Panama to Patagonia

ALONG COAST TO MAGELLAN STRAITS

Arica the Emerald Gem of the West Coast—Memorable Earthquake History—A Future Emporium of Commerce for the Canal—Iquique the Nitrate Port—Value of the Trade—Antofagasta’s Copper Exports—Caldera and the Trans-Andine Railway to Argentina—Valparaiso’s Preëminence among Pacific Ports—Extensive Shipping and Execrable Harbor—Plans for Improvement—No Fear of Loss from the Interoceanic Waterway—Coal and Copper at Lota—Concepcion and Other Towns—Rough Passage into the Straits—Cape Pillar—Punta Arenas, the Southernmost Town of the World—Trade and Future.

THE emerald gem of the West Coast is Arica, a day’s voyage from Mollendo. After days and weeks of rocky coast without vegetation and of the long chain of the naked Andes farther inland, the clumps of green trees and the bushy fringe of verdure along the sandy beach are a seeming paradise and a close one too. The huge cliffs which beetle over Arica do not appear so barren as those farther north, and the flat-topped hills do not limit the vision so entirely as to shut out the thread of valley which marks the line of the railway back to Tacna and the desert. On the highest hill is a great cross, but down on the level are ancient and modern windmills. The train is slowly puffing its way across the plain, while the bay is filled with rowboats and small launches. In all it is a charming, reposeful sight. The island fort at the base of the cliffs is rugged and stern, but it does not spoil the picture.

Ashore are a handsome little plaza with an elliptical enclosed plot of shrubbery in the centre, blue morning-glories and purple vine trees. Lieutenant Commander de Faramond, the French naval officer who went ashore with me, stopped to look at the flowers a moment. “Aha!” he remarked, “they have the fever here. This is the purple fever flower of Algiers. Wherever it grows you find sickness.” Later I made inquiries and learned that he was correct. Arica, while a most charming spot, is peculiarly subject to malarial influences.

But a walk through the town deepens the pleasing impression. There is a well-built custom house, the sloping cobble-paved streets are clean, and the dwellings are very attractive. The latter are neat one-story structures. Some are blue as to exterior, some subdued green, others brown or orange,—a real prismatic blending. Most of them have arbor-arched entrances, and the passing view of the interior is delightful. The church is the biggest building, and at a distance it is not unattractive, though it does not improve architecturally on near approach. Glimpses of native life are afforded by the Indian women coming in from the country. Some of them are mounted astride their donkeys, while the panniers, or baskets which contain their merchandise, almost smother them. Others trudge along by the sides of their animals. The buildings in Arica are of galvanized or corrugated iron. They are of one story, so that they will not be shaken down by the earthquakes.

Arica’s history has been a memorable one. Sir Francis Drake and his sea-hawks from the Golden Hind who touched there in 1579, found a collection of a score of Indian huts. The earthquake record begins in 1605. The most celebrated of these convulsions of Nature was that of 1868, when the United States frigate Wateree was carried a mile inland by the tidal wave, and left there to become the dwelling of a number of Indian families, until another earthquake and tidal wave drew it back toward the beach without harm to the inmates. The companion ship, the Fredonia was destroyed.

Commerce passes through Arica chiefly for Bolivia. Mules and burros transport the freight from the railway terminus at Tacna into the interior. The imports are mining-supplies and miscellaneous merchandise. The exports are saltpetre, salt, sulphur, and some minerals. There is a shop on shore in which are sold the noted vicuña rugs. These are brought down from Bolivia. The skins of the guanaco, much coarser, are vended to unwary buyers for vicuñas. For several years the annual commerce of the port at the maximum was $1,000,000, but it will grow rapidly.

