much crumpled straw. The winds not only blow and then blow some more, but they carry a burden of blight that is death to trees and shrubs, and so Punta Arenas is treeless except behind walls that have been built to specially protect gardens. The German consul has walled his premises and has a charming villino, well filled with flowers and shrubs and grass, presenting a beautiful and striking contrast to the scene of vegetative dearth all about. Up to 1877 Punta Arenas was a convict colony, but the convicts revolted and got the upper hand of their guards before help came from far- off Santiago, the seat of government. So the convict settlement was abandoned, and the fit ness of the location for a respectable community has been manifested by the natural growth of the place since. At this writing there is not in all Chile a more prosperous section. From the first the sheep and cattle industry, with wool and hide shipments and boiling-down works, made it a good town. Now it has become a mining and whale-fishing centre with no small trade in furs. One may buy fine sea otter pelts and water mole and other peltries to good advantage at Punta Arenas. The population is largely foreign, with Germans in the majority. The Rio los Minas, the river of Punta Arenas, PUNTA ARENAS, HARBOR AND TOWN — STEAITS OF MAGELLAN Southernmost City of the World STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 159 has been the traffic agent of a mother lode some where back in the hills and has formed a great deal of rich placer ground. Not much attention was paid to it until four years ago, and within only a year the interest has been intense. Sev eral Americans got in on the ground floor and have made some money. The placer runs in gold from fifty cents a yard up, and several dredging companies have been formed, one of which has just started actual work with reported good results. From nooks in the shore canoes of natives darted out and intercepted our ship while passing the straits and offered to trade skins even to the last one they wear, for bread and tobacco. Each canoe, which is constructed of pieces lashed together rather than dug out of a log or fashioned from skins, although there are a few kyacks and dugouts, commonly contains a family, — father, mother, and six to twenty children. There are dogs and rude implements, both domestic and of the chase. A feature which gave the people their name and which is unique to this day among these savages is the fire which never goes out and which is kept carefully burning in the home, camp, and in each canoe. A pile of flat stones keeps the fire off the bottom of the canoe and the fire is more sacredly guarded than any other possession and is even worshipped. Up to very recent 160 THE ANDEAN LAND years these Tierra del Fuegians, or Indians of the Land of Fire, have been warlike and even ag gressive, mobilizing with remarkable swiftness when a ship would become stranded or crippled and attacking with much ferocity. Now they are more retiring and rarely molest the whites unless provoked. Some authorities place the Fuegians at the bottom of all the savage races, but I think some of the Esquimos are not to be ranked higher. In 1830 Captain FitzRoy of H. M. S. Beagle, took four Fire Indians to England where they were partially civilized and somewhat educated and then returned them to their fellows, but their influence was never apparent. There are mis sionaries among them and their work is one of great hardship and self-abnegation. They have acquired the primitive language, formulated it simply in writing, and are thereby teaching the rudimentary doctrines of Christianity coupled with rules of civilization, particularly along the agricultural lines. The Fuegians are usually classified as Foot Indians and Canoe Indians. The former are allied to the Patagonians, occupy the mainland of Tierra del Fuego, and are superior to the Canoe Indians. They will not drink intoxicants. The Foot Indians almost never use canoes, are in a sense nomadic, and subsist upon the uncer tain fruits of the chase. The east-coast natives STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 161 usually wear a guanaco skin, and on the west coast raw seal skin is the fashion. The men be tween the coasts forming the central tribes may wear a loin skin of either otter or seal and the women are most scantily clad, the body seeming to be more immune to cold and wet than the face and hands of the white man, as some are entirely destitute of clothing. Nearly all the men have several wives or as many as they can support, or rather each man has as many as he can get to contribute to his livelihood. There is next to no form of government and chiefs are not rec ognized, while habits of thrift are unknown. Canoe Indians live on fish and fungi, and the Foot Indians are skilled in the use of bow and arrow, while a very few now have guns. To the Fuegians a whale is a fortune, but they cannot capture one, and only procure a prize when a whale is stranded or driven ashore by some ocean enemy. Once a whale is dis covered a great blubber feast follows for days, after which the bones are made into arrow and spear heads and other implements and the sinews fashioned into fishing lines. One feels a deep pity for these poor Indians who in comfort are scarcely on a par with the animals that surround them. As one proceeds northward into Patagonia, an improvement in the native is easily perceived. Patagonia means the " Land of the Big Paws," VOL. I. — II 162 THE ANDEAN LAND or "big feet," for so their feet, wrapped in skins, appeared to the first Spaniards who saw them. That portion of South America lying between the Rio Negro and the Straits of Magellan, compris ing an area of 372,815 square miles, was Pata gonia, before it was carved into provinces by Chile and Argentina. The native population is not ac curately known, but is estimated at from 10,000 to 30,000, the former figure being more nearly correct, in all probability. There are numerous tribes, the best known of which are the Tehuel- ches, who grade up so closely to the famous Araucanians as to be regarded as an allied people. Some of the Patagonians are high in bust and features, with arms like tree trunks, but with disproportionately smaller lower limbs, probably caused by a horseback life. Their hair is long and thick and jet black and their eyes are as black as their hair; their teeth are white as pearls, almost, and their complexion is reddish dark brown, while their fat features express more kindness than ferocity. They are not bad Indians unless aroused, and even then are inclined to shrink until pressed to the limit of endurance, whereupon they are transformed into veritable destructive demons of tremendous strength and prodigious valor, hesitating at nothing as long as a breath of life lasts. Cape Horn, or Hoorn, named from Hoorn on the Hoornerhop, a bay of the Zuyder Zee, STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 163 in north Holland, is in south latitude 550 59', nearly two hundred miles south of the entrance to the Straits of Magellan, although the straits channel is forced south by Brunswick Peninsula to within one hundred miles of the Horn. Hoorn, in Holland, was the home of Schauten, the daring Dutchman who discovered the passage with Le Maire, in 161 6. The passage through the straits saves nearly five hundred miles of most boisterous ocean and much hazardous navigation. Nevertheless, few sailing craft pass through the straits, and really make time by going around the Horn. Steamers invariably choose the straits, which are quite well lighted and are buoyed jointly by the Argentine and Chilean governments. Owing to fierce currents, the buoys are often swept out of place, and as there is no buoy guard continually on watch, as in St. Mary's River, not much attention is paid to these marks, which would contribute much to facility of navigation if they could be depended upon absolutely. It should not be so, but there does exist in the popular mind the idea that Cape Horn is the southernmost projection of South America or of Tierra del Fuego, when in fact it is a prom ontory on one of the Cape Horn or Hermite Islands, the latter said to have been named for Admiral Hermite, commander of the Dutch fleet here in 1624, and is almost a degree south 164 THE ANDEAN LAND of and two degrees west of the tip of Tierra del Fuego. There are three islands in the Cape Horn group, namely: Hermite Island, Deceit Island, and Horn Island, undoubtedly detached links of the Andes. At the foot of Horn Island is Cape Horn, a frowning black cliff, 1391 feet high, and near by are great heaps of huge and jagged bowlders, which were apparently left over when the continent was completed, and over which the sea restlessly breaks, lashing itself into a milkwhite foam that forms a wild contrast to the big, black barriers that defend the shore. The sea here is never calm, and the appearance of storm-rent coast is the wildest in the world. On the rocks some soil has mysteriously lodged and there is a growth of low, scrubby bushes, similar to those to be seen near the Arctic limits of tree life in Lapland. The island shores form many sheltered coves where there is good anchorage, with waters abounding in fine, edible wild celery and good fish among the kelp-covered rocks that strew the bottom. Flocks of Cape pigeons sweep through the air in unmistakable pigeonesque flight, and on the waters may be seen the clumsy paddle-wheel ducks, a sort of diving bird which flies with difficulty, and also many geese. Now and then a pelican is to be seen, while farther north in Tierra del Fuego are parrots and a bird called the banduria. Mushrooms of fine flavor and texture, and all STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 165 edible, grow plentifully at Cape Horn. St. Mar tin's Cove, on Hermite Island, is a refuge well known to skippers ; and Port Maxwell, two miles north of St. Martin's, is an even better place to run into, and is much frequented by those who are too fiercely assailed by the southern represen tative of Boreas. It is said that the Pacific Ocean between the Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn never escapes from the clutches of the storm king. The weather is always turbulent and sometimes it is worse. Out from the quiet waters of the straits into the wild surges beyond Cape Pillar, with the ocean threshing the indomitable ribs of the monster Evangelistas, is an experience never to be forgotten, no matter how much or where one has sailed. A Cape Horn hurri cane is like no other, with its burden of snow and sleet and spume. It is more like a Dakota blizzard, and if in such the vast plains could reel in elemental, demoniacal fury, the simi larity would be great indeed. There is almost no forewarning to a Cape Horn tempest; no lurid flashes of lightning; no yellowish-green heavens as in the tropics. The barometer is nearly always low and a low barometer does not always mean a storm. Of a sudden the air is poised and a huge lump of blackness appears nearly overhead, as if moulded by the furies of the sky. A muffled roar seeming to 166 THE ANDEAN LAND come from on high grows swiftly into an over whelming confusion as the heavy atmosphere, moving as if dropped leadlike from heaven, falls on the ship and the surrounding sea. The first effect is to make the ship settle as if she would sink to the bottom, and the influence on the sea is first a compression that enlivens the resiliency Of the great waters and makes them leap from the storm's embrace as though resent ing the capture by an enemy. The waves are truly mountain high and as the winds sweep out from their original spot of apparent con centration, the billows are ferociously driven in great rolls in the direction of the storm's move ment. What of the ship ? She is checked down and headed into the sea. Waves heavy with salt and ice sweep from the forecastle head to the stern; the scuppers are overflowed like the sur face sewers during a Mobile cloudburst ; the decks are knee deep ; the water rushes over the comb ings into the bowels of the ship until the state rooms have several inches of water on the floor ; first a boat and then another is carried away, deck houses have to be reinforced with wire hawser lashings; some of the brave sailors are washed overboard beyond all hope of help; every fabric of the ship gives and groans griev ously like a monster sea horse snorting in min gled fear and anger. The scene is indescribable. Men and ships perish every year in Cape Horn STRAITS OF MAGELLAN 167 waters. Not infrequently many sailors are frozen to death. For days the fight keeps up and if the ship is not driven on the rocks, or does not scissor off sheet bolts during the terrible leaps and plunges and falls, or if the machinery does not fail in some vital part, the victory is won, and the good ship emerges like a thing maimed and mangled. The records of the Bureau Veritas for 1906 show that during that year alone eighty-two sailing vessels and thirty-nine steamships were lost. When these losses occur near where there are newspaper correspondents, like the fearful case of the Berlin off the Hook of Holland, the story is told in all its details of graphic tragedy. But more than one ship and brave crew go down unrecorded and unsung, and in 1906 alone six sailed forth from ports and were never heard of again. Of the sailing vessels lost, twenty-five were American and nineteen British. 1 c CHAPTER VII TRADE WITH SOUTH AMERICA American Consular Service — Trade with South America — W. R. Grace tif Co. — Careless Ship ments — Tricky Germans — A Startling Trade Letter — Juan F. Fowler — Letter in Relation to a South American Steamship Subsidy. OUR consular service is being improved, but it is still very bad and needs no end of weeding out. So long was it the dumping- ground of political ne'er-do-wells who had been a failure at everything at home, that only time will work the results that are being aimed at by the State Department. I have often wondered why the department does not institute a system of consulate inspection. Inspection is considered to work well in the postal and treasury and other departments, and it would seem to be valuable in raising the low standard of our service abroad. Consular inspectors could give much instruction to consuls who need it, and could aid the depart ment materially in discovering consuls who are impossible. A private business concern with branches over the world would inspect them rigidly and frequently. 168 SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 169 The inefficiency of the United States consular service, which spreads in instances to our diplo matic service, has caused much shame to Ameri cans, has injured the nation beyond estimate, and is only now being given first thought by the President and State Department, with the result that some slight improvement may be seen. The service is still patchy, with now and then a particularly good consul, who stands out among his fellows like a pine tree among the alders. We spend money in maintaining fine war and naval schools at West Point and Annapolis in order to train competent men to fight our battles in time of war, which is wise, indeed. But our contests in times of peace are even more impor tant and vastly more numerous during the cen turies that form our nation's history than those of war. At least, we will all admit that the battles of peace are important. Yet, as a general thing, our commercial representatives abroad, and sometimes our diplomatic ones, too, are chosen with no reference to fitness or capacity, and sometimes without regard to morals. A Senator goes to the President and recommends some man who has done him a political service, or some person who is a party burden and has outlived his usefulness, if he ever had any, for a position in the service in other countries. The appoint ment is made, and the people of the United States are not seldom judged of by the standard 170 THE ANDEAN LAND afforded by this man. So we all suffer, not alone through his inability to comprehend and perform the duties of the office, but in character as well. Why would it not be wise to establish a United States Diplomatic and Consular College, where men could be especially trained in duties of statecraft and consular work ? * Appointments to such an institution might be made in much the same manner as selections for West Point and Annapolis are now made. Men could be so pre pared and sent out who would be superior in every way to the foreign representatives of other countries. The benefit to the United States in a hundred years would be so great that it could not be estimated. The cost of establishing and maintaining such a training college would be as nothing compared with the good that it would do. Since the Spanish-American War, we have come to have jurisdiction over more than five millions of Spanish-speaking people, or more than are to be found in any one country in South America, or any country in the world outside of Spain itself. A United States diplomatic and consular college could train men for service in Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Samoa, Hawaii, in addition to the foreign countries of the world. * Recently certain universities in the United States have offered courses of study along these lines. SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 171 At present the consular service makes reports on business conditions abroad and particularly affecting American trade. Some of these re ports are intelligent and thorough, while some are as bad as can be. All are published in gov ernment report form and are not read by one- tenth of one per cent of the population. The American press is the most widely circulated in the world. If a bureau of publicity were estab lished in the Department of Commerce and Labor, which would send a daily, weekly, or monthly consular news service to daily and weekly newspapers, thousands of interesting facts and ideas would reach the public with re sultant education and improvement. Judicious advertising by the government in magazines and newspapers of those things which all the people, and especially the coming generations, should know, would pay. Our trade abroad is very large. Each year renders us capable of serving a still larger foreign patronage. We cannot create conditions or stimulate trade by subsidies unless our manu facturers show an intelligent desire for trade and a determination to render such service as shall be necessary in order to get that trade and hold it. Trade with South America is an absorbing topic in the United States at present and Secre tary Root's visit emphasized the discussion of 172 THE ANDEAN LAND the ship subsidy bill. The English and Ger mans transact the bulk of South American for eign business and are also big factors in the domestic trade. I have talked with a good many bright business men, both in South Amer ica and at home, and not one of them thinks the ship subsidy bill will be effective in developing trade. The average opinion seems to be that the United States has been exploiting nearer and better fields. Our domestic trade has demanded major attention, and for a market for our surplus we have gone to Canada, Europe, and that part of the Orient which may be said to be adjacent to the natural pathway of travel and trade. Freight rates to South America are four times as high as to Europe. The purchasing power of South Americans is away below the volume of Europe. The same efforts in other directions have brought better results. When we get ready to sell to South America, when it will be profitable to do so, when we can take time to cater to that trade, which means special goods made in accordance with South American wants and habits, we will get the trade, just as we have gotten it in Europe and elsewhere over the world when we have gone after it in earn est, no matter what the competition was or who the competitors were. The most interesting question to our business men is, "Does it pay?" SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 173 I do not wish to be understood as opposing reasonable and intelligent subsidies, but rather wish to enforce the idea that subsidy alone will not avail unless the natural conditions that make for trade growth are present. When we give~ South American trade special attention, when an American bank is established, and when, most of all, we need the trade, we will go after it and get it. That time seems to be near at hand. Such big establishments as the Case Plow people of Racine, Wisconsin, are sending a representative down this year for the first time. Mr. Frank Wiborg, of the Cincinnati ink house of Ault & Wiborg, made a business trip to South America two years ago and wrote a booklet. Business men of the United States are just beginning to sit up and take notice of South America. They have not been neglectful, inattentive, or obtuse; they have simply been doing a bigger and a better and a more profitable work elsewhere. Our South American trade is not so small, comparatively. We are second to England, but in several countries our trade exceeds that of Germany, our most dangerous rival for the future. In almost every instance we sell more than we buy, leaving the balance of trade nicely in our favor. The South American rate of inter est is high. In Argentina it is almost never lower than nine per cent. 174 THE ANDEAN LAND Our South American trade is considerable, but we have scarcely catered to it, and it may be said practically to have been flung at our heads and to have grown in spite of bad service and careless attention. I can only account for this by the apparent fact that we have had so much to do at home, have been so far behind gener ally in ability to keep up with home orders, that we have been especially recreant in filling for eign orders, and from South America particularly. Until recently our exporters to South America have given no general credit, and have insisted upon cash with the order. In a sense this was necessary because of the absence of United States banks in South American countries, without which or other means of obtaining knowledge as to personal and relative responsi bility, no intelligent or safe credit could be given. On the other hand, the English and Ger mans give six, nine, and even twelve months' credit, with interest. When the South American, even though he is entirely responsible, can get long credit he is apt to be careless as to the price he pays. As a consequence, those English and German firms which have been doing business, with agents on the ground and trips of inspection every year or so by some of the principals at home, have had big prices and have made enormous profits. The principal American busi ness on the west coast has been done through SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 175 such large houses as W. R. Grace & Co. and Wessels, Duval & Co. The firm of Grace & Co. is the largest in Chile and has done more than any other one agency of any kind, probably, to introduce American goods. Envious competitors are re sponsible for circulating bad reports about Grace & Co., and at times the firm has been in with and then out with the government. Never theless, they have continued to grow in size and influence, and the largest American houses, after shrewd investigation, are glad to have Grace & Co. as agents. They have a big line of cargo steamers, American in every sense except the flag, which is English, for the principal reason that ships can be maintained and operated more economically under the English laws than under our own. There are many who contend that changes in our maritime laws would avail more in restoring our flag to the seas than any amount of subsidies. These changes might have to be made at the expense of our coastal regulations and, if so, would operate both ways. South American agents of United States ex port firms tell us that what is most needed in a practical way is a better mail service, on the west coast particularly, and that mail contracts of sufficient importance to insure regular and fre quent delivery on the part of steamers now in service would be stimulation enough. No per- 176 THE ANDEAN LAND son has any trouble in getting from the United States to South America comfortably, or in send ing cargoes of any kind, at the present time. The mail service might even be tolerated and the matter of credits could be arranged, if only the manufacturers of the United States will come to the point where they will sufficiently desire South American trade to serve it well and cater to it. Shipments are continually made of goods that are miserably packed, and in other instances shopworn and obsolete articles are shipped, as if South America were a good place to dump such things, and as if there were no English and sharper and more energetic German competitors to make the most of it. I could easily give names and instances to show that these statements are not glittering generalities. Some of them were told me by H. P. Bush, formerly of Punta Arenas, and now of Santiago de Chile. A big firm of iron founders, whose name spells excellence and reliability in our country, made a shipment of screens for mining machin ery which, after being paid for in advance and reaching their destination seven thousand miles away, were found to be the wrong screens. This could have been obviated by giving special at tention to foreign shipments. Another large firm of wagon makers, whose factory is known the world over, received a trial SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 177 order from Punta Arenas for thirty wagons of a certain description, which would have been followed by a much larger order, to be frequently repeated. They shipped wagons "made before the war," which were in no wise as specified and were not satisfactory in any way. A well-known steam shovel company sent heavy pieces of machinery to southern Chile which had no oil holes. They had not been drilled. There were no facilities for repairing the defect at the destination of the machinery without great trouble and expense. An American family in Punta Arenas ordered canned goods from a house in New York that is usually responsible and reliable. The goods as ordered were not shipped; labels were torn off to conceal the inferiority of the brand, and the cans were so badly packed that they came in almost a ruined condition. Another person gave an order for goods to be shipped to Santiago de Chile. The order was de layed until the time ran into many months. The goods were finally traced to Santiago de Cuba. The fact that the Germans and English make similar mistakes in instances does not excuse the appalling ignorance of South America that prevails in the United States, or the next to criminal carelessness that attends the despatch of South American business. VOL. I. — 12 178 THE ANDEAN LAND In an automobile publication I saw an account of the number of autos that had been shipped to "Buenos Ayres, Brazil," which is no more ex cusable than would be the designation of New York in Mexico, or London in Italy. I am per mitted to use the following letter of current date, bearing upon the same odious topic of careless ness: Santiago de Chile, April ii, 1907. " Dear Sir, has allowed his draft to go to protest for the following reason : The goods from the Heater Co., of (six heaters), have arrived in an unsalable condition. The cases were too thin and the heaters wrapped only with a covering of brown manila paper. Through a hole in the centre of lower part of heater was a steel lug. These in every case have been wrenched and the connections all broken. I send a sample of the timber of case and also the six lugs, all twisted, showing the amount of play there was in the cases for the heaters to roll about. The weight of other cases has so bent the sides of the case that the heaters themselves are bent and distorted, making them unsalable. "On the order for , there are twenty-four kitchen sinks; these were packed in such a negli gent manner that on the roll of the edge the enamel is all broken, in every case making them practi cally useless. Evidently very little or no straw was used, so that naturally, in a journey of many thou sand miles, damage must inevitably result. Now, we have paid for these goods to the manufacturer SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 179 in good faith; the purchaser refuses to pay for them ; where does the remedy lie ? I am having the goods photographed and examined by competent parties and will endeavor to have the statements certified to before the United States Consul. If I pro ceed against this man the courts may or may not decide in my favor, as I am afraid the judges here would consider him justified in not paying for these goods ; and, in addition to this, we will lose the busi ness of this man entirely, as we would naturally antagonize him by proceeding against him and ap pearing, to him, unjust. "Pending an equitable settlement by the manu facturers to yourself, I have discarded and instructed our travellers not to solicit any business for these firms, as we cannot afford to continue to do business with any concern that runs its business in such a lax manner that goods for South America are packed in no different manner than they would be to send to a neighboring town by a responsible express company. This matter of packing by American manufacturers is one of the most disgraceful and discreditable things imaginable. It is coming to that point where no concern wants to import from the United States, if they can possibly get the goods from Europe. "It is a positive pleasure to see goods unpacked from German exporters.