CHAPTER XIII
LIFE IN THE CHILEAN CAPITAL
Railway along Aconcagua River Valley—Project of Wheelright, the Yankee—Santiago’s Craggy Height of Santa Lucia—A Walk along the Alameda—Historic and Other Statues—The Capital a Fanlike City—Public Edifices—Dwellings of the Poor—Impression of the People at the Celebration of Corpus Christi—Some Notes on the Climate—Habits and Customs—“The Morning for Sleep”—Independence of Chilean Women—Sunday for Society—Fondness for Athletic Sports—Newspapers an Institution of the Country.
IN places the river Aconcagua is like the Platte of Nebraska, which is famous for spreading out so that it is all bed and no depth. Yet the stream is more picturesque than the flat top of Mt. Aconcagua, 22,425 feet high, for the monarch of the snow-covered Cordilleras lacks the majesty of the apex peaks, which are 2,000 or 3,000 feet lower. The railroad creeps along the valley from Valparaiso, cuts across the ravines and transverse spurs into a narrow pass, following the watercourse and clinging to the mountain-side like the rim of a wheel. The vegetation is both temperate and tropical. In making the journey on a June day I passed from the balminess of perpetual Spring to the chill of Winter, but Nature was not stern and there was no bleakness. A little back from the seacoast were short and stocky palms, fields carpeted with yellow cowslips, milk-white nut trees, green willows, silver poplars, young apple orchards side by side with orange groves, firs, and the taller forest trees.
After the main valley is left and the gorge entered, it is a steady, curved climb to Llai-Llai. The place is an eating-station, and a very good one too. The name is Indian and not Welsh. Though it was midwinter, the breath of the tropics lingered and the dews had freshened the vines and trees. The railway splits at this point, one branch going south to Santiago and another straight on to Los Andes, where the mule-path leads across the cumbre, or summit, but where in a few years the big spiral tunnel will complete the through rail connection via the Uspallata Pass between Valparaiso and Buenos Ayres. In this region I had glimpses of vineyards, of pretty farms, and of pasturing cattle and sheep. The valley below is an agricultural Arcadia. Coming out of the gorge in the wildest part, the beauties of the scenery were temporarily lost, for a big, staring coffin sign greeted my eye. Sometimes the Chileans call themselves the English of South America; sometimes the Yankees. The advertiser’s art here is both English and Yankee—it stops at nothing.
But the snow-peaks, the overhanging vaporous milky masses on the summit, and the darker purple masses on the mountain-sides, make it possible to forget the coffin man and his wares, though his sign at first jars the æsthetic sensibilities so disagreeably.
Railroad travel is comfortable on the line from Valparaiso to the capital. There are Pullman cars and other conveniences. But though it is midwinter, the cars are not heated. Every one unrolls blankets and robes. The women settle back to a nap or a little gossip. The men light their cigars, and between the intervals of newspaper reading, talk politics and the weather. Two or three peruse French novels. The five hours consumed in the journey pass quickly.
This railroad was projected by William Wheelright. The opposition the enterprise met in the Chilean Congress reads like a chapter of George Stephenson’s struggles with the English Parliament. Wheelright carried the line as far as Llai-Llai. Then came a long wait, till Henry Meiggs arrived in the first flush of his exile, and with his extraordinary mental activities thirsting for a field for their employment. For ten years the government had been deciding to have the remaining sections of the railway completed “to-morrow.” It was in 1861 that they made the contract. They had no idea of quick work. Meiggs, shrewd California Yankee, got a clause inserted giving a premium if Section A should be finished within one year instead of three years, and so forth. Then he built the railroad in the shortest period and collected the largest premium. The authorities, wondering, paid, but allowed no rush clauses in subsequent contracts.