The railroad from Arica to Tacna is of the standard gauge and 39 miles long. It was among the first constructed in South America, the concession having been granted by the Peruvian government in 1851 and the line completed six years later. The aspiration then was to continue it over the pampas along the route followed by the ancient highway of the Incas and across the igneous Cordillera of Tacora to La Paz in Bolivia. A waiting of half a century was necessary before the project could be considered as tangible, but by the terms of the treaty negotiated between the Bolivian and the Chilean governments in October, 1904, it approached realization. The distance from Tacna to La Paz is about 300 miles, but the Corocoro copper mines, which will furnish much of the traffic, are 60 miles nearer to Tacna. The freight carried over this route by pack animals—mules, burros, and llamas—of recent years has not exceeded 20,000 tons annually, but in the earlier years the quantity was much larger.

When the railway from Tacna to Corocoro and La Paz is completed, the commercial importance of Arica as a West Coast seaport will be greatly enhanced. This railroad will be an artery of commerce which will bring the heart of Bolivia to the Pacific, for it will lead to and from the most populous and most productive regions of that country by the shortest and most direct route. The line will be finished long before the Panama Canal is opened, but the result will be the same. Arica is 2,200 miles from Panama, relatively 4,200 miles from New York, and less than 3,600 miles from New Orleans. To New York around Cape Horn and Pernambuco is approximately 9,500 miles. From Arica to Liverpool via Panama is 6,900 miles; by way of the Straits of Magellan is 10,400 miles. Can a doubt be entertained as to the course of the commerce which will flow without ebb through the future great port of Arica?

The afternoon on which we left Arica we had a rare privilege. It was the sunlit view of the snow-cap of the distant Mt. Tacora in Bolivia. The summit is 19,000 feet above sea-level. Though the other snow-ridges often are seen, Tacora rarely shows her ghostly face. In the late afternoon the azure mist gathered over the plain and lower mountain range; the shadows fell on the shell-like hillsides; the sun glistened on the chalky, beetling bowlders; the brown cliffs became browner; the faintest suggestion of twilight hovered for a moment; the snow-caps disappeared, and it was night and we were steaming out of the bay.

From Arica south the cliffs rise from the sea almost perpendicularly. In the morning Pisagua is sighted. This is a centre of the nitrate industry and of what remains of the guano traffic. Colonel North, the hotel-keeper who became the nitrate king, had his beginnings as a captain of industry here. The mountains come down to the sea in parallel ridges. Pisagua is like a little Pennsylvania mining-town, except that it seems likely to slide into the sea. A fearful visitation of fire and plague depopulated it in 1905.

Double-header engines drawing short trains climb the steep walls as though they were going up a ladder. After a time they wind their way to the nitrate plains and then across the dreary desert to Iquique. There is not much to be seen on the railway route, and travellers prefer to keep the ship along the sheer cliffs till Iquique is sighted through the masts of the sailing-vessels which are clustered in the harbor waiting for their cargo. Sometimes a hundred of these are gathered.

There is really no harbor, and scarcely what can be called docks, for the vessels must anchor outside and the rude breakwater is hardly more than a pretence. To get ashore the reef has to be crossed in a small boat. Upsets are frequent, and fatalities are not unknown.

Iquique is a fragile city of frame and corrugated iron buildings. In the plaza are a reasonably tasteful monument and a pretty municipal building. There is a brown wooden church with a wooden effigy of the crucified Saviour, which is far from attractive to look at. The town has a population of 40,000. Iquique has a history which surpasses that of the bonanza mountain towns of the West in swiftness, for in the first days of the saltpetre riches nothing was allowed to be slow. It is more staid and sedate now, but the Englishmen—younger sons and some of the earlier generation—do not let life become too dull. They are terrific brandy and whiskey drinkers, showing a nice discrimination in not exhausting the wealth of the nitrate beds by taking too much soda with their brandy. There is a Country Club and a convenient café at Camache, just out of the town proper. An American missionary school is maintained by the Methodist Episcopal denomination. When I was in Iquique, besides the school instructors there were only two Americans. One was a mining prospector, and the other was waiting for something to turn up. But North American enterprise was threatening to invade the nitrate industry.