^ Recently I had occasion to see three large cases of delicate porcelain groups of statuary unpacked in Valparaiso, and one case of composition figures imitating terra cotta, and in the whole lot the only thing damaged was one of the composition figures. "No one cares to order American glassware be cause of the frightful loss in transit. We have tried 180 THE ANDEAN LAND and tried, but it is always the same question. And before I close, how far are you responsible for this continued state of things ? What do you do in New York to find out about goods being embarked ? as to the state of packages, the thickness of the wood employed, the banding with iron, etc. ? In view of the possible losses, is it not worth your while to have some one carefully watch this detail, and to hold up the cargo in New York and not pay for it until the manufacturer has complied with reasonable demands for the safe carrying of his product, which to him seems a matter of so much indifference ? It seems to me that before the American manufacturer makes so much fuss about export business he had better first learn how to send his goods to these countries so that they will arrive in a manner that will do him credit and make life worth living to those who are down here endeavoring to push his product." This letter was written by one of the most reliable agents for import products in all South America. He had just dictated it when I called to ask him about American trade, and he gave it to me, saying : " I am just about discouraged. Every steamer brings us damaged shipments as a result of bad packing. My travelling men do not know what to do. They cannot sell a second order when the first is delivered unfit for use. Please take this letter and publish it where every American exporter and every American who is interested in his country's foreign trade can read it. No SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 181 subsidy will cure this practice. It is unpleasant reading, but it is also unpleasant to lance a boil. I was in business in the United States for years, and when I consider the care given to home business there, I cannot believe these frightful shipments have come from the States. The best goods in the world are made by Americans, and if they can be gotten here in good order they can be sold easily enough." We have many other things to contend with. The Germans, who should be too big and hon est to do such a thing, actually steal our most reputable trade-marks and affix them to cheaper articles. They do not stop there, but really use the names of American firms. Mr. Granville Moore, of New York, a mining engineer, gradu ate of Sheffield Scientific School, Yale College, who has been in South America five years, told me he was travelling in the mountains of Bolivia when, stopping at a mining camp, he saw some rejected machinery which the owner said had been made in the United States, but was good for nothing. Examining it, Mr. Moore found the name of Fraser & Chalmers on the machinery, which was the big mining machinery firm of world-wide reputation that consolidated with Allis & Co., to form the Allis-Chalmers Com pany. Looking closely at the machinery Mr. Moore saw that it was not the style of work done by Fraser & Chalmers in any way. Run- 182 THE ANDEAN LAND ning the matter down, he found the machinery had been made in Germany and had been frau dulently sold as a Fraser & Chalmers product. It would seem that such acts as these, and many are reported, could be prevented by law or diplomacy if Americans would look sharply after their rights. Probably a more legitimate way of prejudicing American business is made use of by both Ger man and English competitors in continually misrepresenting the Monroe Doctrine. It was a keen perception of this that induced President Roosevelt to send Secretary Root to South America. Very successfully have the Germans and English dinged it into the ears of the South Americans that our Monroe Doctrine means the keeping of other hands off their countries until such time as we shall wish them our selves, whereupon we will gobble them up. The instances of Panama and Hawaii and Cuba are used with half and distorted facts, and so difficult is it generally to understand the big generous policy of the United States that while South American diplomats may concede that we have no selfish motives of territorial aggran dizement, the majority of the people really distrust us. In spite of the active deception of our competitors, the feeling towards us grows better, and the situation was helped by Secretary Root's repeated declaration that: SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 183 "We wish no victories but those of peace; no territory except our own, and no sovereignty except sovereignty over ourselves, which we deem independence." Secretary Root was kindly, dignified, and diplomatic in all of his utterances while in South America, as would be expected of so great a statesman. This did not keep the Peruvian press from reporting him as saying in Lima that Peru was the United States' favorite republic in South America, which he had not even dreamed of saying, and would not have said if he had thought it, or even if it had been true, which it is not. This report was circulated over Chile, and I heard it repeated with bitterness by many Chilenos whose mental attitude had prepared them to believe a thing so manifestly false and unreasonable. One quite influential paper in southern Chile printed an editorial that was reproduced from one end of the country to the other, and read and talked of so commonly that it is still referred to after eight months, to the effect that Secretary Root's visit was not friendly, but was made for the purpose of ascertaining whether condi tions were right for the seizure of Chile. The editorial recited every act of the United States that could be tortured into unfriendliness, from the Chilean war of independence to the present time, and many untrue statements were made. 184 THE ANDEAN LAND Particular emphasis was laid upon the alleged action of the commandant of a United States warship during the revolution against Balmaceda in 1891. It is popularly believed that a United States cruiser watched the gathering of the revolutionary forces at the Rio Concon, about thirty miles north of Valparaiso, on the coast, where a decisive battle was fought with the government forces and the latter defeated, and carried to Balmaceda information of the number and position of his enemy. Whether true or not, as stated before, it is a matter of popular belief and is the source of bad feeling that time has been somewhat slow in curing. Another thing that is said to have militated against our trade in South America has been the infrequency with which principals of United States houses themselves, or responsible and competent agents, have visited the country. The American travelling man, of such high tone and potentiality in his own country, has only begun to go to South America. Even now those who are sent are apt to be unable to speak Spanish and thus do not grasp the situation with the intuitive comprehension so generally exercised at home. The story is told of a recent competition between United States, German, and English railway car builders for an order for six hundred steel cars for the Chile state railways. A Pitts- SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 185 burg firm of manufacturers was after the order. One of the firm came in person to look after their interests. With suave demeanor and quick perception he wined and dined the proper per sons and got a trial order of twenty cars for a test. These were shipped, and so satisfied was the Pittsburger that the cars would stand the test that he went home and left the matter in the hands of an agent. His surprise and mortification and that of the agent also were complete when the American cars were shaken to pieces at the first test run over the moun tains. They had not been overloaded and the service was only such as the cars would have to give if purchased. The conclusion was that the cars were no good and the order went else where. Upon investigation the discovery was made, too late, that a competitor, said to have been a German, had removed nuts from bolts and rods that were vital to the cars' strength, and of course they went to pieces. If the manu facturer himself had remained on the ground, or had left an agent who was a practical man, the dastardly trick would have been discovered at once, in all probability. The American abroad has such a reputation for shrewdness that his competitors seem to think that they must even lie and steal to keep up with him. Consequently, he has to be most alert not to be caught by the trickery that is apt to 186 THE ANDEAN LAND surround every trade he attempts to make in every foreign land. The cheap "made in Germany" imitations will do us good in time by the reaction upon Germany which will surely follow and which is already setting in. No country and no people can practise fraud for any length of time without the chickens com ing home to roost, and the surprise is that the German, usually so profound in his knowledge, and so grounded in honor and honesty, does not see this and refuse to place himself in the same class with the commercial savages of Japan. The American house of W. R. Grace & Co., the largest and best known firm on the west coast, and one of the best known firms in South America, is a most interesting concern. The career of W. R. Grace, now dead, is somewhat known in the United States, but it is not a matter of popular knowledge that he was born in Callao, Peru, of poor Irish immigrant parents. The story of his life would read like many another fascinating tale of American personal achieve ment. From the most obscure position in a for eign land, he amassed riches and gained position and was three times chosen mayor of New York. His daughters married prominent men and the firm he organized lives after him as a monument to his ability. The principal source of the Grace fortune was guano. SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 187 The present managing director of Grace & Co. in South America is a middle-aged Yankee named Juan F. Fowler, who is an intensely active man. Mr. Fowler's stock of nervous energy seems to drive him like a Derby winner, and while the west coast climate may enervate some persons, it has not feazed him. He lives at Vina del Mar, the pretty residence suburb of Valparaiso, but is seldom there, as numerous Grace branches all along the coast claim much of his time. Grace & Co. do as wide a range of business as it is easily possible to conceive, from building steam and electric railroads and steam ships and operating mines to selling needles and tacks. Many of their branches are managed by clean and keen and capable young English men, such as Mr. Sydney G. Gare, at Con- cepcion, Chile, and Mr. Josiah Rogers, at Santiago. While passing some weeks at the Hotel Oddo, Santiago de Chile, I received the following letter written by an American importer, whose business on the west coast is large and growing : "Dear Sir, — It is to be deeply regretted that the United States Congress has not included the west coast of South America in its project for ship sub sidies. Of the whole continent of South America this coast is the one place where a subsidy is most needed, provided it were given to an independent company with the proviso that this company would 188 THE ANDEAN LAND not be controlled by any of the private shipping com panies now doing the bulk of the carrying to the west coast. The freight to the west coast from New York is carried chiefly by the steamers of W. R. Grace & Co. and Wessels, Duval & Co. Both of these firms are merchants, their principal business being that of importers of staple products, such as petroleum, agricultural machinery, cotton goods, etc. It is reasonable to suppose that the best interests of the American manufacturers, especially those who pro duce the thousand and one articles of hardware and specialties of many kinds, are not best served by being represented only by one or two large merchant houses, whose desire is to control the situation and exclude smaller competitors. The manufacturer's agent or the commission house that goes to the ex pense of sending travellers regularly to call on the small importer, spreads the manufacturer's product wider and makes it better known than does the large merchant who is looking to his profits as a jobber. If the United States were to subsidize the present lines it would be decidedly against the best interests of all those who are not doing their business through the above-mentioned merchants; consequently, while a subsidy is most desirable to insure some regularity of service, which we do not now possess, a continua tion of present irregularity would be much better than subsidizing private interests; consequently, such a subsidy would have to be safeguarded in some effec tive manner. "Should the matter come up, I hope you will make known this side of the question, either through the press or in some effective manner in Washington, in order that the situation may be thoroughly known and the matter ventilated in a proper manner, as we SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE 189 want to avoid, if possible, any shipping monopolies to this coast. Let us all have a fair chance, that is all we ask for. To subsidize the present lines would be like subsidizing the Standard Oil tank steamers to carry petroleum products." CHAPTER VIII CHILE Uniformity of Climate — Political Parties and Their Aims — President Montt — General Conditions Improving — How Strikes are Handled by the Government — The Balmaceda Revolution — Fi nancial and Business Situation — Adequate Public Revenues — The Press — Development Generally Slow in South America. THE climate on the Chilean coast is said to be one of the most certain in the world. Conditions during the various seasons have come to be so well known as being stable that they are almost implicitly depended upon. From thirty-five degrees south to twenty-five degrees south latitude the wind is southerly or southeasterly for nine months in the year, but during the other three months bad weather pre vails with destructive northers and heavy rain, not confined to the coast, but extending far into the ocean. From September to May, Chile is all sunshine and very little rain falls. Once in a long time violent northers occur during this season of calm, and of equal infrequency are heavy rain storms lasting for two or three days. North of thirty-one degrees south latitude even 190 CHILE 191 these rare interruptions almost never occur, and so sure is the weather at Coquimbo that a city near by is called La Serena. The terrible northers that Dana so finely describes in his "Two Years Before the Mast," give good warn ing of their approach by an overcast sky, little or no wind unless easterly, a swell from the northward, water higher than usual, distant land remarkably visible, and a falling barometer. These signs make the watchful skipper take every precaution, because a norther at its mighti est will all but blow a ship out of the water. The great norther of 1899 did damage at Valparaiso only second to the terremoto that razed the city in August, 1906. Very few years pass during which ships are not driven on shore at Valparaiso. The infrequency of thunder and lightning would suggest that Nature deems Chile's allotment of evils sufficient without them. As many evidences have been received by the world, something in the climate or in the char acter or some other subtle force makes for the creation of turbulent statesmen in South Ameri can republics. Argentina has been in a state of great unrest for some time, but is said to be quieting down. Chile claims to have the most stable govern ment of all and does so with some reason. The forcible overthrow of the Balmaceda govern ment, which is still regretted by many in Chile, 192 THE ANDEAN LAND who think the country sooner or later must have a dictator, like Diaz in Mexico, is the only record of serious internal trouble in fifty years. There are many political parties in Chile, among which, in the order of their strength, are the Conservadores, Liberales, Radicales, Mon- tinos, Liberales-Democraticos, Balmacedistas, and the Democratas. The Radicales may be called the extremists of the Liberales, and are growing rapidly in strength, appealing to the strong, constructive, and courageous young men of the country. They stand for a separation of church and state, are the party that secured the civil marriage laws of Chile, and are now advo cating, among other measures, civil divorce. The Radicales also claim to be the most in cisive and to possess more initiative in reform measures generally and promise to expose and punish those who are responsible for the epi demic of public dishonesty, especially in high places, which is said to be paralyzing the heart of Chile. In combination with the Montinos, who are the followers of the Montt family, prominent since before the days of Balmaceda, the Radicales elected the present president, Pedro Montt. Great things were expected of President Montt, because he is undoubtedly an honest man, had the full confidence of the people, and is supposed to possess unusual courage and ability. He is CHILE 193 about fifty-five years old, some five feet, eight inches tall, has a few hairs on his upper lip ; his chin is square ; his hair is streaked with gray and worn pompadour, and he is so black that he was unfortunately once upon a time taken for a negro and excluded from a hotel in Washington, D. C. In many ways President Montt looks like President Diaz of Mexico at the same age. His face is more kindly and lacks the fierce and even cruel strength that is so plain in Diaz, and his eyes are more tender, too, and do not seem to burn and dart arid almost stab as did the eyes of Diaz when at the zenith of his iron strength. Montt was a senator at the time of the Balmaceda trouble, and was against Balmaceda. Now he finds himself confronted by nearly the same con ditions that brought trouble to the man who was practically more rash than he is. Full of desire to accomplish much good for the people, Presi dent Montt has not had the legislative branch of the government with him yet. With much tact and fine statecraft he is likely to accom plish a change, and at this moment the Radi cales, who are led by the brilliant Maclver, of Scotch ancestry on his father's side but now a Spanish-speaking Chileno to the heart's core and full of patriotic desire to serve his country men in the truest and best way, are retiring to permit of a coalition of the Conservadores and Liberales for the purpose of bringing about, if VOL. I. — 13 194 THE ANDEAN LAND possible, harmonious government, so that some thing may be done. All this is the work of Montt, who has shown the wise Maclver that he who serves his country best serves his party and himself best, and that his act will be so plainly and unselfishly patriotic that it will redound to the subsequent advantage of the Radicales. The Conservadores are the old church party, largely led by men who have grown rich in nitrate, guano, railroads, and other interests, where government favor was a factor largely to be taken into consideration. This party has been strong in the past, and although gradually losing, it is still the most powerful and best organized of all. When it was at its zenith it governed much as the bureaucrats in the City of Mexico govern, and Chile was ruled from Santiago without much heed to the provincials. Such representatives as might be desired from the country were named by these Centralismos, and for a long time they were unchallenged by the people. The slow growth of popular education began to alter things as surely as the elements erode the eternal hills, and the people stood for their rights and refused to abide the dictation from Santiago, until con gress is made up now of representatives quite fairly chosen. There is still open buying of votes and flagrant distribution of questionable patronage, and matters are said to have become CHILE 195 so bad that an acute crisis may be reached at any time, which will dethrone and punish those Centralismos who have criminally betrayed their trusts. Petty thieves in public service are dealt with unmercifully, and upon several occasions men high in government position and influence have been exposed and have narrowly escaped proper punishment, but were able to hush the thing up. But the time will come when the people will be so morally aroused and will be so well led that they will choose representatives who will cleanse the Augean stables. It is not long since persons of great influence have been in little danger in the United States, but the time came when department heads and great Senators went to prison as the common felons they were. Chile is going through much the same political reconstruction and rehabilitation as has been quite accomplished in the United States. While the Chilenos may not be naturally as sturdy in their morals, public or private, as the Anglo- Saxon, which I do not admit with their admix ture of blood from many lands, they are certain to grow better all of the time, and especially as their intense natural patriotism finds a higher level and is cast in a finer and more unselfish mould. With all of the alleged corruption Chile is not heavily in debt, as compared with other nations, and taxes are very low. The govern- 196 THE ANDEAN LAND ment tax is indirect and light, and the municipal taxes are as low as in Switzerland. City taxes are voted every year and may not be more than three pesos a thousand, or less than one peso, the latter regulation to prevent the raising of so small a budget as to embarrass city government. The population of Chile is small but it has built railroads and harbors, maintained an army and navy, and has done a great deal, and still it is not half as heavily in debt as Argentina; so all of the public moneys cannot have been stolen or unwisely spent. There is corruption, just as there is in England and Germany and the United States, but it is the exception and will be gradually reduced to a lesser percentage. A prominent Chileno, who had been the alcalde of his city, told me that he had retired from politics because they were so corrupt. So they were in the United States until people of the best and most honest classes began to perform their duties as citizens and took a conscientious inter est in public affairs. This the decent and hon est South American must do, as people must all over the world, if they are not to permit the rogues to rule. The man who does not do his best to see that the business of the public is conducted as it should be has no right to com plain of conditions. To return to this brief discussion of the parties, the principal excuse for the existence of the CHILE 197 Liberales in Chilean politics seems to be to op pose the Conservadores until they get their share of offices and credit and favor, which may be ac complished by success at the polls or by coalition, as in the present occasion, but it always is a thing to be secured. The Democratas are re cruited from the laboring classes, and the leaders are always loud in proclaiming what they will do for the down-trodden laboring man, and belong to a class that seems indigenous to the whole world. They are said to have brought about the fearful strikes and riots and looting in Santiago in November, 1905, which were not beaten into order until Santiago had been placed under martial law, and over three hundred persons shot in the streets. It seems the authorities were slow to act, had not taken adequate pre cautionary measures, did not anticipate such extreme disorder, and on account of fearing political disfavor were disinclined to take steps to uphold the majesty of the law until a condi tion of murderous anarchy prevailed. Quite the reverse was the attitude of those in authority during the street car strike in the Spring of 1907 in Santiago. The public was notified to keep moving, and instructions were given to the police and soldiery to shoot all stone throwers and open violators of the law. Police and soldiers armed with swords and loaded re volvers and rifles guarded every street car, and 198 THE ANDEAN LAND upon the Sunday that a mass meeting of the strikers had been called for the Alameda, that imposing thoroughfare was patrolled by police, infantry, and cavalry. The result was that the law was not broken and not a person was injured. The labor conditions in Chile are bad, but they cannot be improved by loud-mouthed politi cal agitation or by strikes that are lawless in character. Temperance, steady employment, education, moral improvement, and sane labor organization will do all that can be done either in Chile or in any other land. When the doors of the law, in every place, high and low, swing open as easily to the workingman as they do to his employer, but no more easily, and when the same can be said for the poor and the rich, which is even more of a moral than a civil problem, then conditions will be at their best, and every man's welfare will be in his own keeping. The Liberales-Democraticos are in a position between the Liberales and Democratas, and would appear to be desirous of working both ends against the middle, with office as the prin cipal goal. The Balmacedistas are those who think they stand for those things that Balmaceda stood for, although at this late time those issues seem nebulous in the extreme. Many Chilenos and almost all foreigners who are informed believe CHILE 199 that if Balmaceda had not shot himself in a moment of despair, when he had taken refuge in the Argentina Legation, Santiago, to escape capture, that he would have eventually returned to power with so great a majority behind him that he could have accomplished all of the re forms he had in mind. There are those who affect to believe, and will tell you with subdued voice, that Balmaceda did not shoot himself, but was assassinated by an agent of the Roman Church. There is absolutely no evidence that this is true, and the statement is founded upon hatred of this church rather than upon fact. It will be remembered that Balmaceda, when presi dent, found himself opposed by congress. He undertook to override this opposition much as a dictator would, and although his motives were worthy, his methods were distinctly unconstitu tional and bad, and he failed. In 1891 occurred the revolution against him. The army sided with the congressional leaders but the navy re mained loyal to the president. Most of the fighting was naturally upon land, and the revo lutionists, although most of the people were with Balmaceda, being armed and organized and well led, won after a reign of blood and terror for six months. To this day Balmaceda's name is held in reverence quite generally, and there are few Chilenos who do not regret the unfortu nate revolution. 