Few big cities can boast the possession of a craggy mountain. Santiago has such a treasure in Santa Lucia, an alluvial outcropping, isolated, and apparently not kin to the granite spur of San Cristobal near by. After waiting many years, the municipality converted it from a sterile mass of rugged rock into a park with drives and gardens, serpentine paths, statues, terraces, parapets, bowers, grottoes, basins, cascades, and aquariums. There is a statue to Pedro Valdivia, the first of the Spanish conquerors, whose conquering career was ended by the unconquerable Araucanians, and a chapel and monument to the public-spirited Archbishop Vicuña. A theatre, a café, and some other structures also have been erected. Their value in beautifying the mountain is not great, yet art and advertising have not been allowed altogether to spoil Nature.
Santa Lucia is Santiago’s crown jewel, her Kohinoor. Every day during my stay I went to walk there, often through the clouds, but always with a freshened sense of enjoyment. The approach is like Chapultepec in the City of Mexico, but this isolated mountain mass, while less extensive, is more dominating than Mexico’s pride. Though it does not afford the splendid sight of two volcanic snow-clad peaks, as Chapultepec does in the vista of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, yet the circular snow profile of the Andes through the violet mist is an always pleasing vision.
A morning or an evening stroll along the Alameda de las Delicias—Delicious Walk, in English—shows much of Chilean life. It is a shaded avenue with a central paseo, or walk, a roadway on either side between rows of poplar trees,—the roadway being given over to the trolley cars, and then the main thoroughfares which form the street. There are some handsome residences and many commonplace ones. The stores are not fine. The Alameda is too long (three miles) and too broad for trade, and the shopping district locates itself elsewhere.
Chilean patriotism is rampant on the Alameda, though it is not always artistic. The avenue has statues to O’Higgins and other national heroes, with groups commemorative of incidents in the war for independence. A statue has been erected to the international hero, San Martin, the Argentine chieftain who led the allied armies of the patriots to victory against Spain. An unambitious monument to Buenos Ayres typifies the completion of the telegraph line between Chile and the Argentine Republic across the Andes in 1865.
While many of the groups on the Alameda commemorate war heroes and war incidents, peace also is recognized. There is a statue to Benjamin Victor MacKenna, the historian, with the inscription that the heroes thus pay tribute to the chronicler of their prowess. He was defeated for the Presidency by a soldier. I like even better the memorial to Father Molina, the Jesuit naturalist, who rendered distinguished service to science. It is an obscure little statue, yet it shows that the warlike nation has thoughts of the sacrifices and the achievements of science as well as of arms.
Santiago is an ancient capital, for when the Boston tea party was held, its population was larger than that of either Boston or Philadelphia. With its suburbs included, it numbers about 300,000 inhabitants. It was laid out by the old Spanish town-makers with the customary regularity of streets and plazas, but not in the usual checkerboard form. The Alameda and the Mapocho River form a triangle which encloses the most densely populated sections like a fan, so that the east and west streets are not parallel. Santa Lucia is at the vertex or the rivet. The fan opens from the Alameda, and spreads over Cousiño Park, the race-track, and various public institutions.
The principal square is the Plaza of Arms, one corner of which is occupied by the Cathedral. Nothing about the Cathedral is especial, nor are the churches themselves particularly striking, for they are not mediævally ecclesiastical. Some of them are Florentine. Santiago as a whole has less of the typical Spanish architectural appearance than any other large city in South America. The business blocks are substantial structures of two and three stories, with many arcades and portals. The private residences have fronts with many façades, and are quite ornate. The patios, or courts, within are paved with variegated tiles. The glimpses of the fountains and of green trees and yellow oranges afford a pleasing picture to the stranger. He longs to enter and be at home in these secluded orange groves, set, as they are, in the amphitheatre of the snow-covered Cordilleras.
Some of the public edifices are comparatively new, while many are of the Spanish and colonial epoch. The Moneda, or Government Building, belongs to the latter class. It is rambling and old, with no exterior pretensions, but with many courts, circular balconies, and grilled windows. The President occupies a smaller house for his residence. The Congress building is new, and is of the architecture of the Renaissance. It is on the site of the Jesuit Church that was burned in 1863,—one of the world’s holocausts, in which 2,300 persons lost their lives. In front of the Supreme Court building is a statue to Andre Bello, the author of the Chilean Civil Code and an eminent authority on international law.