The municipal administration of Iquique under the Chilean authorities is excellent; that is the common testimony of all foreigners. The population which has to be dealt with is a rough and ready one; the nitrate laborers are like the miners in their rude independence, and the longshoremen and harbor workers are as burly and aggressive as the same class in the United States.

In commercial importance Iquique ranks with the leading ports of the Pacific, all due to the nitrate trade. Its saltpetre shipments about equal those of all the other coast towns, and are valued at from $28,000,000 to $30,000,000 annually. In a single year the ships entering the port, many of them sailing-vessels, aggregate from 850 to 1,200, with a tonnage varying from 1,250,000 to 1,800,000. As the nitrate beds are being worked on a more extensive scale, it is safe to assume that almost any given year in the future will disclose the presence of not fewer than 1,200 vessels in the roadstead. Since the industry is largely in British hands, the English flag is by far the most common, though the German ensign is seen with growing frequency.

It is not probable that the Panama Canal will have a marked influence, either beneficial or detrimental, on Iquique. What nitrate freight may exist by the time the waterway is ready for traffic will be governed by the conditions that obtain to-day. The saltpetre fertilizers form a bulky cargo. Part of the profits of the ocean carrying-trade lies in transporting coal from Australia or Newcastle to the Chilean coast and then taking on the nitrates. That brought from England scarcely would find it profitable to pay the Canal tolls. Nor would the distance be shortened sufficiently to secure an advantage for the nitrates as return cargo. Their ocean route, in the future as in the past, is through the Straits of Magellan or around Cape Horn, and Iquique remains an unimpaired port so long as the nitrate beds are unexhausted. Some shipments may be through the waterway direct to Charleston, to mix with the phosphates and thus fertilize the Southern cotton fields.

At various times projects have been agitated for extending the nitrate railways in a manner to form a through line into Bolivia, but the preference given by the Chilean government to the Arica route seems to end the probability of such an enterprise. In view of the raw materials right at hand, it is surprising that neither native nor foreign capital has established manufactories of explosives.

Twenty-four hundred miles from Panama, geographically on the Tropic of Capricorn, is Antofagasta, a fair sort of town, with regular streets, rectangular warehouses, and a graveyard on the hillside. Its pride is the plaza, which has been coaxed from unwilling Nature and made to bear evidences of grass and trees. It is the starting-point of the two-foot six-inch gauge railway which runs 575 miles up into the interior of Bolivia, and brings the mining products down to the shore. The railway pays a 6 per cent annual dividend, and is said to earn more. The gross receipts are about $9,000,000 per year. Antofagasta is a shipping-point for the nitrates as well as for bullion and ores. The nitrate shipments are increasing rapidly, and promise to rival Iquique. The harbor is a wretched roadstead. To get ashore it is necessary to brave a lashing, dangerous surf. The Chilean government is promising extensive improvements. They are badly needed. When made, they will enhance the commercial importance of Antofagasta. The foreign vessels entering and clearing annually have a tonnage of 1,000,000.

Antofagasta is the centre of the chief copper-producing district of northern Chile, and also it is the outlet of Bolivian tin, silver, and copper. The reduction works built by the Huanchaca Company of Bolivia are located near here, and a large quantity of the ores are transported to these works to be treated. It always will be their outlet, but in the future Antofagasta will have sharper competition than at present with Arica and Mollendo, as the shipping-port of Bolivian products. The Canal will be of some benefit in lessening ocean freights, more particularly for the general merchandise imported.

Below Antofagasta is Taltal, a passably well-sheltered nitrate shipping-port. Then the coast toward Chañaral begins to vary; the mountains are lower, more broken and jagged, with more cross ranges. Chañaral has copper-smelting works.