200 THE ANDEAN LAND The watch, an elaborate piece of mechanism, which Balmaceda wore at the time of his death, fell into the hands of "Yankee Wing," who founded Wingleton, Michigan, now the flag station of the Saginaw trout fishermen's Pere Marquette club near Baldwin. Mr. Wing oper ated in lumber along the west coast and is still well remembered as "Yankee Wing," by which name he was commonly known, just as "Santiago Imrie" is known at Antofagasta and "English Lomax" is known at Iquique. The Chile system of government is more like the French plan than like that of the United States. The president is chosen for five years, and his position is peculiarly impotent unless he has the congress with him, as he does not even control his own cabinet. His nominations, if congress is against him, are met by counter nominations and confirmations in cabinet place. As is true all over the world, the government in power is held responsible for all evils that afflict the people, whether they are brought on by pub lic or private excesses, or whether they may or may not be caused or cured by legislation or executive action. The money question is the one now pre eminent, and the problem that President Montt is especially expected to solve. A Chile peso should be worth about thirty-six cents United States gold or eighteen English pence, which is CHILE 201 the value of the gold peso. The gold peso is not in circulation. All of the business in Chile is done by means of paper currency, and the paper peso went down below twelve pence or twenty-four cents in April, 1907, and was expected to go to ten pence. Naturally, this affects business, in a measure destroys confidence, and agitates the mind of every man who has a peso, which should be worth thirty-six cents but is worth only twenty- four. Just what has occasioned this condition is not easy to define, for no one thing has been the cause. Rather a combination of reasons may be given, plus an indefinable, intangible one, which may be most nearly understood by terming it government credit or character. Chile is sup posed to be on a gold basis, and there is supposed to be a gold peso behind every paper peso. This, however, is not a fact. The issue of paper money may be given as about one hundred and twenty million pesos, and the gold fund for redemption or conversion is seventy-four million pesos, of which about seventy millions is on de posit in Germany, and the balance in United States banks, drawing interest at three and three and one-half per cent. The government owes about three hundred and eighty million pesos, mostly in England, upon which public debt it pays interest at the rate of five and six per cent. Chile has just been through or is at the end of 202 THE ANDEAN LAND an era of unusual expansion and speculation. Everybody was prosperous. The government revenues are all payable in gold, and these, from nitrate exports and other sources are large. Mining has been more active than ever before, and the same can be said of railroad building and other public improvements. All supplies come from the outside. Almost nothing is made in Chile. Credit was given to Chilenos as never before, and it is said a Chileno will borrow money more quickly than eat, if he can do so, whether he has any use for it or not. Conse quently, everything came to exist on a high and sensitive scale. Then came the earthquake of August 15, 1906. Valparaiso was laid low, Santiago was injured, many smaller towns were destroyed, or nearly so, thousands were killed, and this, with a loss of at least three hundred million pesos in val ues, placed a great strain upon a people who rather easily and quickly become panic-stricken. Materials had to be bought to repair earthquake damap^s, bills previously made had to be paid, speculative losses had to be met. The demand for gold to pay bills with away from home be came the largest in the history of the country, and when it came to buying gold with paper money, only three-quarters secured, and with the belief on the part of some that the gold re serve might be used in case of emergency to VALPARAISO, CHILE CHILE 203 buy warships with, or might be stolen if it were ever withdrawn from abroad and never be placed to conversion use, together with the caution of the banks, coupled with a desire to be absolutely safe as well as to make money, sent exchange down to a demoralizing point. The people demand something of the government, and this is what confronts President Montt. There is no reason for bad times in Chile, either public or private. The government revenues are eight times those of Michigan, with about the same population. A little econ omy on the part of the government will increase the gold reserve until there is actually a gold peso behind every paper peso; a little more economy will pay the public debt or refund it and reduce the interest charge, while temper ance and thrift and sanity will enable the people of Chile best to take advantage of their wonder ful natural wealth and enable them not only to prosper, but to display themselves to the world as a worthy nation in every way. The distress ing conditions of the present are only temporary and will soon give way to a brighter and better era. Free speech and a free press run riot in Chile. There is a personal inclination to make wild charges, and newspapers often say more than they sincerely mean. Illustrated papers are of a rather low tone, except Zigzag, which is really 204 THE ANDEAN LAND very good, and is deservedly the most popular pictorial publication in Chile. One publication had a cartoon at Eastertide, 1907, showing the Saviour crucified between two thieves. Christ was supposed to represent Chile and the two thieves were plainly recognizable as President Montt and his predecessor, ex-President Jerman Riesco. El Mercurio is easily the leading daily of Chile, and is issued simultaneously in Santiago and Valparaiso, with an imposing office building in the latter city, the most pretentious structure in the place. No one knowing the facts would claim that the press of Chile is upon as high a footing of dignity, influence, capacity, and cour age as the press of Argentina. Wherever one travels now, in North America or in South America, Europe or Australia, one hears on all sides remarks that go to show how unwise Americans were to sympathize and support the Japanese in their war with Russia. Americans are not usually bone-headed, but they were then. Now we see that we have but comforted and fattened our natural enemies, the little brown men of Japan. No matter how brave and bright they are, their viewpoint is not ours and their interests directly clash with ours. If they have morals and honor and honesty, their standards and definitions differ widely from those that obtain under a Christian civilization. CHILE 205 It seems only a matter of time when we will have to discipline them, and as it will not be an easy task we shall have to steel ourselves to it and teach our young men to look forward to it as a duty they will have to perform. If one should go into the reasons why South America has not developed like North America, although really discovered first, he would create more than one line of interesting speculation. On his third voyage, in 1498, Columbus touched at the mouth of the Orinoco. Pinzon discovered the Amazon in 1500. At about the same time Cabral took possession of Brazil for Portugal and that country remained under the rule of Portugal all of the time until 1810 when its independence was won, except for about sixty years, from 1580 until 1640, when Portugal itself was conquered by Spain, and it and all of its colonies were under the flag of Castile. At one time during the Napoleonic wars the court of Portugal was established in Brazil, and a Portuguese emperor, Dom John, refused to return to Portugal at the bidding of the Cortes, which led to Brazilian independence. Slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, and the peaceful establishment of the republic, with its constitu tion so like our own, dates from November 15, 1889. The discoverers of South America found it occupied by Indian tribes after the manner of North America, but many of them were better 206 THE ANDEAN LAND established and much more highly developed. In the north were the Caribs, from whom the big sea of the Spanish Main takes its name. The word "cannibal" also is said to come from Carib, — Cariboles, Cannibal. Prescott has strikingly and artistically told the story of Peru's conquest. Pizarro and his band of freebooters, brave as they were immoral, and only a handful, overthrew the true Inca at Cuzco, who was courageous, but trustful and unsuspicious. The reader will remember how the Inca Atahualpa was treacherously seized and imprisoned in a large room. He was told his freedom could be had by filling the room full of gold as high as his head. This and more was done, and Pizarro kept his word in ancient Spanish style by putting the Inca to torture and death. It would seem that Spain has been cursed as a punishment for the inhumanities she visited on all the primitive peoples she ever came in contact with. The Araucanians, of the Pampas, were some thing like the wild-riding Sioux and claim never to have been conquered. An open window to the life of the Quichuas is had in their beautiful drama " Ollanta," which has been preserved. One of the odd things in the history of South American countries is the fact that one of the liberators of Chile from Spain was an Irish man named O'Higgins. Both father and son CHILE 207 O'Higgins were very prominent in Chilean affairs. The father was styled Don Ambrosio O'Higgins, and he was Captain-General and then Viceroy. No early navigator was more fearless than Magellan, who discovered the straits bearing his name in 1520, only twenty-two years after the last voyage of Columbus, and whose name has also been given to that interesting southern circum-polar nebula. CHAPTER IX THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE AT VALPARAISO Valparaiso — Situation of the City — The Great Earthquake — Destruction of Mendoza in 1861 — Earthquakes at Caracas and Callao — Thrilling Account of the Valparaiso Horror Written on the Spot by an Eyewitness. SOUTH America has been the scene of some of the earth's most dreadful and destructive cataclysms, but not in all history or tradition has there been one to equal in loss of life or property the earthquake that visited Chile and centred at Valparaiso its most fearful force on the evening of August 15, 1906. After eight months had elapsed Valparaiso was still unhealed and bleed ing; few of her wounds had closed, and her people went about with stricken hearts and eyes that reflect nerve tension; her streets were scat tered with the debris of disintegration ; untombed coffins protruded from hillside cemeteries; monuments to the dead were in fragments, corpses were still daily taken from the ruins, the very office building of the port first to be seen upon approaching the city by water was still a dismembered thing of beams and sun-dried 208 VALPARAISO 209 mud, with roof resembling the head of a man blown off in battle and lopping over, only held by a piece of withered skin; the circulation of the town was sluggish, as if the blood were congealed by fear and the marrow frozen by premonition, and all was semi-paralysis. No combination of words can hope to convey that which the eye cannot see all of or the mind com prehend with the aid of sight ; nor can the heart and soul sound the depths of sorrow and sym pathy one would wish adequately to feel for the stricken peoples. When as school children we read of the dis asters at Lisbon and Caracas we were horrified and had our young hearts seared with sorrow. But here in our own time our eyes are confronted with an elemental disorder of such magnitude that it confuses all our being; we are unable to know it, as the man who lives too near to the base of a great mountain cannot see its peak or realize its hugeness. Valparaiso is built at the bottom of an open and exposed bay. The first tier of the town is on a narrow flat that follows the shore and is partly natural and partly artificial, about ten feet or so above the sea. Here on three streets that try to parallel each other, but are forced by the narrow ness of the level ground to intersect each other at acute angles, and upon some bisecting streets at nearly right angles, the business of the city is VOL. I. — 14 210 THE ANDEAN LAND transacted. Part of this level ground is under laid near to the surface with a magmatic syenitic granite. Back of the shrunken level are hills and ravines. Some of the hills are nodular and others are irregular tumuli, all separated by rather deep draws or shallower coulees. At the distance the hills and hollows do not look unlike a great baking of biscuits which has risen well, and fills a Gargantuan pan to overflowing and has been done to a brown or floury gray crust, with here and there a huge biscuit burned blacker or redder and with no glaze of egg white to varnish or soften the crust. These hills rise abruptly from the level and are so high and steep that they can only be ascended by teams upon long, winding, tedious roads, such as inwreathe mountains and are cut into the sides of them. To overcome these elevations and unite the town in as much physical harmony as possible elevators with cars running upon inclined tracks and hauled by cables moved by steam and wound upon drum-hoists have been erected at frequent and convenient intervals, for the use of which a cent and a half is charged. On the very crest and almost overhanging one of the hills in the centre of the city, is an old cemetery with vaults and superficial catacombs like pigeonholes or filing boxes in a business office, located here before the town climbed the hill and built all round it like a live wall of watchmen for those who sleep there VALPARAISO 211 and know the great mystery. The city had a population estimated at 125,000 to 150,000 before the earthquake, but with the thousands who were killed, and the multitudes frightened away it is a common guess that there are 50,000 fewer people there now. It was a peaceful evening in the late Winter, for August is the last Winter month in the Southern Hemisphere ; the vesper bells had rung, devout people had prayed and crossed themselves; all seemed well; refreshing rains had been falling ; business was most prosperous throughout the country, and the chief port had more than its share ; there was no war or rumor of war, which is always something to be glad of in South America ; no pall of sickness or epidemic hung over the people, and there seemed to be a hundred reasons for thanksgiving and joy. No shadow whatever was cast before ; no warn ing, no premonition. All at once the very air seemed to poise; the earth was more still than common, as if to emphasize a hollow moan that appeared to come from underneath as though from angry bowels, and then the surface of the ground began to move like the waves of the sea, with jerky, tearing vibration. People were made sick at heart and stomach. The effect upon buildings was as though they had been in rapid motion and had suddenly collided with an im movable body, or were stationary and had been 212 THE ANDEAN LAND shot into with a great shell. Timbers creaked and crunched, walls buckled and toppled, roofs left with nothing to float upon fell in ; there was a tumbling of cornices and arches, then lights went out and wild fires began to burn. People rushed into the streets only to be killed by fall ing buildings, and others were buried where they stood or sat frozen speechless and motionless by fear; others escaped to the plazas only to be driven to the hills by dread of a tidal wave; many went off to ships in the harbor, which bravely and quickly sent their boats to the rescue, each nation striving to outdo the others in courage and humanity. There were three distinct shocks, covering a period of half an hour, each described as being stronger and longer than the other. Then in the days and weeks afterward lighter but nerve- wearing shocks came every few days to grind heart and life out of the wounded and mourning, and agonize even those who had escaped with out personal hurt or sorrow. The earthquake zone centred at Valparaiso, whence the thing, demon-like, stretched out its tentacles to beyond Santiago, one hundred and sixteen miles away, marking a path of ruin and death wherever man had his habitation. Every town for more than a hundred miles had its dead and its destruction of property. At Santiago the United States legation was in VALPARAISO, CHILE, CEMETERY AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE OF AUGU.ST 15, 1906 VALPARAISO 213 the centre of disaster. Col. John Hicks, United States minister, ran out with all the City, but returned as soon as the worst shocks were over and slept in the legation that night, although nearly all Santiago was in the open. A young business man who was returning from Cousino Park was near the big prison. He told me he thought the end of the world was at hand, which did not keep him from observing the cool ness and steadfastness of the prison guards, who did not once lose their heads or permit the escape of the panic-stricken and stampeded inmates. In Valparaiso, where the seismosis was strong est, thousands of buildings were wrecked, and untold numbers were killed. A list of names of over two thousand victims has been compiled, and on all sides it is realized how incomplete this is, for on one day while I was there, eight months afterwards, twenty bodies were reported as having been exhumed. Daylight, the morning after the earthquake, revealed many terrible sights, among which was the untombing and uncoffining of the dead in the mountainside graveyard in the centre of the city. The authorities rose to the occasion. Order was quickly restored. Thieves were shot on the spot as in San Francisco. The fires were somewhat sporadic and were fought with better result than in San Francisco, because of the 214 THE ANDEAN LAND smaller size of the city and the less inflammable character of the building material. The city is still in woful condition, and all the towns between Valparaiso and Lima are in a state of hapless wreck. In Valparaiso the once fine Avenida Central is lined with shacks ten feet high in unbroken alignment. These are hovels of filth and poverty, and it was here that the bubonic plague got its start nearly a year after the cataclysm. Plague already existed in all the coast towns of northern Chile. Now it is likely to take a more withering toll of life in the stricken city than the earthquake. The number of lives lost in all Chile by the earth quake is variously given at from eight thousand to twenty thousand. No one told me less than eight thousand, and there is nothing official. The property loss is variously stated at from three hundred to five hundred million gold pesos of thirty-six cents each. Chile was un usually prosperous, but the earthquake did much to produce a crisis and to plunge the country into financial gloom. The buildings in the district of made ground suffered most. Those built on the solid rock were hurt least, although they did not escape by any means. Among the buildings in the rock district is the Royal Hotel, at which no person was killed, although several were injured. While I was at this hotel, eight months after the big VALPARAISO 215 earthquake, three shocks occurred, one of which lasted four seconds and would have been con sidered strong before the big catastrophe. The shocks came at 6, 6.30, and 7 o'clock in the morning, the last being the hardest. It caused the plastering to rattle down from the side walls in a cloud of dust, and made me jump to the centre of the room. The ceilings are of wood in these earthquake countries. No one needed to tell me it was an earthquake. In the first shocks the big building quivered gently as though shaken by a somewhat distant explosion, but in the heaviest shock the effect was that of a big bump and then a violent shaking. Other great earthquakes in South America are memorable. At Mendoza, March 20, 1861, an earthquake levelled the city and is said to have killed 14,000 persons in Mendoza city and prov ince. The destruction of Caracas, Venezuela, was in 1 812. A writer of the time says the ground rolled in huge waves, a roar was heard as of countless cannon, and the city was levelled to the earth in a moment, with twelve thousand dead beneath the ruins. Callao, Peru, was destroyed October 28, 1 746, and five thousand people perished. The city was covered by a tidal wave and the sea never receded. San Lorenzo Island, high and mighty in Callao Bay, was rent in twain and a large portion of it subsided beneath the waters, leaving 216 THE ANDEAN LAND two islands where only one had been before. The breach is to be seen now and looks like the work of an earthquake, while it is said ancient Callao may be seen at low tide when the waters are calm and clear. A popular story, woven from threads of history intertwined with tradition and myth, is that a fisherman named Lorenzo Villalta was setting his nets in Callao Bay on the evening of Octo ber 28, 1746. All of a sudden a profound dark ness fell upon the water and the sea was whipped into a wild commotion. Then his boat seemed to reel and to be carried upward with unusual velocity and with none of the yielding sensation of being borne upon water. The peculiar in fluence dazed the fisherman until his mind seemed a blank, and he only, through instinct of preservation, clung to the gunwales of the boat, a hand on either side. When the terrible night wore out and the morning light came, Lorenzo found his boat and nets and himself on the top of a mountain surrounded by water. Off toward where the city had been was the land, and white surf horses charging angrily, but no town. Callao had been swallowed by the master ocean and the bottom had come up where the fisherman was, to be a high island. When Lorenzo hastened to the mainland he found not one soul alive and the deep over all. Devoutly he knelt on the sands and thanked God for his VALPARAISO 217 preservation. Then turning his gaze to the new island he invoked his patron saint and called it San Lorenzo, which name it has borne until this day. An account of the Callao earthquake was written at the time by Arispe, a Spanish monk who came to Peru in 1740, six years before the event. Out of two hundred monks in six con vents in Callao, it is said he was the only one saved. His story is that the first shock came in the evening just before dark. Arispe rushed out, and from the patio of the convent he could see the peaks of the Andes wave to and fro like the tops of trees in a gale until they were broken off and rolled with deafening roars into the val leys. The earth's surface rocked and trembled until its very fabric was shattered and yawning chasms appeared. Believing that the end of the world had come he was about to kneel in prayer, when he bethought him of a highly cherished silver crucifix and rosary which he had left in Lima. As if by insane impulse, which proved miraculous and is now looked upon as divine, Arispe rushed towards Lima. He thought he was going for the crucifix but upon this act de pended his life. When the worst shock came he was well out of the heart of the danger zone. He could hear a roar as of a bombardment by heavy artillery, and the motion of the earth under his feet made him so sick and dizzy that he was 218 THE ANDEAN LAND often compelled to lie prone upon his face. Between whiles he fled onward and away toward the crucifix. Next day he learned of the fate of Callao; that its buildings crumbled to dust, and that the land under a section of the city had sub sided and was covered deeply by the inrushing sea. Arispe says that the shore for half a mile inland, just where the city stood, became a part of the ocean, with forty feet of water over four convents, many churches, and business and other buildings. That part of the bay where the ruins may be seen at times is called the Mar Braba, or rough sea. For nearly a century a watchman was kept on the beach to take charge of any treasure that might be washed up, which happened quite often. When the tidal wave engulfed Callao only three or four in the submerged portion were saved. One of these was a half-breed named Eugenio, who was sitting on some timber. He was carried back three miles inland. Eugenio lived until after 1825, and is still remembered by a few very old persons. Pliny, the Younger, lost his life while observing the destruction of Pompeii from Sorrento, which he regarded as a reasonably safe vantage point. Bulwer Lytton, in his masterpiece, "The Last Days of Pompeii," has given the world a wonder ful fabric of