The National Library is housed in the old Congress hall. It has a very extensive collection of manuscript records of the Inquisition, brought from Lima, and of other rare historical documents, including the colonial archives. I visited the Library one afternoon, and was shown some of its treasures by Director Montt. But the atmosphere of secluded scholarship did not come upon me until in a remote recess I met the Orientalist of the institution, a priestly bookworm in his clerical sotana, a skull-cap covering his tonsure, keen eyes peering from the spectacles across a large inquisitive nose,—altogether a striking figure of the recluse in the midst of the musty wisdom of the past.
Some sections of the capital city are shabby. A walk in the poorer parts—and they cover much territory—disclosed to me even more than shabbiness, grinding poverty. Across the Mapocho, the walled and bedded river, is a church with a gaudy blue front and a dreary triangular plaza. Penury stretches on all sides. The dwellings are low, with floors below the street level and in the cold and rainy season under water. The interiors are repulsively forbidding and unsanitary. The comforts of life, let alone the decencies, cannot be acquired in such squalid surroundings. No subject of municipal legislation is more pressing than that of sanitary tenements, and no municipality has shown greater indifference to it heretofore than Santiago. Until something is done in this direction, the palpitating social question will continue to palpitate, and purely political issues will have to be decided under the scowl of the proletariat.
The women conductors on the Santiago tramways have been often described. They are not many, and they are not all of them the loveliest of their sex, but they are faithful and obliging. They collect the fares about as rapidly as men would do. The motorists on the trolleys are men.
A pleasing view of the poorer class of the population may be had on a national holiday or a Church celebration. I had it one day when the festival of Corpus Christi was commemorated. Both Church and State took part. In the Plaza de Armas were altars with burning candles. There were the troops in their gayest trappings; the infantry in blue breeches with yellow stripes, wearing white plumes; the cavalry with blue plumes, and the military bands with red plumes,—a gorgeous grouping of colors. It was a fine army showing, more imposing than the priestly conclave which, approaching from the adjoining streets, entered the plaza in front of the Cathedral. The parade was led by the Procession of the Cross, composed of various societies. Delegations from the different parishes followed. Next came the religious communities,—the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Capuchins, the Mercedarios, and the Augustinians. After them the parochial clergy brought up by the prebendary under the pallium, the archbishop being unable to occupy that place on account of illness. The pallium was preceded by the archbishop’s cross, and was conducted by local notabilities.
During the procession some of the women and many of the boys knelt in the streets and a few men doffed their hats, but the crowd as a whole was not devout and the ceremony was not impressive. It partook more of the nature of a perfunctory official function.
Though the snow of the Cordilleras is always in sight, Santiago does not have a snow-storm oftener than once in ten years. But it rains. During June, early Winter, I saw clear skies on not more than half a dozen days. My Chilean friends told me this was exceptional, and to prove it they brought the verified weather statistics. These showed an average of only 35 rainy days out of 365. The largest proportion was in August, when there were ten days on which rain fell. But the sky is overcast much oftener than this. There are very many days which are described by the expressive Spanish word triste, that gives to Nature the element of personality and means sombre and sorrowful. Besides, while the actual rainfall is not so great, there are seasons when the humidity is very disagreeable, and this is in Winter instead of in Summer. In January the relative humidity was 64.6, while in July (midwinter) it was 83.7. The average for the year was 73.29. The temperature is quite variable, and the difference between sun and shade is marked. In January the maximum in the shade was 68° Fahrenheit, and in the sun 85°. In July it was 46° in the shade and 57° in the sun. The mean average for the year was 69°.
The Chilean of the upper class is as indifferent as he thinks the humbler class ought to be to mere physical comfort. He resents the statement that not more than half a dozen dwellings in the capital have chimneys, and he is right in doing so, for that is a libellous exaggeration. Yet the majority of them are without chimneys, and their occupants get through the villanous Winter season with oil-stoves or perhaps even without this means of artificial warmth. I went an afternoon in midwinter to call on one of the local captains of industry. He had a handsome residence, and, happily, a parlor upholstered in warm colors. No other means of getting warm were provided. He came down to see me in his overcoat, and I had gained experience enough not to think of removing mine. “It is only a few months,” is the smiling explanation of shivering through the Winter. But the means to provide comfort during those few months are coming. The wealthy citizen now builds his residence with chimneys and open grates.