Caldera is a small town, with substantial warehouses, fronting on a big, fine bay. It has a Panama potency, for it is the beginning of the Copiapo Railway that in time will cross the Andes and make the plains of northwestern Argentina tributary to the Pacific. This trans-Andine route was the dream of William Wheelright, the Yankee pioneer railroader of Chile and the Argentine Republic, often called the father of public works in South America. The passes are low and easily traversed, as compared with those farther south. The gradual extension of population in the northwestern provinces of Argentina, the increase in the areas under cultivation, are followed—or, better said, are preceded—by railroad extensions. A few years will bring her lines to the boundary of the Andes. In the meantime the Chilean government is encouraging the prolongation of the railway from Copiapo to the dividing line of the Cordilleras. The time cannot be far distant when Tucuman, the railway cross-roads of northern Argentina, will have rail communication with the West Coast at Caldera, and an extensive district will be weighing the comparative advantages of the Atlantic transport and the Pacific and Panama transport for its agricultural products and the merchandise brought to the people who grow those products for export.

Coquimbo is a port of considerable importance. From the sea it is attractive. One main street extends along the water front, while the others branch off up the hill at right angles. There is the cemetery, somewhat suggestively prominent. A neat frame dwelling in the seaside, peak-roofed style, hollowed out of the hillside, and surrounded by needle-pointed pine trees, secures attention. Coquimbo ships large quantities of manganese and copper, and formerly a British coaling-station was maintained.

We arrived in Valparaiso one morning late in May. The American woman whose home it was, had promised we should see another Bay of Naples. The fogs lifted slowly. They showed apparently a city afloat, for the vessel masts were first visible and then the port proper, which seemed to lie flat to the sea. Later the skies were sapphire, yet it was not Naples. That morning there was a celebration in honor of the arrival of the Brazilian warship Almirante Barroso, and the bay was alive with small craft and stately ships, while the people swarmed over the heights and along the shore like ants.

Valparaiso (vale of Paradise) is the largest place on the Pacific coast, with the exception of San Francisco, and it is equally as fine a metropolis. Its population is 140,000. The city lies at the foot of high hills, which no one climbs because there are ascensors, or elevators, as in Pittsburg and Quebec. Unhappily it has not a golden gate and a sheltered harbor. The finest part of the city is the Avenida, or Avenue Brazil, at once shaded boulevard, business thoroughfare, and promenade.

The city has many fine business blocks of modern construction, and the government buildings are unusually tasteful and harmonious. All bear the impress of Italian architecture. The commemorative spirit finds expression in a group celebrating the heroism of Arturo Prat, the young naval commander who gained unfading laurels in the war with Peru. On the Avenue Brazil is a bust of William Wheelright, the son of Massachusetts, who provided steam navigation as well as built railways for Chile. There is also a statue to Lord Cochrane, the Scotchman who took command of the Chilean fleet in the contest for freedom from Spain and helped to bring victory. It cannot be said that Chile is unmindful of the strangers who have served her, whether in arms or in peaceful progress.

The port, as is natural, is cosmopolitan. The German colony is largest, and after that the Italians in numbers, though in influence they are hardly so strong as either the English or the French. The French community is self-contained and is an important factor in commerce. The Britishers, chiefly from Scotland, are in everything except retail trade. Though the English language is common, Valparaiso is the one city in South America in which I heard German spoken oftener.

The shipping of Valparaiso is vast and varied, a floating panorama of many nations, like a miniature Hamburg. The English lines maintain a regular fortnightly service of cargo and passenger vessels, and also a special service of cargo vessels to Liverpool. The steamers are of 5,000 tons and upward. The distance to Liverpool by way of the Straits is 9,500 to 9,800 miles, and the sailing schedule is 35 days. The vessels touch alternately at the Falkland Islands, both for mail and for the cargo of wool. They coal at Montevideo, Rio Janeiro, and in the Madeiras. They bring out to Valparaiso general merchandise, and they take away products of the country.

The Bay of Valparaiso is a discouraging one. It is surprising that so extensive a commerce can be handled with such poor facilities. The shipping approximates 1,000,000 tons yearly. The engineering difficulties in the way of creating a real harbor are well understood, though not easily overcome. The rains wash the hills down into the sea, but the detritus, or silt, does not fill in what seems to be the bottomless bed of the ocean, so profound is it. There is no breakwater.