imagery. Many of the earth's tragedies are known by the manuscripts of eye- VALPARAISO 219 witnesses. San Francisco's destruction will have many historians, and various viewpoints will be preserved. The earthquake at Valpa raiso was far more severe than the one at San Francisco, although the subsequent fire loss was less. There will be fewer English versions of it, naturally. This makes a private letter written immediately afterward by a woman of high tal ent who was in Valparaiso at the time of the earthquake, and while the ground still shook at frequent intervals, of intense interest and of high historical value. The author of the letter has written in prose and poetry for the first literary publications of the world. She is a high-minded, fine-grained woman of real refinement and much culture — a womanly woman whose soul is always alive and whose brain is ever alert; whose nerves are momentarily so tense that they keep her upon the verge of invalidism. If I could edit the letter without weakening it, or omit those parts which contain unrestrained and unkind criticisms of the people of Valpa raiso, with which I am not in sympathy and do not at all agree, without injury to the delicate film of impression and memory, I would do so. The mind at such a time, overwrought by anxiety, if not fear, is at once a faulty and a perfect camera — it sees things it does not feel and feels things it does not see, while both seeing and feeling with minute accuracy those 220 THE ANDEAN LAND things which are. For the reason that it may contain injustices, the writer has never be fore consented to the publication of the letter, and I am of the opinion, too, that she now sees more good in things and persons Chilean than she did then. So with these explanations, and with the additional promise that the identity of the writer shall not be discovered now, I am permitted to print the following most unusual production which, in color and fine detail, in description and effect, gives evidence that it has come white hot from the brain at the moment of exposure, and deserves to rank with the rarest work of those who have passed a stupendous peril and endeavor calmly to tell of it at the time and on the spot. There may be as much value in the psychological phase of the letter as there is in the historical and graphic portion of it. It is here given: " Valparaiso, Chile, September i, 1906. " My Dear, — This must be a carbon letter of which copies are sent to various friends, as I am still too tired and too nervous to write individually. The great earthquake itself is a thing of the past (we hope) but the small tremblors still continue and these get on one's nerves so that sleep and rest are impossible. Last night, the fifteenth day after the great quake, I had my clothes off for the first time. Just as the clock was striking twelve we had another. I had slept from 9.30 p. m. until then, but was awakened VALPARAISO 221 and sprang out of bed into George's room — a wide door opens between. He was on his elbow, but not out of bed. " ' Oh George ! here is another,' I said to him in a half whisper. "It was slight, but the house was vibrating and the peculiar grinding and cracking of timbers above, that one soon gets to know, was in process. It lasted not more than five or six seconds, but when your walls are cracked around you, to begin with, that is long enough. So far, with the exception of the first days following the first big quake, they always come at night, — either in the early evening after sunset, or during the night, or early morning. "I sent off a few hasty scrawls from the steamer upon which we took refuge in the harbor, but as many of them may have gone astray I will begin at the beginning again and perhaps repeat; but for give it. I am still stupid from the loss of sleep and the constant strain. If an earthquake, like a cyclone, would only play its havoc and then pass; but, in stead, they hang around and threaten, and one gets so that the normal place for the heart seems to be in the throat. " George met our two boys from Italy in Monte video in July, and the elder arrived in Valparaiso on the first of August. George kept the younger with him while he stopped over one ship in Punta Arenas, and they then took the Pacific Steam Navigation Company's steamship, Orissa, for Valparaiso. George got off at Coronel, a southern port, and by bribing the engineer managed to catch the train for Valparaiso which arrived on the morning of Satur day, August ii. " He left John on the ship, which was delayed by 222 THE ANDEAN LAND bad weather, and did not arrive until Tuesday, August 14. Going on board in the rain that evening we met the boy. I had been much amused when James presented himself — ¦ five feet, ten inches tall, and well proportioned — as by some hocus-pocus we had been expecting two little boys, thirteen and four teen, or thereabouts, and these two were sixteen and eighteen. (I suppose George thought Time had been making no calls in Italy of late.) When James told me that John was as tall as he, and broader, I sent a telegram on board ship to George at Coronel, saying : '"Nephews not according to specifications. Pina fores don't fit.' (Of course, being in Chile, he never received this.) " But what with the joy of getting George back safe and sound, and the joke of drawing these two big things out of our mystery bag in Italy, we were in a gale of fun all the time. So, when we went to meet John on the Orissa it was a sort of a lark we started on. Tuesday at dusk we went on board the Orissa in a small boat to get the boy, but it was too late to get our baggage off, as that had to be done in the day. Wednesday was a feast day, so all the stores were closed and the customs-house also. I had a little shopping to do. It poured all day, and also on Thursday — a torrential downpour. I went out to get some rugs in the lull of the rain, got caught in a big shower, and drenched. My shoes were soaking wet and my dress, too, so when I came back I had to go to bed, as I had no dry things to put on. Had my lunch sent upstairs, and remained in my room all the afternoon. George had brought me two gowns from Buenos Ayres. Neither one fitted, but by chance one was the right length in the skirt, so when evening came I put it on, with my black silk VALPARAISO 223 blouse, and, as the night was cold and damp, a long white broadcloth opera cloak over it — which was a providential thing for me as it afterwards turned out. As I had nothing but a pair of bath slippers with me, I put on my wet shoes to go down to dinner, and di rectly we had finished, hurried back upstairs to get them off. The dining-room and offices of Hotel Royal are on the second floor (as in all Chilean hotels I have seen), the first floor being rented for stores. A long flight of marble steps, with a lift beside, reaches this from the street level. Our rooms were one flight above this. After a minute or two the boy came in. George had gone straight from our table in the dining-room to another, where four men friends of his were, so John and I sat talking and waiting for him. At about 7.45 the earthquake began, with a heavy jar for the first few seconds. I said to the boy : "'This is an earthquake, John.' " He looked around the room in an interested way, saying : ' Is that an earthquake ? I thought it was a tram.' " By this time it had increased tremendously. We both sprang up and went to the door, which fortunately was open wide. "In the earthquake countries a closed door often jams and imprisons those inside. My theory has al ways been that if I am killed by an earthquake I would rather have death come in my own house than on the street with unknown and unwashed multi tudes, so when the boy said, 'Let us get out of this, Aunty,' and started down the corridor, I said, 'No, we are as safe here as anywhere.' " He wheeled, came straight back, and we stood in the doorway, by instinct. In the meantime the awful 224 THE ANDEAN LAND rocking and swaying increased, accompanied by a muffled, ominous, growling roar, and the crunching and grinding of timbers all around that is an inde scribable association of an earthquake. It seemed impossible that the big brick and stone building could stand. The boy braced himself in the door way that I was leaning against. George and I had laughed lovingly at him when we had been alone; at his broad shoulders, his straight back, his big hands and feet, and his habit of standing sometimes with his feet far apart, wide-spread like the Colossus of Rhodes that I remember in a school book I had years ago. Now, with his big clean hands against the door jambs, expecting every minute the upper floors would fall and crush us like spiders under a boot- heel, I remember being struck afresh by his attitude, and of thinking how good a thing in this country of dirty hands the big, clean English hands of my hus band and nephews were, but only for a moment. My swift thought was : '"Where is George ? Where is George ?' and over and over I said to the boy: 'Where is your uncle — where is your uncle ? ' Over the offices, high up over the top floor and lighting all the inner rooms and stairways and corridors, was a big skylight, like that in the old Palace Hotel in San Francisco. I remem ber being so nervous there, and thinking if a big earthquake ever came how small a piece of that heavy glass need be broken to fall that distance and destroy a life. It seemed an eternity as we stood there — waiting, waiting. The horrible sounds from the wrenched building and the elemental moaning roar drowned everything except our own voices, but in the midst of it the boy asked in quite a matter-of- fact tone: VALPARAISO 225 "'Do you usually have them as strong as this ?' "No; never as strong as this before, darling boy, — and probably never again.' "Then came George's voice calling me — 'Mar garet ! Margaret ! ' "Just then the wall of the corridor opposite the door in which we were standing had opened as if a great hand with cruel talons on it had scratched it down from ceiling to baseboard. As George called, or just after, the grinding and vibration seemed to subside a little. Come, let us get out of this ! ' exclaimed George. '"Get me my shoes,' I answered, and started for them. "The next instant the terrible quake increased in violence again. Globes and glass began to fall from the chandelier that had been swinging like the pendu lum of a clock. Then the lights went out, and we were in total darkness. '"Never mind your shoes,' said George, and we started. I remember saying to him as we were on the rocking stone stairway : '"The stairway will go down with us, George.' " But it did not. We made our way down the first flight and then down the long marble stairway. At the foot we found a pack of the guests, all standing under the reinforced arch of the entrance, that is popularly believed to be the safest place in the house, but alas ! how many we saw that had parted and crumbled. It seemed as if directly the electricity was cut off a dozen candles were lighted by various persons. At any rate, the little haven of refuge at the foot was bright with candles. No one made any move to leave it, and the boy called twice : '"Que salganl Que salganV (Move on, move on.) VOL. I. — 15 226 THE ANDEAN LAND "George pushed through the crowd as well as he ceuld. We got out some way in the rain and in the mud and started up the narrow street where all the lights had gone out, keeping in the middle of the road. It seemed to me as if we would never get to a plaza, away from the awful danger of those towering walls, which were tottering and crashing all about us. I said two or three times to George, whose bump of locality is not his strong point: "'Where is your plaza; where is the nearest open place ?' "'Just around the corner,' he said, and we scrambled down a side street, ankle deep in the pit falls of the awful pavements common to Chilean cities, over a pile of debris at the corner, and at last into the Plaza Brazil, where we found many people. "In the first few steps my toweling bath slippers, without heels, had come off, and the boy had picked them up and was carrying them. It was raining like a cloudburst. Neither John nor George had top coats or hats, nor had we an umbrella, but we had hardly reached the little triangular plaza in the centre of which stands the bomberos (fireman's) statue, before a common-looking workingman came up with an umbrella which he thrust upon George, saying: '"Para la senorita.' "George said something polite about depriving him of it, but he insisted : ' For the seiiorita.' "It seemed to me as if his face was evil, but his act was kind. " ' He has seen the glitter of diamonds and is only waiting,' I thought, but George gave him a bill and his card, and with the ground rocking beneath our feet asked him to call at Hotel Royal the next day for a further reward and his umbrella. VALPARAISO 227 "Whether it was just before this or just after that the third big quake came I do not know, but it was almost immediately after we had reached the plaza that the fronts of some tall buildings came down, the bricks and mortar and copings falling into the streets exactly as coal pours out of a scuttle. And almost instantly after that a big jet of flame leaped out of a building in the next block the width of the sidewalk. I think this was the first fire of all. A block or two below us the front of Duncan, Fox & Co.'s store had fallen straight across the street, cut down clean as if with a knife, from cornice to founda tion. The rear also fell out, but crumbled and came over not more than fifteen feet or such a matter. It seemed only a question of seconds before from vari ous parts of the city we saw the lurid glare of fires. It was safe to conclude that water mains were broken, leaving no adequate means of fighting fire. I won dered if in this instance it would be necessary to notify the intendente first, the alcalde next, the prefect of police next, and then the fire department (volun teer, even in these big cities of the state, and living in all parts of town) that there was a fire, following the usual custom. Then some one said it would be better to get out of the Plaza, which was only six feet above sea level, owing to the tidal wave that might follow the earthquake. Other fires were break ing out around us, and fears were expressed by some that we might not be able to reach the hills. George wished to go on board the Orissa, but a man who was with us said so much about the tidal wave that we finally decided to flee to the hills. The ground was still rocking under us at short intervals, and I had always in mind that grisly tale that the sea swept under Valparaiso which is as though built on a shelf, 228 THE ANDEAN LAND and that some day, when the big quake came, it would slough off into the deep and be swallowed up as many a city of old has been. When things were crashing around us after we first reached the Plaza, I thought : '"Well, the end may come at any moment. The ground will sink under us and we shall be swept apart, and swallowed up.' So said I to George, ' Kiss me, dear love,' and to John, ' Kiss me, John.' "We kissed each other solemnly, reverently, lov ingly, and, as I then thought, for the last time. People stood about us in the rain, supine and quiet for the most part. Some women were hysterical, but not many. It seemed to me as if every one was for the most part calm — stunned, perhaps, by the enormity of the catastrophe. "Then began our flight to the hills. We retraced our steps over the debris of fallen buildings at the corner. On top of the pile we went over a great quantity of broken glass. It seemed a miracle that I did not step on some sharp bit and cut my feet, as we could not see in the dark to pick our way. Back through the narrow streets, past the hotel which we all saw distinctly out of plumb against the sky (the next day it had apparently jarred back into place, as it was straight), past the new, handsome Mercurio newspaper building, up through a blind alley that leads to one of the steep, zigzag paths to the top of the hills. Along the crest of the hills on terraces are built houses. As we passed these there were repeated shocks, when we could hear the windows rattling in their sockets and the buildings creaking — as if a person was frightened and trembling, with teeth chattering. George helped me all the way and we rushed on. Whenever we stopped to take breath he and the boy put my wet and muddy bath slippers VALPARAISO, CHILE — EARTHQUAKE RUINS Taken March, 1907 VALPARAISO 229 under my feet to keep me from the cold of the stones, and when we reached the top they took their hand kerchiefs and tied them on. Here a man who had come up to us gave me his rubbers and they were put on over my soaked and sodden slippers. This man, who lived in the United States, had been plucky, going back into the hotel for an overcoat and cap left behind by some one in his flight, to put on a young Chilean woman who was visiting friends in the hotel. The friends had fled with no thought of her in their panic, and he took charge of her. I am glad to think he was an American. She had been visiting native friends. "At the top of the hill another man, a stranger, brought out two chairs for us, and we sat there and rested for a while, watching the fires growing in all directions. The men rolled up an old ash barrel and people took turns sitting on it, two at a time. This was near the little English church. Then George wished to go to his friend's house, a Scotchman whom he had called on the day before, to get some dry hose and shoes for me. It was two blocks away, down a ravine, through some narrow streets and part way up a hill, where we found them and all the Eng lish colony sitting on the sidewalk. As the street was very steep this was a most uncomfortable position, but they brought us out some leather cushions from their dining-room chairs, blankets to wrap us in, and coats and caps for George and John; also whiskey, which was a blessing to us. Twice after that he brought us champagne, so in spite of the chill of the night we did not feel cold. As it is the custom here to keep everything locked, our friend could give me neither hose nor shoes, for in the excitement his wife could not find her key, so George went into the 230 THE ANDEAN LAND house, up to the bath-room (they said it had seemed at the time of the quake as if the stairway had moved up and down a foot), and got a towel with which he gave my feet a brisk rubbing, afterwards pulling down my hose as far as they were dry, tying a knot in the ankles and tucking the wet part in the toes of the man's rubbers. After that I was very comfortable. About three o'clock in the morning our Scotch friend came out with something white in his hands and said: '"Madam, I am afraid you will take cold with nothing on your head. This is all I can find.' "It was a baby's nightgown. I tied it over my head, and I am quite sure that no costume in all that stricken city that night was quite so heterogeneous as mine — my long trained spangled gown; the white broadcloth opera cloak; the man's rubbers on my feet, and the baby's nightgown on my head. So tragedy and comedy go hand in hand in the world. "We sat on that slanting sidewalk all night, watch ing the reddened sky — old fires in some localities dying down and new ones springing up, with re peated quivers of the earth. Once we tried to go into the house and did for a few moments, but a longer and heavier jar than usual drove us into the open again. Toward the latter part of the night the character of the earthquake seemed to change. In stead of being a heavy vibrating movement the earth appeared to sway forward, a far more fearsome move ment than the other, as it moved north — toward the bay, from where we were. With each of these dogs would whine and bark. Our friend could not get his wife and family in from the street as they preferred it to the dangers of even such a hospitable roof. Their Esquimo dogs had a big kennel converted from a VALPARAISO 231 grape arbor. The top of this was silhouetted against the sky from where we sat, and I have a vivid mem ory of big paws and sharp noses somehow mingled with the boughs at the top, not yet in spring leaf, as the terrified animals struggled to escape from the prison and get among human beings. Other dogs in the street came and pressed against our knees, ap pealing for protection to their gods — we are gods to our dogs. " During the night we heard of the first loss of life. We knew there must have been some loss of life, reaching perhaps into the hundreds, but I think no one realized then it would run into the thousands. "George slept a little with his head on my lap, and on the other side the boy nodded, bolt upright. We sat with our feet in the gutter, no rest for our backs, and certainly little for our minds. For the first few terrible moments in the hotel I had a lightning-like memory of the other boy's first dream in our house. At the breakfast table I said : "'Did you sleep well and have pleasant dreams ?' '"I dreamed there was an earthquake here; the roof fell in and broke John's leg.' "As I patted the boy from time to time during the night, pitying him so, I thought : " ' Why did we try to be Destiny to this boy ? What if anything happens to him!' " But most of all my thought was, and my heart was sore with it— 'Is mamma in the street to-night ? ' (She was at Santiago.) 'And what about the other boy?' "There is nothing truer in the world than that the fewer you have to love and feel responsible for, the fewer your anxieties are. How I wished we had left the boys in Italy for Fate to deal with as it might without our intervention. 232 THE ANDEAN LAND "When morning came George got me a pair of cheap little cloth slippers at a native store near at hand, and we started back down town. No one could make coffee or tea as gas was disconnected and no chimney safe. We had no idea where we could get any food, even at the hotel, but when we went down the narrow street, so steep and overhung with tall buildings, and saw what had been done by the earth quake, George decided to go on board the Orissa and not go to the hotel at all. So we walked to the wharf, which fronts a square, in which people had camped all night and where they were trying to make little fires on the rain-soaked ground. We stopped on the way at all the cable and telegraph offices, but all were out of communication. The morning was bright and the rains had ceased — providentially, for all the thousands living in the open. On the Orissa we found many refugees. The ship itself had narrowly escaped destruction in the fall of a crane, made of riveted boiler iron, on the wharf near to where she lay. Her boats had been the first ashore the previous night, and we were told the earthquake was a terrible thing in its action on the ship. "After getting the boy and me aboard, George went ashore again to his office and up to our rooms in the hotel, fetching me my travelling dress and shoes. He said the inside walls of the Royal were badly damaged, but nothing of importance injured. Our beds had been arranged for night while we were at dinner — George's pajamas on one and my gown on the other, covered with thick dust, but owing to the universal wooden ceilings of this coun try no plaster had fallen. We found our heads cov ered with dust and our ears full of it, as if we had VALPARAISO 233 taken a long, dusty journey. Small things were overturned. My hand mirror had been shot off the table, the table itself remaining upright. George had brought me, each day, a big bunch of violets and maidenhair ferns. These I had put in small glasses, for the lack of bigger, and of course they were smashed and on the floor. The splittings of the op posite wall that I saw in several places just before the lights went out, George said were all in diagonal waves, the smallest wide enough for a man's hand to pass through. My purse had been left on the table, — a heavy silver chatelaine that is a burden and that I always remove on coming in. In it was a smaller purse, containing some change and a fifty- dollar bill, my watch, and a little silver powder box George had made for me in India, — a thing I have always treasured and could never replace. I sup posed, of course, it was gone, but there was the purse on the table, with the open door, the confusion of hasty flight everywhere, the dust of the earthquake over all, and not a pin disturbed. Probably no one had dared go up that flight of stairs until George did, and no doubt every room in the house was in the same condition, with valuables scattered about un touched. Every mozo and waiter fled at once and dared not return. The manager (an American from New Jersey) remained alone, sending his wife and children out. The wife was injured, — a broken leg, — and while they were camping in the streets he re mained in that rocking building night and day for four days, to guard his only property on earth, — the pluckiest thing I heard of. It takes nerve to stay in a building that may fall upon you any minute. Every day George went back, collecting his stuff and paying his bill, — the only guest of all that did. Bit 234 THE ANDEAN LAND by bit he got all of our luggage away and lost noth ing. We thought two or three times his bodega, or storage warehouse, where he keeps machines, etc., was burning, but each time it was a false alarm ; fires were all around it but not actually in it. "As I said, the Orissa' s boats had been ashore, the first to land and to try to offer refuge to the panic- stricken residents. Every officer on that ship volun teered to go ashore directly after the catastrophe. Primarily, as they told me from the captain down, their mission was to bring off British residents, women and children of the English colony. These were all on the hill, with their homes to defend, and not one came to the ship. My husband and my nephew, English citizens, were the only British sub jects who applied for relief. The ship was filled with Chilean refugees who had reviled the P. S. N. Co.'s line, and who turned it into a bear garden. The de struction of a city was made an excuse for a picnic. From the absolutely uncontrolled little children of the natives up to the eighteen-year old girls and women of mature years (with the honorable exception of the wife of the editor of El Mercurio), all seemed to re gard the situation as a joke. The ship surgeon said to me, gloomily: 'If these able-bodied young women were English girls they would be ashore trying to aid the injured and help the homeless.' One girl sat with us at the table the first night, who told us of one church in which a thousand dead had been placed, waiting for tardy burial in trenches or at sea. She said she had gone to the cemetery and that the dead were uncoflined ; nothing standing. That first night she was serious, or partially so. She revelled in the horrors she told us. Next day and thereafter, she and all the rest of the crowd were screaming with VALPARAISO 235 laughter, the same sort of cheap mirth one could find on a workingmen's picnic going down the Sound from Coney Island to New York. Many of their friends were