The mineral wealth of Bolivia has been proverbial almost from time immemorial. The silver-mines of Potosi have long been celebrated as perhaps the richest deposit of silver ore in the world. From the year 1545, when they were discovered, to the year 1864, these mines, according to official data, produced the enormous sum of $2,904,902,690 of our money. Besides Potosi there are other rich silver-mines, and many large deposits of gold. The great want of these mines is skilled labor and improved modern machinery. In early days the Indians were forced to work them against their will, and were treated with great harshness and cruelty. The historical student will call to mind the efforts of philanthropists to mitigate their sufferings. When their labor could no longer be controlled, the mines fell into comparative decay. The Indians will not work them with energy and industry to-day. They doubtless hold in memory through their traditions the wrongs inflicted on their ancestors by merciless taskmasters. If worked by experienced miners, with all the improved modern machinery, the gold and silver deposits would yield as abundant returns, perhaps, as in the days of their early history. Recently a party of Californians have gone into the country and taken charge of a gold-mine. If a good many others would follow them, mining in Bolivia would experience a renaissance that would remind the Bolivians of the El Dorado of the olden time.

The most useful to mankind of all the natural products of South America was quinine, the drug made from the bark of the cinchona-tree, which was discovered in Bolivia by a Franciscan friar in the early days of the Conquest, and was called cinchona in honor of the Countess of Conchona, whose husband was the Viceroy of Peru. She introduced it into Spain as a remedy for fevers, and there is no drug in the catalogue that has been used in such quantities or with such success by suffering mankind. The entire supply formerly came from Peru and Bolivia, and it was known as Peruvian bark, but afterwards the forests along the entire chain of the Andes were found to contain it, and it furnished one of the chief articles of export from South America for three centuries. The supply has been greatly diminished by the destruction of the trees, as it was the habit formerly to cut down the trunk, and strip it as well as the branches of the bark. Nowadays the forests are protected by law, and the trees are allowed to stand, a portion of the bark being stripped off each year, which nature replaces again.

England, with that provident foresight which characterizes much of her political economy, several years ago sent agents into Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, under the direction of the celebrated botanist Mr. Spruce, and made a collection of cinchona plants, which were taken to Java, Ceylon, and India, and there have been transplanted and cultivated with great success and profit. It is found that under proper treatment the tree produces a very much greater amount of quinine, of a much superior quality, and at less cost than the bark can be gathered in the mountains of South America, so that shipments have almost entirely ceased, and the market receives its supply from the British possessions.

Another plant is coming into prominence, and its export has very largely increased within the last few years. This is the coca, from which cocoaine and other medicinal and nerve stimulants are made. In the valleys of the Andes there are, and have been from time immemorial, extensive plantations of the coca shrub. It is indigenous in these regions, but the natives of Peru and Bolivia cultivate the plant in terraces which are likened to the vineyards of Tuscany and the Holy Land. Erythroxylon coca is allied to the common flax, and forms, says Dr. Johnston, a shrub of six or eight feet, resembling our blackthorn, with small white flowers and bright green leaves. The leaves, of which there may be three or four crops in the year, are collected by the women and children, and dried in the sun, after which they are ready for use, and form the usual money exchange in some districts, the workmen being paid in coca-leaves. Among the Peruvians and Bolivians the coca-leaves are rolled with a little unslaked lime into a ball (acullico) and chewed in the mouth. Coca-chewing resembles in some respects the smoking of opium. Both must be taken apart, and with deliberation. The coca chewer, three or four times in the day, retires to a secluded spot, lays down his burden, and stretches himself perhaps beneath a tree. Slowly from the chuspa, or little pouch, which is ever at his girdle, the leaves and the lime are brought forth. The ball is formed and chewed for perhaps fifteen or thirty minutes, and then the toiler rises refreshed as quietly as he lay down, and returns to that monotonous round of labor in which the coca is his only and much-prized distraction. Some take it to excess, and to these the name of coquero is given. This is particularly common among white Peruvians of good family, and hence the name “Blanco Coquero” in that country is a term of reproach equivalent to our “habitual drunkard.” The Indians regard the coca with extreme reverence. Von Tschudi, the Austrian scientist, who made the most thorough study of the ancient customs of the Incas, says, “During divine worship the priests chewed coca-leaves, and unless they were supplied with them it was believed that the favor of the gods could not be propitiated. It was also deemed necessary that the supplicator for Divine grace should approach the priests with an acullico in his mouth. It is believed that any business undertaken without the benediction of coca-leaves could not prosper, and to the shrub itself worship was rendered. During an interval of more than three hundred years Christianity has not been able to subdue this deep-rooted idolatry, for everywhere we find traces of belief in the mysterious powers of this plant. The excavators in the mines of Cerro del Pasco throw chewed coca upon hard veins of metal, in the belief that it softens the ore and renders it more easy to work. The Indians even at the present time put coca-leaves into the mouths of dead persons, in order to secure them a favorable reception on their entrance into another world, and when a Peruvian on a journey falls in with a mummy, he, with timid reverence, presents to it some coca-leaves as his pious offering.”