At the beginning of every Winter season the question is raised,—what will be the harvest of disaster? It seems incredible that vessels of 3,000 tons could be lost in this bay, but that is what has happened. In May, 1903, voyaging down the coast in the Tucapel, we were told that the Arequipa of 3,000 tons burden was the next ship following us. She arrived two or three days later, and took on passengers and cargo for the return trip. One night a savage tempest arose, many of the smaller vessels were wrecked, and the Arequipa foundered and went down with the loss of a hundred lives. Two weeks later from my hotel window I watched the wild bay and waited three days for a chance to get off on the Oropesa, one of the big ships which run between Valparaiso and Liverpool. Smoke from the funnels showed that the large vessels were keeping steam up, and they frequently steamed out into the open to avoid the dangers of the harbor. This storm was a norther which came in a circular path from the south. The immense floating docks tossed about as if they were eggshells; the buoys bobbed like dancing water-sprites; the schooners plunged their noses into the angry breakers until the mastheads dipped; again the masts and yardarms would be as a stripped forest in Winter bending before the blasts. And the wreckage of the hurricane of a fortnight earlier was still visible,—two big schooners driven hard against the rocks, their masts under water.

In July, 1904, another destructive storm swept along the coast. The lower part of the city was completely covered with mud and water, the sea-wall was destroyed, and the railroad badly damaged. The loss of life was not great, but the destruction of property was serious.

In the period from 1823 to 1893 the shipping statistics show the loss of 378 water-craft in the Bay of Valparaiso, of which 100 were rowing and sailing boats. The money value was incalculable.

The Chilean government after many discouragements accepted the plans of Mr. Jacob Kraus, the Holland engineer, for conquering the difficulties which Nature had placed in the way of making Valparaiso Bay hospitable instead of hostile to the ships that bear the commerce of many seas. The estimated cost of the harbor improvement is $15,000,000 gold, though the initial provision was for $11,000,000. The scheme contemplates the construction of a series of sea-walls in the bay. The water is so deep that it is considered impracticable to build a single breakwater across the mouth of the harbor. It is believed that the several sea-walls constructed in the manner proposed will protect the vessels and the merchandise from the terrific seas which drive in during the storms of the Winter months. A dry dock is included in the proposition. The calculation is that the shipping of the port will be benefited annually to the extent of $1,250,000 and upward by the projected improvements. The Chilean Congress approved the Kraus plans at the Autumn session of 1904.

These harbor improvements will lay some additional charges on maritime commerce, but they can be borne in view of the increased security and the better facilities. If the Panama Canal were likely to impair the commercial prestige of Valparaiso, they would serve as a means of retaining it. Not improbably the Congress had this contingency in mind when sanction was given the government projects for making the dangerous bay a safe shelter. The only loss from vessels which will pass through the Canal instead of making the voyage through the Straits or around Cape Horn, touching at Chilean ports, will be in coaling them and providing other supplies. This is not an important factor in Valparaiso’s trade. The imports and exports of the port are based on the products and the wants of the country. Its maritime movement, which is estimated at 3,000,000 tons annually, is measured by the facilities provided for this foreign commerce.

Trade with the United States grows regularly, and agricultural implements and mineral oils, which are among the chief imports, will pay the Canal tolls and still have cheaper ocean transport from New York or New Orleans than down the Atlantic and up the Pacific. It is not an unreasonable assumption that for a proportionate share of the merchandise imported from Great Britain 9,500 miles’ water carriage from Liverpool through the Straits of Magellan may be offset by 7,800 miles via Panama plus the Canal tolls and other commercial considerations. The same holds true of Hamburg and the trade with Germany.

On two visits to Valparaiso I found that the shipping interests were not worrying over a dimly prospective loss of commerce through the construction of an isthmian waterway. Instead they were looking forward to it as an incentive to making the bay a genuine harbor, and as a stimulus to closer trade relations with the United States. That appears to be a sound interpretation of the economic relation of the Panama Canal to the port of Valparaiso.