dead, thousands homeless; whole streets in ruins with uncounted dead beneath, but the light little Latin mind could not see the situation seriously. The only time I heard anything like a serious expression was when the stewards were ordered to deny the preliminary cup of tea or coffee or chocolate in the staterooms. Outside our cabin I head the oft-repeated phrase : '"No hai desayuno ' (no first breakfast), with the little click of the tongue which means disappointed surprise. "But wnen nine o'clock came and they all sat down to a substantial meal (for which they did not pay) all was laughter and gayety. Sleep was impos sible for the injured or anxious, by day, owing to the row they made, and those who suffer bodily and men tally do not sleep readily at night either. Moreover, the after quakes were frequent, shaking the ship from stem to stern. These, I also noticed, after the first few hours, had a curiously separate and distinct quality, beginning with what sounded like a loud, but, of course, muffled subterranean explosion, from which the subsequent detonations jarred the ship. Next to the Orissa was a German steamer. The captain of the German ship lost both his anchors. He told the British captain that he believed the bay had opened under his ship and swallowed his two big anchors. No one else lost any. The waters of the bay, a very small one, receded after the first shock about eight feet, we were told, and then rose again in three breakers. I was told by officers of the Orissa that the water again receded and six days after had sub- 236 THE ANDEAN LAND sided six feet, so the shore line was six feet higher than before the earthquake. How true this is I do not know. Subsequent measurements ought to con firm it if it is a fact. "After the first day our anxiety was to get to San tiago. There were no trains, no coaches, no horses, no means of transportation, immediately organized, as they would have been in our own country or any other civilized one. "Everything about the government collapsed, if one may apply the term to something already supine and unjointed. Here in Santiago, President Riesco threw himself upon the necks of the foreign ministers as they called, and wept, crying: '"What shall I do, what shall I do ? ' "Of course he did nothing. The military took it in hand; martial law was declared, and, owing to the foreign officers in charge of departments, some sys tem of order was maintained. At first George thought he could get horses and that we might ride the one hundred and sixteen miles to Santiago. But many horses had been killed, and those in public stables that survived had been driven out into the country where they could be fed, so that no horses could be had. Then he turned his attention to getting a coach, after walking to Vina del Mar, trying at every turn and, failing, he managed to get, through a friend, the use of a coach returning to Lamache. This was to be at his office at 9.30 Tuesday night. We were to go to Vina, stay overnight (in chairs or on the floor) in the house of Senor Ambrosio Montt, a relative of the president-elect. But the captain re fused to allow any of his men to take us ashore. After 6 p. m. any one attempting to land was to be shot; at least the city was strictly patrolled, and VALPARAISO 237 that was the martial law, but we were determined to risk it. "I won't have any of my men shot for anybody,' declared the captain, but he afterward relented and took us ashore himself. Brass buttons can go any where in Chile. "The little square was lighted by the camp fires of the troops, whose guns were stacked close at hand. It was the bivouac of an army. A man and his wife (Chilean friends of George's from Santiago), who were to go with us, decided to return to the ship, thoroughly cowed by the appearance of things. Fires were burning in the direction we had to go, and we were not yet certain of the armed escort we had been promised. A sister of the woman who flunked elected to remain with us, so we started at a little after ten. There was a path cleared in the street wide enough for a coach to pass between piles of debris, and except for the new moon everything was dark. Every night on the ship we had heard the scattered shots of pickets, evidently firing at looters, and we were told we might be held up in the city, even, but we drove unmolested to the headquarters of the commandante, on Avenida Brazil, and George went to his tent with a note from an influential man in Valparaiso, who had promised us two mounted soldiers as an escort to Vina. We had two young men on the box, and George and the young woman with us (who had been educated in the States) each had revolvers. It was impossible to get one for me. The poor commandante was aroused and recognized an old friend in the charming young woman, was de lighted to see her and was kindness and politeness itself to us, but resolutely refused permission to leave the city that night. 238 THE ANDEAN LAND '"It would be suicide to make the attempt,' he told us. "'Here we are shooting every man caught looting, and many desperate characters who came thronging in at first to rob are now driven to the outskirts and country, where they are ready to hold up any one. Many have been murdered. A party of eighteen young men from Santiago coming here were held up and killed yesterday. [This George and I did not believe at the time and have not yet heard it con firmed. It was a big party to hold up.] It would be madness to go on. Here you must stay until day break — and this is hell!' "It certainly looked like it. On two opposite corners fires were still burning in gutted buildings, whose blackened, empty windows showed the smoul dering inferno within. On the corner next to where our coach was drawn up was a little low tent, to which the commandante pointed : ' In there are my wounded and injured — nine women and one man. Over there [pointing to a little kiosk where the band had played, as bands do in these Spanish countries two or three times a week] are refugees. There is room for the ladies.' "So he sent an orderly for a mattress and another held a candle. We took one of our rugs, left one in the carriage for the men. George, with his usual thoughtfulness and kindness, had the two men off the box and inside to share it with him. Just how much this would mean to any one of cleanly habits can hardly be explained, but George was a hero in more ways than one that night and the ones before. "When we followed the commandante into the kiosk we found the floor covered with sleeping figures, — men and women and children, — some with blankets, VALPARAISO 239 some under the army tenting canvas. The general brought a blanket and a square piece of canvas, and when my young woman friend and I had lain down in our narrow bed, tucked us snugly up; then he had the two soldiers withdraw with the candle that had illuminated this pathetic picture, and we tried to go to sleep. We were tired, so tired, but I was as sleepless as I had been since that Thursday night, and this was Tuesday. After midnight I dozed off, to be awakened by a violent explosion across the street. It was from one of the burning buildings and there were several following that at intervals. Nothing but a canvas wall was between us and the danger, but things adjust themselves according to proportion in the mind, and what would have sent us flying in ordinary times seemed trivial there. George had the horses put on the coach and drove up the avenida a few rods. And so was passed the night, alternately dozing and being awakened by the explosions. Once some bricks fell on the iron roof of our shelter. "Just in the first gray dawn I heard, half asleep, the sound of something being dragged along the pavement. I thought very likely the water supply had been miraculously restored and the bomberos were trying to fight the fire where the explosions had been. Then there were sharp voices, a sharper re port of what seemed like a gun, but even then I did not realize what it meant. When I came out a few minutes after, there was the pitiful figure of a man, young, with arms tied behind him, bleeding head, in a bloody bandage, crumpled over almost to the waist, knees bent, and the weight of the drooping body held by the post to which it was tied at the elbows. Over the dead body was the word 'Ladron' (thief). 240 THE ANDEAN LAND "As we drove away in the gray of the morning a crowd was already collected around it. From that on we were in the district where the earthquake had played the greatest havoc. Just above where we spent the night, the Victoria Theatre, the pride of the city, was a heap of rubbish through which a cat could not have crawled. It was to have opened the follow ing Monday with the annual grand opera season. Had the earthquake come then, and two hours later than its Thursday evening schedule, it would have wiped out the wealth and fashion of Valparaiso. From that on it was a grisly sight to see the damage that had been done. Piles of rubbish one story high, above which the splintered skeletons of interior tim bers, dust-covered, without a semblance of what had previously concealed the framework left, — and whole streets of this reaching away from the port part of town, — showed what these terrible, mysteri ous visitors can do in a few seconds' time. Often these were remnants of what might have been a handsome building, towered up three stories above the piles of broken masonry itself. If the occupants escaped with their lives it was a miracle, and every stick and scrap of furnishing — all their household goods — must have been absolutely destroyed without the aid of fire. This was merely what the earthquake had done. "On reaching Vina we found lesser ruin at first. Don Ambrosio Montt's house was practically un damaged. It was a big place in its own grounds, built on a solid foundation and apparently of wood. In these earthquake countries nothing but wood should be used, but of course its inflammable quality puts it out of use at once in cities. It is the rule to build of bricks with heavy masonry copings project- VALPARAISO 241 ing at the top, figures and ornate designs introduced, and everything that the mind of man can devise to destroy life when the crisis comes, put on the outside of the house, where the Chilean idea likes to make its show — in that and in its drawing-room. The offices of the house may be no better than a dog kennel, but anything that is concealed does not matter. If, in the furtherance of this wish to look impressive 'in front,' they could be persuaded to use galvanized iron made into showy designs, but not a menace to the poor life below, it would be a mercy to every soul who has to walk their narrow streets. "We lunched with the Montts, — charming family, — and having been joined by the man and wife who had deserted us the night before, proceeded on our way to Lamache. Our coach had four horses abreast, a fifth ridden by a postilion, and we had two mounted soldiers, mere boys, but armed to the teeth. The woman who had caved in the night before was afraid of them, afraid of every tree trunk and shadow; afraid of the spots on the sun, too, probably. Her body would have weighed over two hundred, but the gray matter at the top would n't have burdened a bee. I was much more favorably inclined toward the poor, oppressed middle classes than toward the idle and often vicious upper-tendom of the distracted country. George and I said to each other when we had the chance, how much we would have felt that ride through the desolate, forsaken camp, if we only had been alone in the coach. The woman's panic had apparently extended to her husband years ago, and it finally reached the plucky sister. 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,' and perhaps they knew their own country better than we did, but when dusk came down and George and I walked up a long hill VOL. I. — 1 6 242 THE ANDEAN LAND to ease the poor beasts, we were greeted by a black silence when we got back in at the top. We paid a hundred dollars each for the coach to Lamache, but I would n't take that ride again with that idiot for a thousand. You can't laugh at them; they are too touchy, and I am too blunt for diplomacy with these shams. "Of course, the condition made for the knights of the road. We rode that day in that coach through a stretch of the Middle Ages — the lumbering coach, the vile, uncared-for roads, the exhausted horses, the utter impossibility of escape by flight if attacked, the fords, the steep hills, the hundred and one places for ambush — everything favorable for a 'hold up.' But we reached Lamache in safety at about eight o'clock. Poor, wrecked town, like all the other villages we had passed through. We slept that night on the broken pavement of a grape arbor over which an improvised roof had been nailed, of corrugated zinc. Outside, not more than eight or ten feet, was a mud- wallow in which a flock of sheep was herded. The smells were something to forget. About two feet from my head, outside a cloth wall, were some starved goats. Everything on four legs in this coun try is starved from its birth. (Every morning I see a man lead a mare up to the opposite house here and milk her with his filthy hands, that it would be safe to say had not been washed a dozen times since his birth. The house is worth probably $75,000, but cleanliness has not yet entered there.) During the night a hungry mother goat evidently climbed up the arbor and annexed a string of garlic. George and I chuckled to ourselves and rejoiced when we heard her — and smelled the repast. Next morning a poor little kid with his nose in a muzzle clarified the complaints VALPARAISO 243 we had heard during the night. The ' plucky ' girl, in the full belief that the band of highwaymen that she and her sister had been looking for had arrived, clamored for a light, so I got up and stumbled around among the beds until I found the boy, awakened him and found out where he had put the candles. Then I lighted one and stuck it up in a crack of a broken pavement beside her bed, but she did n't want it there as it would light up the interior and 'they' might shoot us from the outside before they came in to rob us ! So I blew it out and went back to my already inhabited bed. My 'bites' next morning were uncountable ! " In the morning we got one of the wild trains to Santiago. Our section was banked up as full as could be with little orphans, boys and girls, from a Catholic orphan asylum of Lamache, forty-five of their original number having been killed in the col lapse of the building. George gave them oranges and money, and we were kind and coddled them all the way. When the train was stopped a few blocks outside the station to take them off, I think at least twenty beside the five in our section came up and shook hands with us, saying in their pretty little way, 'Adios, senorita — A dios, senor.' " Poor little toads ! What were they born for, and why — to be smashed by Fate one way or another ? "We thought our adventures were over, but hav ing made a portage through a tunnel, at one end of which about a hundred tons of rock had fallen, we had the most harrowing experience of all. From the cumbre (top of the range) the engineer (who had been drinking) simply cut loose and we went down the mountains like a rocket, the aisles full of standing passengers who had no seats and the rocking cars 244 THE ANDEAN LAND pitching them off their feet. We expected any min ute to be hurled into space. What, with the rotten governmental inspection of road-beds, cars, engines, and what not, on top of a possible and very probable weakening of the tracks by the quake, nothing seemed more probable at the moment than that we had sur vived the big disaster to be destroyed by a fool's whim. But some of the bomberos went forward and threatened to 'chuck' him off if he did n't slow down. Even the tender was full of firemen and soldiers, sit ting thick on the coal. At the first station when he did slow down, our car, next the engine, vibrated as in a small earthquake with the tremendous pressure of the head of steam he had on. But 'all's well that ends well,' and we reached the city in safety. At least a thousand or two persons blocked the big stations and the adjoining street to see if any of their friends came through on the first train. Probably hundreds had taken a short cut to another world and were lying buried under the piles of rubbish in that dreadful ruin at Valparaiso. "Here we found mamma and James safe, the house not badly damaged, and practically nothing broken. One pane of glass out of four hundred odd (we have a glass corridor a hundred and thirty odd feet in length), one vase of no special value, a water bottle — nothing. My faithful maids had done every thing possible for mamma, and between tremblors Julia, the second girl, had come upstairs and hastily placed my most valuable porcelains — the ones we had brought from Japan, that were of greatest value, — - on the floor. Then mamma and the two girls cleared the china closet (it has glass doors), and put every thing under the beds. Unless we have another hard quake we have got off very luckily. Many houses VALPARAISO 245 here in Santiago lost all their crockery, and even as late as after I arrived I saw garbage carts loaded with broken dishes. Here one hundred only were killed. There has been considerable damage done to houses, the handsomest and most expensive appearing to suffer most, and all through the business part of the city buildings are shored up, looking very unsafe. The tremblors still continue, and as I finish this on the seventh (I have written a few pages daily, so you must forgive its incoherent character), I have not yet had my clothing entirely off me at night. Twice I have tried it, and in an hour or two a quake made me so nervous I have dressed again and got what sleep I could that way. Another big earthquake is promised by Captain Cooper on the twelfth, but as a prophet rarely hits it twice in succession we are not worrying. But we wish these little tremblors would stop. They only come at night; keeping us keyed up and anxious. The boys' room is badly cracked so they bring out a mattress and sleep in the hall at night. We had three quakes this morning, one at four, another at four-thirty, and another at about six. It seems to me as if it would be heaven to get between sheets again without fear. I take my midday baths in fear and trembling, and only draw breath when I am dressed again. We may have to keep this up for some time. It is a dreadful year from all accounts all over the world for this sort of thing — strange, mysterious, interesting phenomena. "We are thankful, so thankful, to be safe and to gether again, but we are not banking on future safety. I have often laughed at our many sorts of dangers here and said laughingly: 'It is dangerous to be safe in Chile.' "And it is. All the chief festivities in honor of 246 THE ANDEAN LAND Secretary Root had to be abandoned. Minister Hicks had intended to give a banquet with eighty covers, but reduced it to a small dinner at the lega tion. He went to Coronel to meet the party and they came to Santiago by train without having seen Val paraiso. Their warship had been delayed by fog and everything was thrown out of programme. The re ception to the Americans was to have been on Thurs day evening, but was put off until Monday. The decorations and the tables looked artistic and at tractive. Things looked as well as they could in this earthquake, makeshift country. When Colonel Hicks presented me to Mr. Root, I said : " ' Mr. Root, everybody has been telling you prob ably how glad they are to see you. Let me vary it by saying I shall be glad to see you go. Americans cannot afford to jeopardize any of their presidential timber in an earthquake country. After you see what it has done to Valparaiso you will go thank fully on board your ship,' and I would stake my head he did. " Poor Mrs. Root is a bad sailor and has been ill everywhere. When I told her she must be bored to death to meet colony after colony of exiles whom she had never seen before, and probably would never see again, she said this was the first colony she had met. Colonel Hicks said: "'Why, did n't you meet any on the other side ?' "'No,' she said. 'I was sick everywhere.' "The ladies of Montevideo gave her a beautiful pearl collar, but she did not have it on here. Imagine the purgatory of this sort of junket to a frail woman who is a bad sailor. "I had a long talk with Pedro Montt, the president elect, and told him how much we expected of him, VALPARAISO 247 and how we foreigners thought and hoped and be lieved that he would be another Porfirio Diaz, and do for Chile what President Diaz has done for Mex ico. Over and over he said : '"You will be disappointed in me — I shall dis appoint you.' "Heavens! How we hope he will not. He is a smart, short man, as dark as Diaz — the only mem ber of his family who looks like an Indian. He is not as aggressive as Diaz, but I suppose a dozen Diazes and another dozen Roosevelts, Kaiser Wil- helms, and King Edwards could n't make much out of Chile. It is beyond hope or help." Living in an earthquake zone has its arts. Children are taught never to close their doors at night, for a shock may so disarrange joints and hinges as to make it impossible to open the doors, thus imprisoning the inmates of a sleeping- room, which in case of fire would be most serious. As soon as a quake is felt persons always jump to the centre of a room as being the safest spot. The S. S. Oropesa was in the harbor of Valpa raiso, August, 1906, when the great earthquake occurred there and took on board many refugees. The second officer was on watch one night when a severe shock was felt. He described it to me as feeling like the explosion of a mine or a torpedo directly under the ship. During the earthquake, or shortly after, while there were many fires, the big Grand Hotel suddenly burst into flames. Spectators could divine no other cause than 248 THE ANDEAN LAND incendiarism, and seeing a suspicious-looking person they condemned him at once as the incendiary and threw him into the burning hotel where he was cremated. It has never been known whether they burned the right man or even whether the fire was not purely accidental. The nerves of the people at Valparaiso have been kept at a tension all of the time since by numer ous recurrent shocks, the worst of all, reported March 7, 1907, is said to have been very severe. We did not get details at Montevideo before sailing. CHAPTER X SANTIAGO AND THE CHILENOS Santiago de Chile — Santa Lucia — Don Benjamin Vicuna MacKenna — Microscopic Baskets — Queer Shop Signs — Women Street Car Con ductors — A Pessimistic American — Hedgehog of the Sea — The South American Evolving a Type — American Women as Wives of Diplomats — Prominent Americans in Santiago — General Kil- patnck's Fascinating Widow — Courtesy, Brav ery, and Honesty of Chilenos — Arturo Prat, a Hero — Suicide of an Entire Army at Arica — Juan Fernandez, where Defoe Marooned Robinson Crusoe. SANTIAGO de Chile on Rio Mapocho is the third city of South America, with a popula tion of a little over three hundred thousand. A late census gives the population at 296,645, but the access since has been enough to carry it over the mark given above. It is one of the most beautiful of cities and is well governed. The sanitary system is being very gradually im proved and the water supply, as taken from Vita Cura, from a well-protected mountain stream with good settling basins and filtration reservoirs, is far above the average. The climate is dry, and not infrequently nine months of the 249 250 THE ANDEAN LAND year will go by without a drop of rain, which makes for a contaminated city dust, very in jurious to inhale. The death rate not long ago was sixty to the thousand, but is decreasing as fast as attention is given to city sanitation. Santiago ought to be a most healthful place, although some authorities say the locality is deficient in atmospheric electricity, which they claim is a want that cannot be supplied by man and is not likely ever to be by nature, and thus an element desirable for good health and high vitality will always be absent. By attention to city sanitation Buenos Ayres has reduced its number of deaths by fourteen thousand each year, which is astounding, and furnishes an ex ample to Santiago. The city has a very small indebtedness and is in shape to make any im provements considered wise. Nature left a huge pile of rocks, three hundred feet high, in the centre of the city, or, more in telligibly, the early Spaniards fortified what is now Santa Lucia, and the city gradually grew in a circle around it. But its beauties and possibilities were not appreciated until Don Benjamin Vicuna MacKenna became intend ente of the city early in the eighteen-seventies. The United States had been permitted to build an astronomical observatory at the summit, which work was well performed by Lieut. James M. Gillis, of the United States Navy, in 1849, SANTA LUCIA, SANTIAGO DE CHILE SANTIAGO DE CHILE 251 assisted by Lieutenants Phelps and McCrae. This establishment was purchased by the Chileno government and removed to the Yungay dis trict, resulting in the founding of a permanent observatory. MacKenna had travelled, and he saw what might be done with the freaky cerro in the way of urban beauty. Terraces, pools, walks, and drives were built; trees, shrubs, mosses, and flowers were made to grow; suit able lookouts, band stands, gateways, and all castellated, were constructed, until one of the rare parks of the world resulted. The sunsets to be seen from the summit of Santa Lucia are among the most exquisite of the world, and are even more delicately pink than the soft evening lights which people go to the Mokattam Hills near Cairo to see and rave about. While the park was being beautified, many skeletons of Protestants were dug up, because the cerro was one of the few places where they had been permitted burial in this ultra-Catholic country. In fact, nearly all interments of Protestants were at Valparaiso, no matter where death took place. MacKenna had the skeletons all carefully re-entombed and a slab set up bear ing this inscription in Spanish: " To the memory of the expatriated from heaven and earth, who in this place have Iain buried half a century, 1820-1872. September, 1874." 