The coca-plant resembles tea and hops in the nature of its active principles, although differing entirely from them in its effects. In the coqueros the latter are not inviting. “They are,” says Dr. Von Tschudi, “a bad breath, pale lips and gums, greenish and stumpy teeth, and an ugly black mark at the angles of the mouth. The inveterate coquero is known at the first glance; his unsteady gait, his yellow skin, his dim and sunken eyes encircled by a purple ring, his quivering lips, and his general apathy all bear evidence of the baneful effect of the coca-juice when taken in excess.” The general influence of moderate doses is gently soothing and stimulating; but coca has in addition a special and remarkable power in enabling those who consume it to endure sustained labor in the absence of other food.

Down the coast, just before reaching the city of Valparaiso, is an island which possesses an interest for every one who has been a boy. Occasionally an excursion visits the place, and the Englishmen, who constitute a large fraction of the population of Valparaiso, with what few Americans there are, go over to spend a day or two, and renew their youth. It is the island of Juan Fernandez, where Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, “who kept things tidy,” had the experience that has given the world of boys as much enjoyment as any that ever came from a book. There was a Robinson Crusoe—there is not a doubt of it—and there was a man Friday too, and the island stands to-day exactly as it is described in the narrative; but the surprising adventures of Mr. Crusoe as therein related do not correspond exactly with the local traditions of the story. The island was a favorite stopping-place for vessels in the South Seas, as it has good ship-timber, plenty of excellent water, abounds in fruits, goats, rabbits, and other flesh for food, and the rocks on the coast are covered with lobsters, shrimps, and crayfish. It was a popular resort for buccaneers also, who ran into a well-protected harbor to repair damages and get provisions. Juan Fernandez, a famous Spanish navigator, discovered it in 1563, and the King of Spain gave him a patent to the island, but as he never occupied it his title lapsed. In 1709 the Scotchman Selkirk, or Selcraig, became mutinous on board the ship Cinque Ports, and had to choose between being hung at the yard-arm or put ashore at Juan Fernandez alone. He took the latter alternative, and was left on the rocks with his sailor’s kit and a small supply of provisions. To his surprise, after he had been on the island a few days, he found a companion in an Indian from the Mosquito Coast of Central America, who some years before had come down on the pirate Damphier, and going ashore on a hunting expedition, was lost and abandoned by his comrades. This was the man Friday. Some years after, Selkirk and the Indian were rescued by Captain Rogers, of an English merchant-ship, and taken to Southampton, where the Scotchman told his story to Daniel Defoe, and it got into print, with some romantic exaggeration.