Life in Santiago—that is, social, professional, and business life—is only for the classes. The gulf between comfort and poverty—for it is simply comfort, since there are few great fortunes—is bridged by ignoring poverty. And it has to be confessed that, with wretchedness blinked out of sight, existence in the Chilean capital is agreeable. The city is both the heart and the pulse of the nation. The commercial habit—hardly industrial, for the factories are few—limits itself to an hour in the morning before breakfast and rather resents intrusion during that hour. Though he is at his office, the business man would rather have you come around after breakfast, since it spoils his mid-day meal to take up the work of the day before then. Some humorous experiences of my own, some polite postponements, satisfied me of the fixedness of this custom. In the afternoon there is real activity, concentration which in a few hours makes up for apparent slackness.
In professional and official affairs it is the same. An official appointment or a call of any nature on a public functionary should be made somewhere between half-past two and half-past four. I discovered that the official urbanity was greatest if the call could be made between three and four o’clock.
The social life is more of the clubs than of the home, yet there are many fine homes where a charming hospitality is dispensed. The breakfast, preferably on Sunday, is a favorite social function, beginning at mid-day and conducted with all the formality of an evening dinner. At a breakfast in the home of Mr. Emilio Bello Codecido, a colleague in the Pan-American Conference at Mexico, I met many of the leading people of Santiago, among them Mr. Auguste Matte, another colleague in that conference. Madame Bello is the daughter of former President Balmaceda. Again, Mr. Juan Walker Martinez, the brother of the Chilean minister in Washington, desiring to give me an opportunity to meet some of the principal men of the city, arranged a breakfast at the Union Club. When given on week days, these social breakfast functions presuppose no pressing business or professional engagements during the afternoon.
The Santiagonian is a night-hawk. His club life, and when he is not at the club his family life, does not begin till two or three hours after sundown. Every evening he is found at the Union Club, one of the best associations of gentlemen in South America. It may be that he is going to forego this practice for a few hours and accompany his wife and daughters to the opera or the ball, which celebrates some charity or a public function. Female society is satisfied with these diversions and with church-going. At the opera it is resplendent in Parisian costumes. Charity draws all its members. At a charitable performance in the Municipal Theatre one night I was assured I saw all that was lovely in the capital—and very lovely it was.
The Chilean women are less restricted by traditional Spanish formalities than their sex in other South American countries. They shop by themselves, and many are employed in the stores and similar places, but man is the master, and the women take pleasure in recognizing this. They go to the ball or the opera to be admired, and the strangers admire and continue to admire.
The chivalry of the male Chilean, while formal and precise, is rather commonplace. He gives the lady the inner side of the street, and will politely describe the arc of a great circle and cheerfully step off into the sewer that his gallantry in this matter of etiquette may not be questioned. But this is the limit of his concession, except that if he be of a literary turn he may write sonnets to her black eyes. He extends the first greeting. Without it his most intimate female acquaintance must not manifest the faintest sign of recognition. This custom is intensely exasperating to the visitor, who finds the Chilean women look so much alike that he may have calmly ignored his vis-à-vis at a social function while he has greeted with effusive politeness a lady who makes it apparent, though not disagreeably, that she never saw him before.
At the theatre the zarzuela, or one-act comedy, is as popular as in Spain. After the performance the clubs find all the men congregated there. The gambling is high. It has been said that the Chilean who forms a part in the social life of the country must be either a soldier, a priest, or a farmer. With the predominance of the army and navy, the first class would be certain. The priest is less an element than formerly, but the farmer is the constant factor. The latter class includes the professional men, lawyers and doctors, and the business men, for all are landed proprietors.