252 THE ANDEAN LAND MacKenna was a native Chileno of North Irish parentage, and had ability as a writer and was a prolific author of a wide range of publica tions, covering the field of politics, history, and biography. Most of his work was carelessly and hastily done, but his style was clear and capti vating and he had a large public. Chile looks upon him as one of its great men. Once Mac Kenna came to the United States on a mission, during which he met many public men whom he proceeded to describe in sketches after his return home, interweaving imagery, satire, wit, and sar casm with artful and attractive skill. He heard somebody say that Grant was an elephant that trod down everything in its pathway. Referring to this he wrote that Sherman must then have been an eagle and Sheridan a hawk. Of Horace Greeley he wrote in terms of admiration, but to Theodore Parker he referred thus contemptuously : " Parker was the first great man of little mind I have met." A visit to the first James Gordon Bennett gave him the impression that James Gordon, second, was a "frank, resolute, though rude, boy." MacKenna seemed to think it worth while to note that Mrs. Bennett smoked cigarettes. To his eyes, Admiral Farragut did not look his part, as he writes: "He is such a figure as we have seen a thou sand times in Chile behind the door of a shop, SANTIAGO DE CHILE 253 — a little, dark fellow with a rather big nose, bright eyes as black as his teeth were white when he showed them in a fascinating smile; there never was a great man who had less the appearance of one." When MacKenna saw President Johnson, he saw mostly his coat "which seemed to have been cut by his own scissors," he writes, in satirical reference to Johnson's sartorial period. To him Secretary Seward was "a little bit of a fellow with a white and wrinkled face and beady, blue eyes." Kate Chase Sprague charmed MacKenna, and he refers to her as "the en chanting Kate Chase." The famous little ornamental baskets, almost microscopic, with mesh so fine it cannot be seen by the ordinary eye, are woven by Indians near Santiago, who sometimes peddle them in the city, or perch at a hotel entrance with their wares. The baskets are nothing less than exquisite in their delicate handiwork and are a curiosity. The native weavers are as honest as they are skilful. Our party had a great argument with one who, we thought, was trying to be extortion ate, but who finally convinced us that all of the trouble grew out of the actual fact that we were trying to make her take just twice the amount she asked for the baskets. Our self-imposed fine that time was to buy all of the baskets the good woman had. 254 THE ANDEAN LAND Many of the natives and country people come to town in most fantastic attire and are a feature to be looked for and admired for their grace and carriage and independence, emphasized by every glance, pose, and movement. The shop signs of Santiago are interesting, and may be considered quite typical of all Spanishesque cities, — only possibly more odd. Very near to a Santiago church is a butcher shop, over which is this inscription : "Chancharia de Jesus" — "The Pork Shop of Jesus." The feminine street car conductor of Chile is a feature of a country with many features. Dur ing the war with Peru and Bolivia, all of the Chilenos who could walk went to the front. The government really had more trouble keeping cripples and impossibles from going than in securing recruits. There was a paucity of men at home, and still things could not be permitted to languish, so the women took hold everywhere and most effectively, too. When the war was over, women had found that they could do many things that they were not aware of before and men found that the women could do some things better and were more reliable and did not drink and carouse, and so they displaced the men permanently on the street cars and at some other vocations. A country whose women will work and whose men will fight has plenty of STREET CAR IN CONCEPCION, CHILE Woman Conductor in Rear SANTIAGO DE CHILE 255 vitality and will accomplish its destiny satis factorily in time. A German said to me one day: "Chile is a nice country, but there are too many Chilenos in it." If he had added too many for the Germans, perhaps, he would have told the truth. Another subject of the brave and boisterous Kaiser said: "Chile has the most perfect climate in the world, but it is unhealthy," which is a sample of both German criticism and perhaps unconscious humor, with not much truth attached. I met an American in Chile who at forty was bright and successful, but who was sure the United States was going to destruction in a handbasket. He had been out of the country for five years and all he had read, he said, in that time, was of public and private corruption. He had not considered that only the unusual is news and that crookedness is printed because it is uncommon; that for every dozen cases of infraction of the laws of public morals there are ten thousand honest officials whose acts of probity make a big offset; that there has been a great moral awakening among our people; that more is now demanded of a public servant than ever before, or in any other country; that everything discovered is made public in a most prominent manner; that in the friction between vice and virtue the former would win and nothing 256 THE ANDEAN LAND be said if the latter were not absolutely dominant. No, he had not thought of these things. Criti cism, exposure, and publicity are good agents, but they should be used with temperance, accu racy, and courage. If our reformers and our press attack without reason and fact, they will come to have the reputation of a termagant on a housetop, and their own power for good will be much reduced. Let us be bold in assailing wrong, but let us be fair and sane and, above all, we should be sure of our premises. We must not inculcate the doctrine that a successful man in either public or private life is a legitimate object of suspicion. When one has not an extensive Spanish vo cabulary and still wishes to learn as much as possible about things, he has many experiences, some funny and some embarrassing, but unless one is supersensitive, there need be few of the latter. We were going along the only street of a little coast town with a citizen who spoke almost no English, when a woman passed bearing a huge covered basket on her head and crying out in Amazonian tones: "Erizosl erizos! erizos!" "What is an erizo?" I asked him. Then the trouble began. In broken English and half Spanish he tried to tell me. "What you call one thing if a dog barks may be in a garden its head pulls in ? " "Turtle," I guessed. CHICKEN PEDDLER AT SANTIAGO DE CHILE SANTIAGO DE CHILE 257 "No, he is not turtle which does have no thousand spines on the back." "Porcupine, hedgehog," I ventured, eager to do my part. "Si! Si! hedgehog of the sea." "But hedgehogs do not live in the sea," I dissented, firm in the fact and with the belief, too, that the woman could not have many porcupines in the basket on her head. But my amiable companion held fast. " Sure, hedgehog of the bottom ground of the sea; they eat him here." No use; I had to await a dictionary, where I found that "erizo" in Spanish means both a hedgehog and a sea-urchin, between which, with fine imagery, they insist upon discovering a great similarity. In fact, many people believe that there is nothing upon the land which does not have its counterpart in the sea. This incident is only one of hundreds, and I must say that I have enjoyed every one of them, permitting those whom I have met to laugh at much of my bad Spanish as I have chuckled at their bad English. Everywhere we have met kindly and obliging people of quick and gener ous impulses, whose graciousness and hospitality could not be criticised or doubted. The South American, and very especially the Chileno, is a composite man. It is not a question with them of the vitality of a race but rather of VOL. I. — 17 258 THE ANDEAN LAND the potency of a language. It is not the problem of perpetuating the Spanish peoples, but as to whether the Spanish tongue shall prevail. The demonstration seems to have been made to the effect that the Spaniard will not live, but that his tongue will. The South American is no more a Spaniard than the American, with his admixture of Teutonic, Latin, Slavic, and other blood, is an Englishman. In Chile one finds a Fitzsimmons or an O'Higgins, a Burke and a Moran, a Fleischman and a Schmidt, a Cochrane and a Jones, who cannot speak a word of any language except Spanish — not the Spanish of Cervantes, or pure Castilian, with its lisping aspirates and its soft c and z, but the Spanish of South America, which, if harsher, sounds as though there is more force in it and behind it. There is a plentiful mixture in the South American of German, English, French, Italian, American, and last, but of first importance, of Araucanian, the strongest of all the native races of either North or South America. President Montt, of Chile, is black with Araucanian blood, and he is a fine, forceful, cultured man, the present hope of Chile. I am not so certain of the ancestry of President Alcorta, of Argentina, and President Penna of Brazil, but I am told they both have Indian blood in their veins, and General Roca, ex- president and grand old man of Argentina is SANTIAGO DE CHILE 259 said to be part Indian. The president of Ecuador is a mixed-blood, and is especially strong, while all the world admits the courage and genius of that remarkable man, Porfirio Diaz, the presidential autocrat of Mexico, who has Oaxaca Indian blood in his veins to the extent of a quarter, and that blood is much the same as the Araucanian, according to the best ethnic authorities. I do not know whether the negro professor of Atlanta is right or not, who claims that the genius of Robert Browning, Alexander Hamilton, and Lew Wallace can be traced to African blood in their veins, but I do believe that every Spaniard has been enriched by whatever relation ship to the Araucanian he can prove. So the South American is a creation and a creature apart from all others. There are over seven thousand French in Santiago, so the genial French minister, M. DesPrez, told me, and they are making their presence evident. The Americans are often prominent, but not numerous, numbering about sixty in Santiago. Recently five foreign legations in Santiago have been presided over by American women, and this does not include the United States legation, whose distinguished head is a widower. Just now two of the legations have charming American mistresses — the Mexican and the French. Madame DesPrez, the strong 260 THE ANDEAN LAND and stately wife of the French minister, was a Miss McClellan, a daughter of Gen. George B. McClellan, and a sister of Mayor McClellan of New York. She does not like Santiago, but she does her full duty in her important station and speaks French, of course, with as much fluency as English. Madame Covarrubias, wife of the Mexican minister, is of a fine old family, prominent in both Louisiana and Mississippi. Her heart is Southern and her emotions and sympathies alert and strong, which have prompted her to do much humane work for animals in a land where it is sadly needed. Madame Covarrubias is a most lovable woman in every way, considerate, tolerant, tender, and most superb in her woman hood. The Mexican legation building is one of the very few wooden ones in Santiago, and house and grounds are after the American fashion. Like Madame DesPrez, Madame Covarrubias has many dogs of rare and interesting breeds. A most prominent American, but for years a patriotic Chileno, in Santiago, is the aged and respected Senor Don Julio Foster. He is crowd ing ninety, and he has had one son in the Cabinet, while another son is at present on the Supreme Bench. I walked in Cousino Park with a fine young Chileno named Luis de la Maz V. He was just CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA, SANTIAGO DE CHILE SANTIAGO DE CHILE 261 learning English, and told me his grandfather's name was "Boorkay," and that he came from "Earlan," which rendered into English is Mr. Burke, from Ireland ; yet the young man looked and talked nothing that would in the least sug gest the fact, so quickly and thoroughly does the Spanish tongue submerge one in Chile and Argentina, and in all South America except Brazil and the Guianas. To my mind the most interesting Chileno woman in Chile is Madame Kilpatrick, the widow of General Kilpatrick, who rivalled Sheridan and Stonewall Jackson as a cavalry leader and was a General in the United States army at twenty-seven. After the war General Kilpatrick, still a young and handsome man, went as Minister to Chile. The general was a true hero, as was right, in the eyes of the beauties of the capital. He reciprocated the unmistakable admiration, and took to wife one of the most beautiful daughters of that southern republic, to whom he was always a true and loving husband. Dying before his time, he left a widow and two daughters. The latter are well married to Amer icans in the consular service, and the former lives modestly and genteelly in Santiago. She is still beautiful and dignified. Frequent visits to the United States have deservedly won many promi nent friends, and she was particularly admired by the late President McKinley and Vice- 262 THE ANDEAN LAND President Hobart, and their wives, in whose homes she has often been a guest. The United States gives Madame Kilpatrick a moderate pen sion. Her manner and sweet, lisping English quite won Secretary and Mrs. Root, to whom Madame Kilpatrick sent a beautiful vicuna rug of special design, after their return from their South American tour. She keeps well informed upon the politics of the United States. General Kilpatrick' s widow holds him in loving memory and her home is full of things that Suggest him. No loyal American goes to Santiago without paying his respects to her. The story is told that General Kilpatrick's secretary of legation also married a Chileno girl, but that he was a poltroon and soon deserted his most worthy wife, thereby breaking her heart and wrecking her life, proving a distressing contrast to the General. From the moment we sailed from New York we were told not to trust anybody in South America. The books we read were filled with instances of dishonesty, and the persons we met who had been in South America all told us to expect ninety per cent of the people to be thieves. The consensus of opinion was that of all the dis honest people in South America the Chilenos were the most so. Somehow or other this did not prejudice me, and I was disposed to trust the South American, because I had seen his SANTIAGO DE CHILE 263 antecedents in Spain, Italy, and over the world, and had found among them a good percentage of honest people ; because I knew of the inclination of travellers to malign people among whom they go; because I remembered the "pickpocket" signs in the railway stations of all of our big home towns; because foreigners living among a new or strange people are ever inclined to speak badly of them to visitors, for the reason that to say good or kindly things would be tame and would not prove the superiority of the foreigner or indicate the degree of his bravery or martyrdom in residing among such a lot; and, finally, because I believe there are more honest people in the world, and in every country of the world (possibly excepting Japan, in which case I will probably be regarded as prejudiced), than dishonest. As Chile was the country always referred to as the most highly developed hive of thievery and general dishonesty, I shall take it as a type and relate the result of a little personal investigation. Mr. George Rose-Innes of London is at the head of the oldest English house in Chile. His firm has existed in its present style since 1861, and Mr. Rose-Innes has done business personally in Chile for forty-five years. He has gotten rich, has come to live at home, and his business is so organized he needs only to visit Chile every two years. I asked him about the Chileno character. 264 THE ANDEAN LAND He said he had found it to be about the same as mankind the world over ; that the Chileno's word is good and his credit is good; that he is inclined to procrastinate about paying his bills, but that he never objects to paying interest on deferred accounts. Mr. Rose-Innes said his losses through his debtors did not show a high percentage, and that the greatest trouble his house had had was to make it clear to the Chileno merchant that it was a mercantile and not a banking establishment. I asked W. R. Grace & Co., who do more business in Chile than any other house, do mestic or foreign, and they told me the same thing; that accounts must be looked after as elsewhere, but that their losses were small. The Santiago managers of the Banco Aleman Trans-Atlantico, the great German banking house, and of the Bank of Tarapaca y Argentina, the largest English banking establishment on the west coast and perhaps in South America, told me that judgment had to be used as in banking everywhere, but that with ordinary banking care it was as easy and as satisfactory to do business in Chile as anywhere in the world. And so I could cite dozens of others who live and grow fat among and on the Chileno, and who are willing to go on record in his favor, and yet when I happened to ask a certain foreigner about the honesty of the Chileno he burst into a coarse SANTIAGO DE CHILE 265 guffaw which could only be identified in the United States as a horse-laugh, and exclaimed, "The idea of using 'honesty' in referring to Chilenos ! As if there was a single honest one ! " This aroused me in defence of the abused Chileno, whom I had found so courteous and so obliging. Frequently I had asked a question of a Chileno in broken Spanish and had met with most patient grace in explanation, and if it were some place I desired to find, I have known them go more than a mile to show me with no hope of reward and no intelligent idea that they would ever see me again. On the railroad trains I often carried a half-dozen parcels. Some might be piled into one coach and some into another, or distributed in different parts of the same crowded coach, where it would be impossi ble to watch them. In this way I have gone past station after station, with hundreds coming and going, and I have never lost a thing. This may have been careless and it may have been luck, because one often loses parcels in the United States under the same conditions; but here in Chile, where I had been told they would steal a red-hot stove, and that everybody was after everybody else's property, and would be after mine, I did not lose a thing, and did not meet a single person who had been robbed. Several incidents occurred at the Hotel Oddo, Santiago, that came under my personal obser- 266 THE ANDEAN LAND vation during the month we made it our headquarters. A gentleman left a fine Patek- Phillippe Swiss repeating watch, with gold chain and diamond charm, worth one thousand dollars, gold, under his pillow when he arose in the morning. When he returned in the evening the poor mozo, working for a pittance, handed him the highly prized watch, which had been carefully cared for. The mozo could have taken to the hills and lived five years easily on the proceeds of that which had been apparently no temptation to him. Mr. Desola, of the U. S. Vacuum Oil Com pany, forgot a roll of bills containing three hundred and ninety-seven dollars. He left the money on the dressing table in his room, where he had placed it while changing his clothing. At night the mozo handed him his money with out a bill gone. Mr. Desola has been in Chile for years and expressed no surprise, and told me he had not worried about the money, as he knew it would be all right. A miner who had made a strike came down from Peru. He had a belt containing five thousand dollars in gold which he carried strapped around his body. The first night in Santiago he went out to see the town, and, as he expressed it, got gloriously drunk. His com panions of the night had not been of the savory kind, so when he "came to" in the morning and SANTIAGO DE CHILE 267 found his gold gone, he at once concluded he had been robbed. He took the matter very philosophically, told the police, to whom the matter was reported, that he supposed it served him right, and on the way back to the Oddo formulated plans for getting more where that came from. Imagine his surprise when he returned humbly and tamely to his room to re ceive the belt and every bit of the gold from the mozo. The miner had not taken it with him on the spree; had forgotten to fasten it about his body and had left it lying on the bureau of his room. A lady told me she had ridden home in a cheap Santiago coach. The driver charged her a fare she regarded as too high, so she paid him half he asked and marched off. When she got home she missed her purse and could not be at all cer tain where she had lost it. Within an hour or so the driver with whom she had had the difference about the fare came to the house. He had found her purse in the coach and had started out to locate the owner. Not a centavo was missing. President Browning, of the Instituto Inglese, Santiago, had a friend who was going away for a long visit and who asked if he could leave some valuables in the college safe. The request was granted and the package containing the articles was handed to President Browning at 268 THE ANDEAN LAND the house of the friend. On the way to the insti tute the president rode in a street car. He be came engaged in an interesting conversation, and absent-mindedly laid the precious package on the seat. When he left the car he forgot to pick it up. Soon after reaching his office he dis covered the loss, but did not know the number or identity of the car. After much distraction and a lot of telephoning he got word of a package that had been turned into the car company office by a conductor. Hastening across the city he found the package had been opened and there displayed on the table were all of the con tents, watches, diamonds, pins, etc., tallying exactly with the inventory. Since that occurrence President Browning has had more confidence than ever in the Chileno character. I could give many other instances, not to prove that all Chilenos are honest, but to show that most of them are. I heard many stories of their faithfulness. During the great strike of November, 1905, in Santiago, over three hundred persons were shot in the streets by the authorities and the city was placed under mar tial law. Many of the Hotel Oddo employees lived in the suburbs and even in the country. During the entire time of the trouble, although they had to walk many miles because the street cars were not running, not one of the employees absented himself or was late to work. They SANTIAGO DE CHILE 269 even worked sometimes until after nine o'clock at night, although the martial law made it an offence for which one could be shot down to walk the streets after nine o'clock. Miss Gerard, the daughter of the Oddo land lord, was born in Santiago. Her father and mother are French, but she is a Chileno in heart and mind. A graduate of the Santiago Ameri can College, she is an accomplished young woman. When telling me of the faithfulness of their employees, numbering over a hundred in the Oddo and two annexes, she said she often tried to help them with their work so they could get through earlier, but they would not permit it and would push her gently aside with the answer that such work did not become her. The Chileno has spirit, more than any people I have ever met outside of the United States. He does not bend "the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." If you give him a gratuity and he accepts it at all, he looks you straight in the eye; and if he says "Thank you," which is infrequent, as he con siders it his due, he does so with much reserve and fine dignity. If he is an employee you must not speak crossly or even quickly to him, or he will resent it at once by at least leaving, if not by personal assault. And he is brave and inde pendent, and no matter what his station in life, he holds his head high and his shoulders back, 270 THE ANDEAN LAND and there is a fine fire of manhood in his eye. No man is more patriotic, no citizen loves his country more, and none will die for it more quickly. During the war with Peru and Bolivia, his greatest fault was his intense desire to get at the enemy, — to lay hands on him personally. There was no firing a volley and then retiring with a muttered manana as in some of the hotter Spanish-American countries. Mr. Chileno just fired a volley, then dropped his gun, drew his deadly knife, and rushed at the enemy until the conflict was hand to hand. There are endless tales of valor of officer and private. All over Chile the name of Arturo Prat (Arthur Pratt) is revered, and there are monuments to him, Plaza Prats, and thousands of cantinas called " Bar Arturo Prat." This naval hero won fame forever at the naval battle of Iquique, May 21, 1880, between the wooden gunboats Esmeralda and Covadonga, of Chile, and the Huascor and Independencia, Peruvian iron clads. The Huascor sank the Esmeralda, which was Prat's ship, but before she went down Prat rammed the Huascor and boarded her. There was only time for six marines to leap after him and they were at once cut to pieces by the Peru vians. Meanwhile the Covadonga ran away and the Independencia struck a rock while in pursuit of the lighter-draft craft. Another memorable feat occurred at the Morro MORRO de ARICA, chile SANTIAGO DE CHILE 271 de Arica. A Chileno force, said to have numbered seven thousand, attacked a Peruvian force of twenty-one hundred at Arica June 7, 1880. The Peruvians retired to the Morro, which is a sheer cliff, five hundred feet high, overhanging the sea. There had been no quarter asked or given and, seeing the hopelessness of the issue, the Peruvian in command, who was Coronel Uguarte Sebal- los, spurred his horse over the cliff and was fol lowed by nineteen hundred of his command, all of whom were dashed to pieces on the rocks be low, thereby repeating the action at the Pali, near Honolulu, and the similar occurrence at the Citadel of Cairo. The Peruvians sing songs of Seballos' valor, but the Chilenos do not think much of it as they contend that he should have faced the enemy and fought to the last, selling every life dearly and inflicting as much damage upon the enemy as possible. Juan Fernandez Island, made famous by Defoe as the kingdom of Robinson Crusoe in the best book, according to Rousseau and many other critics, ever written for the young, lies about three hundred and eighty miles west of Valparaiso and a trifle south, and is a Chilean possession. It is known by the Chilenos as Mas a Tierra. After the great earthquake that dev astated Valparaiso and other Chilean cities in August, 1906, it was widely reported that Juan Fernandez had disappeared. The Chilean gov- 272 THE ANDEAN LAND ernment sent a cruiser to investigate, and it found the island unharmed by the very slight shock felt there by the few fishermen and shep herds who inhabit it. No boy or girl, or man or woman who was once boy or girl, would wish to have the home of Crusoe and Friday swallowed by the sea. The island is irregular in form, about twelve miles long and only four miles wide at its great est breadth. The northeast portion of the island is a series of craggy ridges divided by fertile and well-wooded valleys, while the other half is flat and barren. El Yunque, meaning, "the anvil," three thousand feet high, is the crowning peak of a precipitous range of mountains in Juan Fernandez. It is well timbered to the summit and forms a conspicuous and pleasing sight as viewed from the sea. Cumberland Bay, a har bor of some value, is the fortunate possession of Juan Fernandez. It affords good anchorage, but is exposed to north winds, and navigators are inclined to give it a wide berth. Peaches grow wild, there is fine water, plenty of fish, and ships may get many supplies if pressed. A tablet, as follows, has been put up : " In memory of Alexander Selkirk, mariner, a na tive of Largo, in the county of Fife, Scotland, who lived on this island in complete solitude for four years and four months. He was landed from the Cinque Ports, Galley, 96 tons, 16 guns, A. D. 1704, ¦HP jj£t - ¦ ¦ ^af^ZjMMMB r . 