After leaving Valparaiso one feels the pertinence of the suggestion that far enough south the Pacific is not always pacific. The sea is not excessively rough, yet it heaves and rolls uncomfortably. The tops of the Cordilleras, covered with snow, are very clear in the bright sunlight. At Lota there are trees and Winter vegetation on the high hills. Lota and Coronel are really twin ports. They both lie alongside the great vein of coal and copper, and are coaling-stations for the vessels. Most of the steamers come down to Lota for the fuel which will be needed in returning to Panama, while those passing through the Straits of Magellan or around Cape Horn take on enough to serve them to Montevideo. It crops out of the hillside and is mined in primitive and inexpensive manner. The copper mining is also primitive.

Lota has a good bay, but hardly a harbor. The town is not a bad one. Its main street is well paved. It has an attractive plaza, a club, a shabby church, a fundicion, or copper-smelting works in which old processes are used, and pottery and brick factories. It is also noted for the coal tunnel under the sea. Until they were turned into a stock company, Lota and Coronel were the property of the Cousiño family, and the company is still controlled by that family. The widow Cousiño at one time was the richest woman in the world. Cousiño Park at Lota is the pride of Chile. It is bizarre, and blends English and French landscape gardening with some original ideas of Nature improved and unimproved. There is a French chateau on the hill, and there are ravines, grottoes, fountains, statuary, artificial lakes, arbors, terraces, flower gardens, and a small zoo. A lighthouse in the corner commanding the sea has a history. It was brought from Paita in Peru as the spoil of war.

Indian faces are numerous in Lota. They are the strongest type I have seen, and are of the unconquerable Araucanian stock. These Indians and half-Indians, besides being engaged in fishing and water traffic, are mingled with Europeans as mine-workers. It is a half-savage mining population, among which strikes, bloodshed, and murder are not unknown.

For those who wish to visit the Chilean Annapolis, the train may be taken from Coronel to Concepcion, and then to Talcahuano, which is the naval port. The journey does not occupy more than an hour. The Chileans have a patriotic pride in this naval school. Talcahuano is a principal port and has much shipping. It is about the only good harbor on the Chilean coast.

Concepcion, after Santiago and Valparaiso, is the largest city in Chile, and has a decided importance as the outlet for the great central valley. Many passengers come by the railway from Santiago through the central valley to Concepcion, and take the ship at either embarkation. The English and the Germans divide the foreign trade, which is large and profitable.

Continuing down the coast on a voyage on the Oropesa, we passed the briefest day of the year, June 21, out of sight of land. The day was clear and cold. The seas were very heavy. At sunset the navigating officer told us we were in south latitude 41°. The Milky Way never seemed so luminous, nor the evening star, set in the dark southern sky, so bright. The following day was alternate rain and shine, with just a sight of the Chiloe Archipelago through the mists. Few of the vessels now take the more picturesque route into the archipelago and through Smythe’s Channel. The wrecks have become too common.

Heavier seas were encountered in the afternoon and at night. What a night! The Oropesa, a ship of 7,000 tons, was pounded as with an anvil, tossed like a chip, knocked, hammered, slammed and banged about, chased by huge seas astern, struck obliquely by mountain waves, caught horizontally and spun around like a top. First she went at half speed and then at quarter speed, but with plenty of sea-room no one worried.

The next morning at daybreak the lighthouse which marks the Evangelist Islands was sighted. The name, Islands of Direction, which is sometimes given them, is a better description. They fix the entrance into the Straits of Magellan. They are four rocky heaps,—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. After they are sighted the rough seas become gentler, and the ocean is like a rolling, gently swelling prairie. A knob of brown earth is seen. It is Cape Pillar. The gray clouds change into violet and purple, a blinding snow-storm of three hours follows; then the sun lifts a little, and discloses on the right Desolation Islands and the great snow fields. By mid-day the land on either side is quite close. The channel does not appear to be more than a quarter of a mile across. There is some brush, but no trees. The blue glaciers of which we have read are not blue, but are white against the water-green sky. In the afternoon a gauze spreads over the glaciers like a veil of mist, and they are blue.