Sunday is the day for society, for drives to Cousiño Park, and to the Quinta Normal or Agricultural Experiment Station, which is also a zoölogical garden. The grounds are extensive and well wooded with sycamores and cypresses, but they impressed me as being badly neglected. Cousiño Park also had the appearance of unkemptness. Chile long ago abolished the bull-fight, and she does not permit a national lottery, though there is no interference with the sale of tickets for the Buenos Ayres drawing. Football and other athletic sports are in high favor. Santiago in this respect is an English town. The great attraction is the racing, and on a Sunday afternoon in the season the Carrera, or Club Hipico, gathers all that is fashionable and all that is animated.
Though Santiago has a delightful Summer climate,—the thermometer never gets above 85° Fahrenheit,—every one who is anybody has a fundo, or country estate, to which the family flits at the first approach of the heated season. Later in November all move to the seashore resort of Viña del Mar, near Valparaiso, and play golf.
The English group in Santiago is the largest of the foreign colonies, but it is not so extensive as the many English and Scotch names would lead one to suppose. These names are borne by Chileans whose great-grandfathers were from the British Isles, or a very few of whom were from the United States.
Newspapers in Chile are as much an institution as in the United States. This is true both of Santiago and of Valparaiso. El Mercurio, “The Mercury,” which is published in both cities, has fine buildings, superior in their conveniences to newspaper offices in the United States, and with provisions for editors, reporters, printers, and other employees that the Land of Journalism (I mean the United States) is a century behind in. Dining-rooms, private parlors, working-offices with baths, bedrooms, chess, for the working-staff of a daily newspaper! The Santiago office of El Mercurio is notable not only for its own facilities, which are very complete, but for its salons and other rooms which are maintained for the benefit of the public. In a newspaper office in the United States the patron is lucky if he can get standing-room against any kind of counter or railing in order to write his advertisement. In Santiago he may have a table and chair and take his time. In consulting the files he has all the luxury of a modern library reading-room. The salons in the “Mercury” building are thrown open to the public for receptions and similar functions. One afternoon I attended by invitation a concert given by the members of the visiting Italian Opera Company in the music-room. Members of the Diplomatic Corps, public functionaries, and all that was distinguished in professional and social life in the capital were present by invitation of the newspaper management.
The owner of El Mercurio, Mr. Augustin Edwards, is a young man. He is of the banking family of that name, is a member of the Congress, and has been Minister of Foreign Affairs. His journals publish more foreign and cable intelligence than any two newspapers in any city of a quarter of a million inhabitants in the United States.
While a large amount of telegraphic and local news is printed, the leader, or editorial on the foremost topic of the day, is a prominent feature of the daily issue, and one that carries great weight with the reading public. One evening at dinner, at the house of Mr. Alejandro Bertrand, the distinguished Chilean civil engineer, who was his country’s expert commissioner in the boundary dispute with Argentina, the talk turned on the negro question. There are no blacks in Chile, and one of the guests, a man of prominence in finance and politics, who had lived much in Europe, confessed his perplexity over the negro issue, and wanted to know something about the African race. The clearest exposition that I ever heard of the life-work of Booker Washington, and the most discriminating explanation of the race problem in the United States, were given by Mr. Silva, the leader writer on El Mercurio. Though he had spent some years in England, he never had visited the United States, yet he was thoroughly conversant with our national perplexity. It therefore may be understood that the leading problems of the United States are discussed with intelligence in Chile, though Chilean subjects may not always receive the same treatment in the journals of the United States.
Besides El Mercurio, Santiago has other vigorous papers. One of them is La Lei, “The Law.” The name is misleading, for it is merely a daily journal devoted to current topics. It represents radical political tendencies. Its editor, Mr. Phillips, was declared to me to be either feared or loved by every public man in Chile, and the alternations of fear and love were said to be as regular as the seasons. Here, then, was the ideal editor. In a call on Editor Phillips I was impressed with this feeling. His aggressive personality would be bound to make friends and enemies, and his independence in discussing public questions would be certain to insure ideal journalism.