1 H?'^i •«v ''; J^'v;: ¦•"'"j &HaM8r " 1 /.u^j^.i^ ,,,«¦/••'¦ E If ' J w3» g#! ¦ J,4| '¦>-': ... 'W^^Shs^ ;flBi ' ""^SmA^M Wm ; ^£1 ¦ . i&fi 1 -'•';>.' .J.y s&StSSvM IhbP '<***- .- if^af- -¦%! y'^i'^. w ^*^:.' *j»BffiBsi&-- IPP> ¦ jtmLj ¦ iLS&to&Bi* : :j'=,*J5b aaWW ' SS M^^B^^Sy^^^^HM^^HnttP .- ."' IH^W^^ki^Ln .ja^F.^ " |^^^ |||h|R- .j^E' ¦ j^BHkt1'- M ¦ iBK "^im~^r**™™^ !S«i«^^fl V^ '. fffflKHAVJ TABLET PLACED IN THE KOl'K AT JUAN FERNANDEZ IN MKMORY OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK SANTIAGO DE CHILE 273 and was taken off in the Duke, privateer, 12th February, 1709. He died lieutenant of H. M. S. Weymouth, a. d. 1726, aged 47 years. This tablet is erected near Selkirk's Lookout by Commodore Powell, and the officers of H. M. S. Topaz, a. d. 1866." Of the many kinds of trees growing on Robin son Crusoe's Island one is the chonta, a kind of palm, the exterior of which is almost as heavy and as strong as iron. Excellent canes may be made from it, and a chonta cane is highly prized. Once or twice a year large special excursions are made to Juan Fernandez from Valparaiso, which are taken advantage of by many all over Chile. VOL. I. — 18 CHAPTER XI SOCIAL CUSTOMS AND NATURAL HISTORY Social Conditions — Church and State — A Ban on Bull Fighting — The Passion Play in Santiago de Chile — Education and Schools — Dr. Brown ing's Instituto Inglese — Americans Lead as Educators — Dr. William H. Lester — - The Color Question — Agitation against the English — The Tropics not for the White Race — Some Diseases to be Reckoned with — Terciana, Sorroche, and the Deadly Verrugas — Inefficient Health Officers — Preventive Work of the United States at Sea — ¦ Poisonous Insects and Reptiles — The Fierce Lagarto and how it is Captured — Intelligent Sheep Dogs — Odd Use of the Capon. THERE is little difference in the moral and social conditions throughout South Amer ica. All of the countries are upon much the same plane in this respect. There is some in clination to classify the strata in Argentina and Chile, but beyond the fact that the good as a general thing flock together, and the very bad are gregarious, and the well-to-do assume one plane and the poor another, there is not much distinc tion. It is the growth of three centuries of Spanish Catholicism, during which there has 274 SOCIAL CUSTOMS 275 been much progress. The standards are not the same as in the United States, but it is to be gravely questioned if the men are not just as honorable and the women fully as virtuous. The Roman Church is charged with many crimes that it is not guilty of. Many of the shortcomings of the people are wholly temperamental and not due to dogma or the interference of the priest hood. The world has given its verdict that church and state do not flourish well together. They are unnatural partners. Notwithstanding this consensus, the states of South America have not entirely divorced the Church from politics and state revenues. In all of the South American countries there are political parties organized to bring about an entire separation, and their agita tion and influence are much felt. At first it was supposed that it was the state which suffered in the joint business, but now, as compared with other days, it is the Church which is receiving the short end of the bargain. The whole result of the discussion has been to stimulate the Church to endeavor to meet the demands that progress has actuated the people to make. A powerful influence is still wielded by the priest hood, but in most instances it is subterranean and circuitous. In some countries, notably Ecuador, foreign priests, which is interpreted to mean priests from any other country, South America or elsewhere, are not permitted to land. 276 THE ANDEAN LAND The argument is that the outside priest brings new ideas and strange problems, and not only complicates internal conditions, but increases the public church burden. So notable an eccle siastic as Monsenhor Vicente Lustoza, of Rio de Janeiro, was not permitted to land at Guayaquil May 15, 1907, without an escort of military police, who saw that his brief shore privileges were not abused and that he regained his ship. In all of the first-class countries of South America the bullfight has been inhibited. The custom clung to Peru the longest, but is under the ban in that country from time to time and will ultimately be done away with entirely. This shows an awakened public conscience and a progressive desire to do the right, when the light is given as to what is the thing to do. In all parts of the world I find the national conscience blunted in some way, just as the individual suffers from moral calluses and delusions. So it is one thing in South America, another thing at home, and probably as bad in England as any where, as witness the opium debauching of China for revenue and other things too. So we are none of us too safe in stone-throwing, but can spend our time better in helpful introspection which will illuminate the path to improvement. In Chile the Divine tragedy * is even more of a feature than in Oberammergau, for it is given in 1 The playbill in Spanish advertising the Passion performance is given on opposite page. SOCIAL CUSTOMS 277 Teatro Santa Lucia. Gran Compania Espanola Comico Dra- matica Miguel de Munoz. Sabado 30 de Marzo. Ultimas funciones Domingo 31 de Marzo. Dos Magnificas Funciones y Dos Esplendida Matinee de dia — a los zymedia. Nocturna alas 8 y media. El grand ioso drama sagrado, en 12 cuadros titulado Pasion y Muerto de Ntro Sr. Jesu. Cristo. Tercio representacton del grandioso drama sagrado en verso y en 12 cuadros de don Enrique Zumel, el cual sera estrenado en Santiago por don Miguel Munoz, titulado Pasion y Muerte de Jesus, puesta en escena por el mismo y con el sigmente personal. Maria Magdalena . . . . Veronica Claudia Procula . . Criado de Pilatos . . Un Anjel Pilatos Caifas Anas Un Centurion . . . Nicodemus . . . . Josef de Abarimachea Dimas Gestas Simon el leproso . . Sacerdotes hebreos Lictores — Hombres REPARTO Sra. Val Mujer I Sra. Olona Mujer 2 Sta. Benito Jesus . Sta. Garcia Pedro . Sta. Graciete Juan . Sta. Caro Judas . Sr. Venegas Malcos BenitezBarca Sr. Sr.Sr.Sr. Gil Sr. Abad Sr. Garcia Sr. Abad Sr. Silva — Apostates Ctrineo Lonjinos Lambiase Sayon I Sayon 2 Sold ado I Soldado 2 Hombre I Hombre 2 — Soldados Sta. Puelma Sta.GarciaN. Sr. Munoz Sr. Garcia Sta. Benito de Gil Abad Sanchez Venegas Silva LambiaseSilva N.N. N.N. . Sr. N. N. la Centuria — Sr.Sr. Sr. Sr.Sr.Sr.Sr.Sr.Sr. — Mujeres y Ntnos del pueblo. CUADROS DE LA OBRA I. Arrepenttmiento de la Magdalena. 2. Entrada en Jerusalem. 3. Los treinta dineros de plata. 4. Cena y despedida de Jesus. 5. La Oracion del huerto. 6. Arrepenttmiento de Pedro. 7. Desespera- cion y muerte de Judas. 8. Ecce Homo. 9. Calle de la Amargura. IO. Mont Calvario y Muerte de Jesus. II. Descendimiento. Todo el decorado de esta obra es magnifico y pintado por el reputado escenografo Luis Pianttini. Vestuario y Atrezo hecho exprofeso. Precios Populares Palcos con 4 entrados . $15.00 Entrada a Palco . . . $>2.00 Sillones de Platea . . . 2.00 Entrada a Galeria . . . .50 278 THE ANDEAN LAND Santiago each year and repeated by very ex cellent travelling players quite generally through the country. The settings are not so fully those of nature as in the Tyrol, but in the large open theatre of Santa Lucia the trees and rocks and plants and running waters are very near. All classes attend, and even the children are per mitted to be present. At first the play seemed to me to be most sacrilegious, but as it sacredly unfolded in the hands of actors and actresses of undoubted merit, I could feel a majesty of pur pose, fraught with honor and reverence, and only harshly marred by untimely snickers on the part of children who could not understand and saw comic situations in the repentance of Peter and the treachery of Judas. If young children were excluded, I concluded that my objections, which were prominent enough at first, would be quite swept away. The prices were, of course, given in Chile money, and a dollar was worth at that time about twenty-five cents in United States money. The bill went on to give the places where tickets would be on sale and assured patrons they might order carriages for 1 1 .30 p. m. Munoz and company presented the accepted dramatic fabric of the betrayal, torture, and death of the Master, by Heinrich Zumel, which is much the same as the professional peasants of Oberammergau give. Detailed study of costum- SOCIAL CUSTOMS 279 ing and make-up had resulted in much perfection. Munoz twice was the Christ of Parker. The entry into Jerusalem, with the Master on the little ass's back and the populace following, was plainly taken from Deger's fine painting. Twice Munoz depicted Dietrich's canvases in a way almost startling. Once the presentation was that of Hoffmann's "Christ in Gethsemane." When Munoz quoted the Saviour as saying: "Suffer little children to come unto Me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," it was unmistakably the setting of Pfannenschmidt. Never was the actor the Christ of Richter or Titian or Raphael. He was always the modern conception, with the evi dent idea of recognizing the picture so univer sally framed in the common mind. The Mary Magdalene of Sefiora Olona was true to Ling- ner's canvas. The Apostles were those of Albrecht Durer that adorn the gallery at Munich, and the last supper was as close a copy as could be of Leonardo da Vinci's crumbling master piece on the grimy, gloomy walls of that obscure Milanese edifice where it is a mural. The entire scheme was true to art and conveyed the picture to the mind with impressionistic suggestiveness. Realism in the acting was almost too closely followed, which would not be the criticism of a Latin, who fattens on sorrow, horror, and grew- some detail, but not without much feeling too. Munoz was first gowned in blue and brown. 280 THE ANDEAN LAND Before Pilate Munoz wore robes of white. He was stripped to the waist and flogged and de rided. The crown of thorns was roughly thrust on his head and much blood flowed and trickled down his neck and face as the torture was kept up. Then a cheap red mantle was thrown over his shoulders and a sceptre of reeds was placed in his hands and he was derisively bidden to sway his realm as King of the Jews. "And they stripped Him, and put on Him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head, and a reed in His right hand: and they bowed the knee before Him, and mocked Him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews ! And they spit upon Him, and took the reed, and smote Him on the head." On the Via Dolorosa, or Amargura, Munoz wore a purple robe. He staggered under a prodigious cross and was repeatedly jerked down most roughly by a rope fastened to his neck. There were well enacted scenes of sadness between Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, and a Sister of Mercy, the latter in recognition of the dominant church in South America. The two thieves followed Munoz on the way of sorrow, but were not treated with so much inhumanity and brutality. When the curtain arose on the crucifixion, Munoz, in most natural flesh tights, SOCIAL CUSTOMS 281 a white cloth about his loins, was in place between the two crucified thieves. Mary, John, and Mary Magdalene were prostrated at the foot of the cross. "And they that passed by reviled Him, wagging their heads. . . . Likewise also the chief priests mocking Him, with the scribes and elders, said : He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He be the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. . . . The thieves also, which were crucified with Him, cast the same in His teeth. . . . And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli! Eli! lama sa- bachthani ? that is to say, My God ! my God ! Why hast Thou forsaken me ? . . . And straight way one of them [that stood there] ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave Him to drink. . . . Jesus, when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the Ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom ; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent." There was thunder, deep shadows, and light ning, and the audience intuitively glanced toward the doors to see if all was well and Santa Lucia still in place. The ascension was perfectly wrought mechanically. It was a careful repro duction en tableau of Biermann's masterpiece. "Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, 282 THE ANDEAN LAND Truly this was the Son of God. And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto Him. Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children. When the even was come there came a rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple. He went to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered. And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock ; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed. And there were Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre. Now the next day that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Phari sees came together unto Pilate; saying, Sir, we re member that that deceiver said, while He was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night, and steal Him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead : so the last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch; go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch. In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earth quake; for the angel of the Lord descended from Heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And SOCIAL CUSTOMS 283 for fear of him the keepers did shake, and become as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye; for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead. . . . Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught ; and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw Him, they worshipped Him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto Me in Heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have com manded you; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." With perfect costuming, much art and refine ment, wire hoists, tableaux, spot lights, and strong support, Munoz presented all this and more. The part of the delicate young St. John, so often the companion of Christ, was taken by 284 THE ANDEAN LAND Seiiorita Benito, who was all that innocence and youth demanded. The repentance of Peter was a strong piece of work. Each of the three denials were given with all details, including the crowing of the cock. Judas Iscariot was round-headed, red-haired and rough, over rough. His refusal to break bread at the last supper and his disagreeable deportment then, as well as at the great lesson of devotion, gentility, and humility of the Master in the washing of the feet of the disciples, was entirely misunderstood by the large number of children who were unfortunately permitted to be present. The dramatic interpretation of Judas left nothing to be guessed at. Beginning with the dawn upon his mind of the enormity of his act the lines of Judas were full of color and fervor. "Then Judas, which had betrayed Him, when he saw that He was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us ? See thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Where fore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day." SOCIAL CUSTOMS 285 And so The Story, which though old is ever new, the one superlative divine-human tragedy, was given. The question as to whether those countries that do not permit the staging of the passion play, yet which read it and paint it and enact it mentally over and over again, are any more respectful and reverential than those peoples who allow it to be acted out so that it may be understood by the simplest person, and who gaze at the touching unfolding of the drama in tears and tremors, does not seem to be unanswerable. In Ecuador, one of the religious customs among the Indians is the "Velorio." The Indians dress in white and have a large white cross which they carry from place to place, keeping it when sta tionary in a milk-white tent. These processions occupy all of the time of certain tribes from April 15 to June 15 of each year. At each stopping place the white cross is erected in the white tent and the devotees sit and gaze at it for hours as if in hypnotic adoration. Between these times of movable shrine worship they indulge in much dancing, some of which is to music soft and slow, while at other times the dance is wild and exciting, varying as the moods of the dancers change. Most, if not all, of the constitutions of the South American republics, require that the president shall have embraced the Roman 286 THE ANDEAN LAND Catholic faith. This is a narrowness of yesterday, just as it would have been if Methodism or Presbyterianism or any other creed had been prescribed. Until comparatively late years, most of the republics have been intolerant of Protestantism, and a few are still so. In the major instances, a tolerant spirit has finally possessed the people, and all are progressing, with differing speed, toward true freedom and liberty. They are also learning that liberty is not license and that freedom does not mean lawlessness. The Roman Church in South America is slowly unbending and is beginning to look to the Church in the United States for lessons of conduct, rather than to the unprogres- sive and inelastic Catholic Church of Europe. Many of the republics have fine state educa tional systems and institutions. These have been most often organized by professional educators from the United States, and there are many Yankee teachers still employed. These schools are making excellent headway. There are many church schools of several denominations, and taken altogether it may be said that the way to a good education is pointed out to every young South American who is ambitious and willing to work and study. One of the best of the many institutions, quasi- sectarian, and commonly known throughout South America as "American Schools" or SOCIAL CUSTOMS 287 "American Colleges," is the Institute Ingles, a school for boys, Santiago de Chile. It has fairly adequate buildings, the main one of brick containing the dormitory being of three stories, and so well constructed that the big earthquake scarcely cracked it. Located at Augustinas 3076, Avenida Portales, two squares from the Quinta Normal, it is at once in an accessible and healthful district of the city, offering many ad vantages. The Institute Ingles is under the influence of the Presbyterian Church, which does not trammel its independence or efficiency. The director, or president, Prof. Webster E. Browning, M. A., Ph. D., is a graduate of both Park College and Princeton University, U. S. A. I have never met a man who seemed to be better fitted for his place. Dr. Browning combines scholarship and calibre with character and force, the whole cemented by earnestness, kind ness, and interest. His wife, Mrs. Hallie M. Browning, B. A., Park College, is not only his able assistant, but is an example of the best the United States can produce in the way of dignified womanhood and motherly solicitude. Many a boy finds in Mrs. Browning his first idea of what the word "mother" means. The corps of instructors is composed of a high class of sincere educators, all of whom are doing good work under the direction of Dr. and Mrs. Browning. Wilson Snushall, B. A., a graduate 288 THE ANDEAN LAND of the New York State Normal School and of Amherst, who also took post-graduate work at Harvard, is vice-director. Mrs. Snushall, B. A., a graduate of the Massachusetts State Normal School and of the University of Illinois, is as sistant to Mrs. Browning. Sr. Victoriano de Castro G, previously master of the Central Normal School in Madrid, teaches Spanish and commercial mathematics. George M. McBride, B. A., Park College, has the chair of English. George C. Lindsay, M. A., Hanover College, U. S. A., is professor of natural science. Charles F. Baker, Ph. B., Emporia College, is professor of physics, history, and geography. John Hodg- kinson, Silcoates College, England, and post graduate of Liverpool University, is at the head of the preparatory department. Edward Moffat, M. A., graduate of both Cambridge and Durham, England, is professor of higher mathematics. William H. Lester, M. A., D. D., Amherst Col lege, professor of philosophy and sacred history. W. B. Calvert, Greenwich Naval School, Eng land, professor of English literature and English. Caspar Wistar, Haverford College, U. S. A., professor of mathematics. Senor Carlos Neu mann, B. A., graduate University of Chile, and post-graduate in Germany, teacher of German. Senor Ramon Barahona Merino, graduate In stitute Pedagogico de Santiago, assistant in Spanish and teacher of tachygraphy. John W. SOCIAL CUSTOMS 289 MacDonald, graduate Institute Ingles de Santi ago, assistant in the preparatory department. Monsieur A. Gouffau, University of Lovaina, Belgium, Dr. Sc, Quim, teacher of French. Senor Don J. Enrique del solar Armstrong, Uni versity of Chile, professor of the geography and history of Chile. Sefiora Maria de Schumann de Paredes, scholar of Joachim Ysaye, teacher of violin. Senorita Rosa Estela Anguita, Na tional Conservatory of Music, Santiago, teacher of piano. Senor Gabriel Mourguet, assistant in French. Dr. Gabriel Gumucio, physician to the institute. The school was founded in 1877 but did not take its present name until 1897. In 1898 the number of students was ninety; in 1906 it had increased to three hundred and fifty, and in 1907 the total had reached to nearly four hundred. Thorough work is done, discipline develops manhood, Yankee system is employed, and the school is a credit to all who are connected with it. Such institutions, of which this is the highest type, are doing more to educate the people to a proper understanding of the United States and its high place and purpose in the world than any other agency. Since 1900 the American minister to Chile has given a cash prize for the best Eng lish composition written by a scholar of the Institute Ingles. There is always keen competi- VOL. I. 19 290 THE ANDEAN LAND tion which results in most creditable work being done. I asked one bright boy how the boys re gard the United States and the countries of Europe. He replied that they had been given the idea that all good things came from England, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, but that they were gradually learning that there were many good things in the United States ; perhaps more than all of the other countries put together. And so it is. Several helpful societies, some of them fra ternal to a wholesome degree, exist within the school. The students of the senior class publish an interesting and quite pretentious quarterly called " The Southern Cross." It is nicely bound, well printed in both English and Spanish, and its contents would do credit to professional sources. The Institute Ingles deserves support in Chile and also in the United States. Philanthropists who have given most liberally at home might turn their attention to such institutions in other lands with the assurance that they would be spreading the fame and influence of their home land in a manner to be highly desired by all patriotic persons. The effect of such institutions is not fugacious. The American College, of Santiago de Chile, is another creditable school. Throughout Chile one finds capable young women as clerks and occupying many important positions. Almost SOCIAL CUSTOMS 291 always they will tell you that they are graduates of the American College, of Santiago. There is much excellent work of this character going on all over South America. The American School at Sao Paulo, Brazil, is another prominent and worthy example. At Iquique, Chile, there is a good Methodist school, called the Iquique Eng lish College, of which American Consul Winans, of Chelsea, Michigan, had charge for a number of years. The present director is the Rev. A. S. Watson, who is watchful and capable. Under Mr. Watson's management the school has taken on new life and is a potent factor in its field. Dr. William H. Lester, an intense American and a graduate of Amherst College, is pastor of the Union Church at Santiago de Chile. Dr. Lester is a Presbyterian. He is also thoroughly human, and possesses rare tact. His church is entirely independent, without a tint of denomina- tionalism. The result is that it is both well at tended and supported by all of the Protestants in Santiago. An odd edifice of brick, full of angles and flying buttresses and gloom and mould, houses the church. The building stood the big earthquake very well, and Dr. Lester is seeing to it that the structure courts friendship of the sunlight. The remodelling takes time and money, but the alert pastor does not let that bother him. If a Protestant of any land gets in and out of Santiago without paying toll to the 292 THE ANDEAN LAND worthy Union Church, it will not be the fault of the splendid sky pilot who sails its ship of fate. Dr. Lester is a versatile man and a patriot. He is scholarly and eloquent and can roll a cigarette perfectly with one hand while he writes a sermon with the other. One hour he extracts church subscriptions from travellers, no matter whether they are unwary or wary. The next hour he shoots ducks and snipe along the irri gating ditches that rob the Mapocho of its clear mountain waters. Following that he teaches sacred history and philosophy at the Institute Ingles. Next, with skilful handiwork, he turns out for particular friends a few finely wrought chonta walking sticks from wood he obtained himself near Robinson Crusoe's cave on Juan Fernandez Island. Between times he delivers a lecture or two, instructs the choir, does his home work, makes pastoral and social calls, keeps posted on the world's work, shows visitors the city, and what not else. No man could easily have a more extensive programme of work. All of these things he attends to personally. There is no delegation of duties. Dr. Lester gives a similar illustration of the dynamic energy one can maintain in central Chile to Managing Director Fowler, of Grace & Co. Dr. Thomas D. Wood, a Methodist mission ary, teacher, and leader, of Callao, Peru, has made for himself a rare place. Respected and SOCIAL CUSTOMS 293 deferred to by everybody, citizens of the country, foreigners, and visitors, whether Romanists or Protestants, it is to be deeply regretted that the evening of his life has almost reached the gloam ing. Few missionaries, no matter how deserving, have won such a reputation and such unalloyed esteem. In the social conditions of South America, which are sufficiently the same from Panama to Patagonia to regard them as a whole, is to be found one of the real reasons for their attitude of unfriendliness, or at least of negative regard, toward the United States. The color line is not drawn in any South American republic; not even in Argentina, the most white of all, where there are those who undoubtedly would wish to do so, but do not dare. The negro and Indian are peaceful enough and have been much married into the whites. Not only do the Spanish and Italians find no objection to the blacker natives, but the Germans quite generally and not a few English young men marry them and thus undoubtedly increase the percentage of hemoglobin in their blood, as well as nearing themselves to the land and its people in a progressively homogeneous manner. But the American, as a general rule, is preju diced and it does not matter a whit to him whether Solomon or Hannibal were Ethiopians, or whether the Araucanians were never conquered. 