A look astern shows that we are passing through the narrowing neck of a long channel with snowy crags and slopes on either side. We are in south latitude 54°, no twilight, a black night, not a star visible, the water not to be seen from the lower deck, the ship groping for anchorage like a blind fisherman. “Two hundred sixty fathoms, no; thirty-six fathoms, yes.” We have conquered the treacherous currents, have turned the dangerous elbow corners, and learn that we anchor for the rest of this black night off Cape Coventry. I thought of Ferdinand Magellan and his sail-ships threading those unknown channels nearly four centuries ago.

We are under way at four o’clock in the morning, and come out on deck to find the sun hooded and cloaked in the snow clouds. It clears later, showing the straits much broader and the hills on either side lower but still under a white mantle. We round Cape Froward, latitude 53° 54′, at times losing sight of Tierra del Fuego. We get a sight of Punta Arenas, the most southerly town on the American Continent or on any continent, 1,600 miles farther south than Cape Town, 900 miles nearer to the South Pole than Christ Church, New Zealand. It is the world’s cross-roads for ocean travel.

The first view is of wide streets running back to forest-clad hills which are almost lost in the snow clouds. Everything about the town is brisk and bright. Ashore the snow crunches under our feet, and we have the buoyant feeling of the Hudson’s Bay trapper. There is a Chilean cruiser in the bay, and German, English, French, and Spanish ships. Even rarer is one bearing the American flag. There are hotels, gasthauses, posadas, and other signs which tell in many languages of sailors’ lodging-houses. The mingling of many tongues is also heard, for the sailors are ashore.

Punta Arenas has very good wharves and warehouses, substantial bank buildings, some private residences that look like Swiss chalets, and a somewhat pretentious plaza in which on this day the fountain has become a beautiful ice crystal. The town also has sailors’ bar-rooms. There is a new church, and a few vacant lots are left in the business section. A troop of urchins come chattering from school, leap into the snow-drift, and pelt the passers-by, the universal privilege of boyhood. Though it is Winter the women are bareheaded, or most of them are, and the black alpaca shawls thrown carelessly over their shoulders do not indicate that the cold is penetrating. The men wear vicuña robes like blankets, or many of them have the skins made up into overcoats. The steamer has brought the fortnightly mail, and every one gathers at the post-office waiting for letters. The talk is of new sheep companies and gold washings in Tierra del Fuego.

Punta Arenas has no custom house. It is a free port,—a very wise policy considering that its trade is of an international character, selling to the passing ships and buying from them only such articles as are needed for local consumption. The commercial movement reaches $2,250,000 per year, the exports exceeding the imports by $250,000. The export commerce is of wool, hides, tallow, ostrich feathers, foxskins, guanaco and vicuña rugs. The imports are alcohol for the Patagonian Indians, cereals, and general merchandise. The best fur store is kept by a Russian woman. The town is the seat of the territorial government of Magellans, and is the official residence of the Governor. There is also an army barracks and a weather bureau office. It is a station of the Chilean navy, which has rendered much service to navigation in the hydrographic work of the Straits. Punta Arenas has its daily newspaper, filled with shipping intelligence and containing cable news which is transmitted by land wire from Buenos Ayres. Wireless telegraphy finds it a convenient station.

Punta Arenas thinks it has a cloud on its future. This is the Panama Canal. It now is an important coaling-station, the coal being brought both from Australia and from Newcastle, and it has a good business in supplying passing vessels. Some of this trade will be lost when the Hamburg and the New York ships which follow this route to San Francisco are able to take the shorter course through the waterway. But by that time the improvements which the Chilean government is making in the navigation of the Straits, and the natural development of trade in the far southern regions will have more than compensated for the diminution from the diversion of the through ocean traffic to other channels. As the centre of the sheep industry of Tierra del Fuego and of the Chilean mainland, the southernmost town has a stable future.