294 THE ANDEAN LAND The South Americans take careful note of this. Slavery was abolished in most of the republics many decades before the emancipation took place in the United States. They seem to be provokingly pleased to remember the days be fore '60, when the United States was administered entirely by Southern influence, and they do not seem to recognize much change. They revert to the lynchings in the South, to the utterances of such monuments of malice as Tillman, who is sane on almost every other question but that of the negro, and they persist in claiming from one end of the continent to the other that Presi dent Montt, of Chile, was once upon a time ejected from a Washington hotel because the manager insisted that he was a negro. It does not matter whether these things are reasonable or are of the past ; they are vital in the minds of the South Americans, are ever renascent and so stimulate prejudice, which feeds on slight food in all lands and most so, it would appear, among the Latins, and it may take years to cure the situ ation. Repeatedly, when I could get below their surface of urbanity, I have had Brazilians, Chilenos, and other South Americans retort: "You want our trade, of course you do; but down deep in your hearts you do not like us and do not respect us; you look upon us as negroes or half-breeds, and believe that to be black is to be inferior." SOCIAL CUSTOMS 295 In Argentina there is not a little agitation against English capital. Whether this is a legitimate "Know Nothing" movement, or the work of the sly, clever, and intriguing Germans, abetted by the jealous Italians, one cannot be sure. Only at present the aim is toward the English, who have done most in Argentina, for themselves and for the country. In April, 1907, the Federation of Labor of Argentina, in ses sion at Buenos Ayres, by an almost unanimous vote, decided to pursue an anarchistic policy. Just what this means seems to be much involved, even in the minds of the delegates, but taken with the agitation against English investors plus the repudiation of their public debts by many towns in Argentina, it has had a bad effect upon the credit of the national government, as witness the failure in England of the big Argentina loan, early in 1907. These are only little peepholes into the condi tions and the maze of problems the people of South America, not unlike those of the remainder of the world, have to face. There is some of the higher patriotism among the people and not a little definite and sustained purpose, too, which will insure good, average results. For the black man and his congeneracy, there is a kind of cherimoia-mango-banana-abocatee existence in tropical South America, which does not lend itself to the white man, either in or out 296 THE ANDEAN LAND of the tropics, nor does it extend to the hardy mountain Indians who perpetuate themselves at astounding altitudes, where the battle with the arch enemies of life is fierce from the cradle to the grave; nor is existence easy in the old Patagonian zone, growing more strifeful as the tip end of Tierra del Fuego is approached. The traveller in search of entertainment, information, or business, and the young man seeking a fortune must take always into consideration just how strong and numerous are those insidious physical enemies, diseases, sicknesses, ailments, and their clan which may have to be confronted'. A person who has developed in a temperate zone and whose every part has armed itself against the exactions of such a region, surprisingly numer ous and terrible as they are when analyzed and counted, but not depressingly apparent as we dodge along day by day, does not have as good a chance in the tropics as the tropical man has at a slant from Capricorn or Cancer, whether the former is from Tientsin or Terre Haute or the latter hails from Teheran or Timbuctoo. The man of the north temperate zone does not always do well when transplanted to the south temperate zone. In the tropics the chief thing to guard against is malaria, which manifests itself in many forms, from yellow fever, which is the worst, to ague, which is the lightest, form. Some persons are malarial sponges, only they cannot be squeezed SOCIAL CUSTOMS 297 out as easily, and others seem so adamant as to be next to immune. The common malaria of the valley of the Amazon and its tributaries will conquer the average man in about one year, no matter how much quinine and whiskey or opium, strychnine and tobacco he saturates himself with. Once thoroughly poisoned with malaria few persons ever wholly recover. The only cure is said to be quinine and life on the sea. Trav ellers almost always carry Warburg's mixture for malaria, which the United States Army found was efficacious in Cuba. Whether good or not, it is quite the popular remedy. English travellers have great faith in chlorodyne, be cause the English army surgeons are said to have found it valuable in India in treating cholera, dysentery, and similar complaints. Probably the most common sickness of South America, both in the mountains and low lands, is terciana or paludismo, and some other names, which is as common as chills and fever were in the Wabash bottoms fifty years ago. Terciana is malaria and closely akin to ague. Everybody takes quinine in huge doses, up to fifty grains at a time, for it. Very often the only effect is a quinine intoxication, which is only an exchange of sensations for a brief period. Sorroche, or puna, is the mountain sickness caused by altitude and so much dreaded by those who are susceptible to it, which means the great 298 THE ANDEAN LAND majority of those bred near the level of the sea. There is an absolutely unfounded, but quite common idea, that those who are attacked by seasickness are never immune. There seems to be absolutely nothing similar between sorroche and being seasick except to very commonly frighten the victim into an altogether unfortu nate, but usually unwarranted, nervous condi tion, which shackles the powers of resistance and may almost be said to be a part of the disease. I have personally known several who could scarcely look at a marine painting without qualms, but who could scale the highest peak and live in deadly altitudes with minimum dis comfort. Bolivianos, who are the tiptop moun taineers, do not have sorroche at all; and Granville Moore, a Yankee mining engineer, prospected for four months at a height of 18,800 feet without serious inconvenience. There are numerous towns in the Andes 12,000 to 14,000 feet above the sea, of which are La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, and Cerro de Pasco, and then there is the town of Caylloma, in Central Peru, which is at an altitude of 16,000 feet. An English company operates a silver mine there and has no great trouble. At the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, a telegram of fealty was sent as from the highest community on earth, which would indicate that altitude and patriotism are not incompatible. SOCIAL CUSTOMS 299 Sorroche cannot be described any more than seasickness can. It is worse and more dangerous than seasickness, of which one could not con vince the victim of the latter until he had had puna. Persons with very weak hearts have to be careful about altitudes, as is well known, and persons of low vitality should not hazard the mountains unless compelled by advice of physi cian or other circumstance. No two persons will have all of the same symptoms. All will notice a general weakness, most often emphasized at the knees, and there is commonly an increase in the number of respirations per minute, accom panied often by difficulty in breathing and a fearsome feeling of suffocation. The heart action seems to be weaker and more rapid, sometimes accompanied by pain and functional insufficiency caused by the imperfect oxygenating of the blood and unequal pressure. There is also sickness of the stomach, intense headache, dizziness and lightheadedness, and not infre quently there is bleeding of the nose and some times even of the ears. One victim told me he felt as though he were dying, and that no matter how tired he was he did not dare to go to sleep, because he was certain he would never awaken. This is a nervous phase of sorroche. Another told me he was certain he could have easily died and that the struggle to continue breathing was something frightful. Still another groaned deeply 300 THE ANDEAN LAND all of the time and complained of being very dizzy and exceedingly cold. Often one feels nothing more than a great faintness, which may not manifest itself until the mountain has been climbed and a descent made again into the richer air. The body seems often to get into such a condition as to have a narrow range of com pensation and almost no equalizing power whatever. The majority agree that one should not partake of any alcoholic stimuli while ad justing himself to the altitudes; that some are helped by nitroglycerine and others find benefit in tea and coffee; that one should eat very sparingly, but often, even lunching every two hours. It is wise to have the system in as good condition as possible, and the better one's vitality is, the greater his power of resistance, and gen erally of compensation, as a matter of course. Bubonic plague is generally prevalent in all of the west coast towns of any importance from Valdivia to Guayaquil. In 1907 it even attacked the pretty and peaceful town La Serena, for which Coquimbo is the port, and it was especially a menace in Antofagasta and Iquique. A west coast graveyard is commonly larger than a west coast town. There is lax, if any, quarantine regulation in Chile. Not much attention is given to the plague so much dreaded in most parts of the world. La Serena authorities did wire Buenos Ayres for a supply of Yersm serum, SOCIAL CUSTOMS 301 which is said to save about one-half the cases in which it is used. Nevertheless, there was none to be had in Chile and no especial worry about it. Sickness is like Pope's analysis of vice, which also explains why miners come to regard dynamite with perfect complacency. The Chilean health authorities, and they are neither) active nor very much in evidence, say that the plague is a disease of the unclean, and that sani tary conditions are both a preventive and a cure. They say it is impossible to catch all the rats, and so what is the use of bothering with these com mon carriers, especially of this contagion. Pos sibly I am doing Chilean health authorities an injustice, but if so and it will stimulate them to activity, I am willing to be unjust. The government of Chile is as good as any in South America, perhaps even the best, both in local and national affairs, but so far as public health is concerned, it is lamentably and danger ously weak. Cities and towns are filthy and the common people are almost as unclean as the Chinese or lowly Italians. No apparent en deavor is made to regulate health affairs, and the result is a fearful mortality and not confined to infants and children, though in that respect it is the highest percentage known in the world. During 1907 no foreign ship was given a clean bill of health, so far as I could learn, from any port in Chile north of Valdivia, and the smaller 302 THE ANDEAN LAND and poorer republics to the north quarantine against Chile as though it were a horrible, withering pest. The United States health au thorities, in their energetic and commendable attempt to head off Chileno germs, have a corps of especially trained physicians on watch down there, who compel all sorts of ship and passen ger disinfection and fumigation in order to pre vent the infection of the Panama Canal Zone. There is almost no doubt but that the bubonic plague in San Francisco came directly from Chile. It is to be deplored that ships of other nations do not sympathize with the efforts of the United States. They look upon the fumigation of their ships with fumes of sulphur as a sort of high seas outrage, and gloat when they see a live rat after these attempts at their asphyxiation. Ships' officers claim that sulphur fumes will not kill young rats and that the older ones are get ting so wise that they hide in the rigging or in the ventilators or some other safe place whenever they see a fumigating outfit tie up alongside. A Clayton fumigator is commonly used, and two and a half pounds of sulphur is the allowance for one thousand cubic feet, except where there is a cargo of cotton or hemp or similar absorbent substances, when more sulphur has to be used. The ships fumigated pay the cost. Worse than cholera or yellow fever and more fatal than the bubonic plague is the deadly SOCIAL CUSTOMS 303 verrugas, which is fortunately confined to a small Andean zone in Peru, and which seems unknown to the science of medicine, probably because the few medical men who have heard of it and have endeavored to investigate it have died in the attempt. Verruca in Latin is wart, and verruga is Spanish for wart. The medical world knows a skin disease called verruca, which occurs in several varieties, all of a warty nature. Thus there is verruca vulgaris, verruca plana, verruca acumi nata and other forms, none of which is similar in any way to this South American verrugas, and all of them amenable to treatment and disap pearing often of their own account But this deadly verrugas is different, although it takes its name from the same suggestive source. The victim suffers an eruption of thousands of tiny bloody warts. From each papule oozes the red substance of life, and the great number of the papillae makes the exhausting process a swift one. The centre of the verrugas district may be located at the Verrugas River, on the line of the Oroya Railroad in Peru, between Chosica and Matucana, the former at an altitude of 2800 feet, and the latter 7788. Some poison, miasmatic or mineral or vegetable, has its source here. The distance from Chosica to Matucana is twenty-seven miles. No known cases have occurred outside of this limited territory; and 304 THE ANDEAN LAND nobody, no matter how old or strong, or of what race, who passes through this zone of death is immune. Travellers who have simply gone through without tarrying have been attacked, while practically nobody who has remained in the region has escaped. The warts are some times so close together as to appear to form a sanguinary patch, and are only distinguishable as verruca by a magnifying glass. Sometimes the victim has large, bloody boils. Natives are no more free from it than whites and they do not know any more about its cause. They do know an herb, however, which only grows in the verrugas district and which is its only cure, but is not always efficacious. The railroad bridge over the mountain torrent, now called Verrugas Bridge and the torrent Verrugas River, was swept away March 24, 1879. It was not rebuilt until 1890. From March 1, 1890, to January 1, 1891, the contractor, A. Hof- master, of Iowa, who had charge of replacing the bridge, endeavored to keep one hundred and ten men at work steadily. His sick roll, he told me, for that time was seventeen hundred and twenty- six persons with hundreds of deaths and almost all of them from verrugas. Mr. Hofmaster sent to New York for seven expert riveters. They all had verrugas and six of them died. The seventh was supposed to be convalescent when a delirious native killed him with a knife. SOCIAL CUSTOMS 305 William Ellis, a fine old American, has been in Peru for thirty-three years, and is now road- master of the Oroya Railroad. He is an old railroad man and served under Meiggs. Mr. Ellis told me that more than two hundred men died of verrugas while the Oroya Railroad was being built from Chosica to Matucana, only twenty-seven miles. Both Mr. Hofmaster and Mr. Ellis told me that they had had verrugas and that they were snatched from the grave, as it were. Mr. Ellis said he not only suffered from the exhausting bleeding, but also had to bear much excruciating pain. Once a person has had verrugas and recovers, which is rare indeed, he is considered to be immune from subsequent attacks. A young American physician was the latest person to attempt a scientific study of the strange malady, and he suffered the fate of all predecessors by taking the disease and dying. Once attacked, the victim has the best chance by remaining in the verrugas zone, where the herb used in its treatment can be obtained and where the best native attention may be had. A recent victim of the dread verrugas was A. A. Abbott, of Lansing, Michigan, formerly superintendent of the well-known Cerro de Pasco Copper Mines. Guayaquil can be depended upon to supply a choice variety of yellow fever, smallpox, and pernicious malaria at almost any time. Rio de VOL. I. — 20 306 THE ANDEAN LAND Janeiro has become a healthy city. The health authorities are vigilant and capable, and the condition of the city is being improved all of the time. Buenos Ayres has a low and unhealthy location. The authorities happily realize this fully and are busy all of the time upon ways and means for improvement. The death rate in Buenos Ayres is not a popular topic, but may be said to be decreasing. There are bugs and snakes and curious crosses between reptilia and insectivora, many fatally poisonous and others more or less venomous, in tropical South America. If you cannot keep away from their habitat, the next best thing is to keep an eagle eye open and carry antidotes. The worst spider is one similar to the very deadly casampulga, of Central America, and its bite is equally venomous. It is about the size of the little finger nail, dark in color and covered with tiny red spots, looking, when viewed cursorily, not unlike some ladybugs. The tarantula lives in corrals and is called the horse spider. It is not regarded as deadly, although its bite is serious. It often bites and lames horses. A scorpion bite is bad enough but it is not fatal. The side of the body bitten is usually paralyzed for twelve hours, so it is best to shake them out before putting on one's shoes. There are snakes, from the boa constrictor down, and many are venomous to a deadly SOCIAL CUSTOMS 307 degree. Huge boas may be seen basking on the banks of interior tropical rivers. They attain a prodigious size and are as graceful as they are powerful. A common posture is head erect, with body forming several arches, as many as six or eight. Their color is a bright yellow, and deep green with dark brown stripes on the back. Their smoked flesh is eaten by the natives and is said to be palatable and nutri tious. The natives have many antidotes for snake bites, one of which is to make the victim drink a great quantity of olive oil. Then they scarify around the wound and apply pieces of burned stag's horn. The snake remedy natives have most faith in is the leaves of a creeper called huaco, which grows quite commonly where poisonous snakes are most apt to frequent. The leaves are bruised to a paste and made into small cakes about the size of a nickel five-cent piece, which are dried in the shade. When a person is bitten, he puts one of these little cakes in his mouth and chews it until the bitter taste is gone, swallowing his saliva. Then he is bathed and the herb now chewed is bound over the place of the bite. A profuse perspiration takes place and the victim generally recovers. Sometimes a pumpkin poul tice is bound on the bite and the patient may drink almond milk, called orchaba. The huaco herb has leaves a half-inch wide and two and a 308 THE ANDEAN LAND half inches long ; the upper surface is dark green with purple veins and looks glossy and solid. The under side of the leaf is pale or dirty purple. The leaves grow singly and one opposite to the other on the stem, which is bluish, hard, ribbed, and slender. The great enemy of the snakes is a bird that not only kills snakes but eats them. It is a kind of vulture as big as a hen, and is called by different names in different places such as quiriquinqut, or huaco, or beteado de oro. The huaco is easily tamed and makes a valuable part of the home equipment in a snake country. After fighting with a snake, this bird was observed to eat of the huaco herb, hence the herb's name and the knowledge of its virtue as an antidote. When the coral snake bites a negro, the corpse is said to become white, which may be a native myth. Among the deadly snakes are the bejuco, two feet long, slender, brown, and resembling a cane, the cascabel, 3. kind of rattlesnake, and many, many more. There are also harmless snakes, some of which kill and eat the venomous ones. Almost all snakes are eaten by the aborigines. The caiman, or lagarto, infests many streams. They are a large, fierce alligator. Their eggs, larger than those of a goose, are deposited in the sand, where the gallinaso, the people's protector SOCIAL CUSTOMS 309 as a scavenger bird, finds and destroys hundreds. Dogs are also trained to hunt alligator nests and destroy the eggs. Despite all this destruction, the caiman has not been exterminated by any means, as the female lays as many as a hundred eggs sometimes, so that if one nest escapes the enemy the family is apt to be plentifully perpetu ated. They grow to be twenty-five feet in length. When the mother lagarto by instinct knows when the period of incubation is over, she goes to the nest with her male companion and carefully scrapes away the sand. Then she gently tears the tough skin off the eggs and the little ones run out. These are eaten by the dozen by gallinasos and the male lagarto also eats his fill. They are said to hunt fish in an organized way, and the claim is also made that after tasting animal flesh they will leave the water and live on shore. Land animals seem to know their danger and take interesting means to circumvent the bloodthirsty lagarto. Going to a stream to drink, cattle will bellow and dogs will howl and bark until they attract the lagar- tos to one spot, then they will drop back, run to another place and drink in a hurry, so as to es cape being seized by the nose, dragged under water, drowned, and eaten. When the rains fall the low lands are sub merged, and the lagartos cover a wide territory in search of cattle driven to small islands 310 THE ANDEAN LAND temporarily formed by the flood. Quite often the waters, retiring quickly, leave the lagarto a floundering prisoner in the alluvium, where he remains alive for six or seven months, feeding scantily on flies. When thus captive, the natives hunt for them and kill them by spearing them between the foreleg and the body, apparently the only vulnerable place. Another way they kill the monster is to build a fire around its head and burn it to death. Lagartos will seize human beings while bath ing and will take children on shore. After being successful they become emboldened and have been known to take men and women from rafts and even to upset a small canoe and devour the occupant. When a man-eater is known to be in a region, all the natives make war on it until it is killed. One way to kill it is to make a noose of strong rawhide and bait it with meat. When the lagarto attempts to seize the bait, a concealed native pulls on the rope and lassoes the creature's jaw, whereupon all hands come to the fight. Some hold on to the rope and some use spears and the enemy is generally killed. Very expert natives sometimes capture a huge lagarto alive, in which dangerous performance they are both brave and dextrous. A man takes in his right hand a weapon called a tolete, made of hardwood, two feet long, with a ball at each end like a great dumb-bell. Into each ball two SOCIAL CUSTOMS 311 iron harpoons are fastened, and in the middle a plaited thong is made fast. With this in one hand in which he also holds a fowl for bait, the man plunges into the river and swims with one arm. When the lagarto rushes for the bait and opens its great jaws, the tolete is thrust into its mouth in a vertical position. The lagarto closes its mouth with a snap, forcing the har poons through its jaw and fastening them. Then it is towed ashore by the thong. This act of prowess has been done for the entertainment of distinguished guests. Once ashore the ap pearance and struggles of the lagarto are some thing fearful. The natives are now in their glory. They tease the creature as is done in a bullfight, as it will rush at anything red. The matador, as it were, side-steps as in a bullfight and the lagarto goes directly on until brought up by the rawhide rope fast to its jaws. This is kept up as long as desired, when the animal is killed by a spear thrust down its throat or between the forelegs, or underneath the body if it happens to turn over. The belly is soft and easily penetrated. Another way to take the lagarto is for the ex pert hunter to hold the fowl in one hand and a big knife in the other. When the lagarto rushes at the bait, the hunter drops the fowl, dives, comes up under his quarry, cuts a long gash in its belly and the contest is over. No feat in the 312 THE ANDEAN LAND world requires more cool bravery and skill. Out of the fine ivory teeth of the lagarto many ornaments are made, and some of them, mounted with silver and gold and gems, are very beautiful. In all of their relations to animals the natives are unusually capable. Nowhere in the world are sheep subject to more dangers and nowhere in the world is the sheep dog more faithful or better trained. While a puppy it is suckled by some gentle old ewe and henceforth is a member of the flock, guarding it day and night, being fed with it and never leaving it. The subjugation of the capon also illustrates the native cleverness. An industrious hen comes off with a fine, big brood of chicks. She is needed for egg-laying. So Mr. Capon is prepared to do her work. First the capon is well plucked of the feathers on the breast and between the thighs, and is then roundly whipped with a nettle weed, after which it is put in a coop with the chicks overnight. Next morning with its little remaining rooster spirit all gone, the capon clucks forth as proud as any trusted eunuch and scratches a better living for its charge than the average hen. End of Vol. I. 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