The island is accurately described in the story, and the visitor who is familiar with “Robinson Crusoe” can find the cave, the mountain-paths, and other haunts of the hero without difficulty; but Defoe has located it in the wrong geographical position, having placed it on the other side of the continent, and mixed up Montevideo with Valparaiso. It is about twenty-three miles long and ten miles wide in the broadest part, and is covered with beautiful hills and lovely valleys, the highest peak reaching an elevation of nearly three thousand feet. A hundred years ago the Spaniards introduced blood-hounds to kill off the goats and rabbits, and to keep the pirates away, but the scheme did not work. Upon her independence, in 1821, Chili made Juan Fernandez a penal colony, but thirty years after the prisoners mutinied, slaughtered the guards, and escaped. Then it was leased to a cattle company, which has now thirty thousand head of horned cattle and as many sheep grazing upon the hills. There are fifty or sixty inhabitants, mostly ranchmen and their families, who tend the herds and raise vegetables for the Valparaiso market.

Great care has been taken to preserve the relics of Alexander Selkirk’s stay upon the island, and his cave and huts remain just as he left them. In 1868 the officers of the British man-of-war Topaz erected a marble tablet to mark the famous lookout from which Mr. Crusoe, like the Ancient Mariner, used to watch for a sail, “and yet no sail from day to day.” The inscription reads: “In memory of Alexander Selkirk, mariner, a native of Largo, county of Fife, Scotland; who lived upon 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, and was taken off in the Duke, privateer, on February 12th, 1709. He died Lieutenant of H.B.M.S. Weymouth: 47 years. This tablet is erected upon Selkirk’s lookout by Commodore Powell and the officers of H.B.M.S. Topaz, A.D. 1868.”

No one ever goes to Juan Fernandez without bringing away rocks and sticks as relics of the place. There is a very fine sort of wood peculiar to the island which makes beautiful canes, as it has a rare grain and polishes well.

SANTIAGO.

THE CAPITAL OF CHILI.

In Valparaiso, as everywhere else in Chili, there is an intense prejudice against the United States, growing out of the attitude assumed by our Government during the late war with Peru. The prejudice has been aggravated and stimulated by the English residents. This, with the natural arrogance of the Chillanos, who think they have the finest country on earth, and that the United States is their only rival, makes it rather disagreeable sometimes for Americans who go there to reside. For this and other reasons our commerce with Chili has fallen off from millions to hundreds of thousands, and it will be difficult to increase it as long as the prejudice of the people exists, and lines of English, French, German, and Italian vessels connect Valparaiso with the markets of Europe.

There is no steam communication with the United States, and all freight is sent in sailing-vessels around the Horn or by way of Hamburg or Havre. The freight charges from Valparaiso to New York by way of the Isthmus are more than double those to the European ports, and it is about thirty per cent. cheaper to ship goods from New York to Europe, and from there to South America, than by way of Aspinwall and Panama. Passenger fares as well as freight are subject to this discrimination. One can go from Valparaiso to Europe via the Strait of Magellan—a voyage of forty-one days—cheaper than to Panama—a voyage of twenty days, which ought to be made in ten. It costs about ten cents per mile on a steamer from Valparaiso to the Isthmus, to California, or to New York, and about two cents a mile to Europe. As if this were not enough, the steamship company, a British corporation which controls navigation on the west coast, arranges its time-tables so as not to connect with the New York steamers at the Isthmus, and its steamers usually arrive at Panama the day after the Pacific Mail ship leaves Aspinwall, so as to subject the traveller to the expense and annoyance of ten days’ delay on the fever-haunted Chagres. Freight and mails receive the same treatment, and every possible obstacle is raised to divert trade from the United States to Europe.

Valparaiso means “the Vale of Paradise,” but somehow or other there was a misconception in this particular, for there is no vale and no symptoms of Paradise. An almost perpendicular mountain ridge forms a crescent around the bay, towards the shores of which descend steep, rocky escarpments. Here and there watercourses have furrowed ravines, or barancas, as they are called, which offer the only means of reaching the outer world. Along the narrow strip of sand which lies between the sea and the cliffs the town stretches three or four miles. In some places there is width enough for only a single street, at others for three or four running parallel to each other, but they only extend a few blocks. The one street, the only artery of commerce in Valparaiso, is “the Calle Victoria,” stretching around the entire harbor, and skirted by all the banks and hotels, the counting-houses of the wholesale firms, the shops of the retailers, the Government buildings, and the fine private residences. The rocky cliffs have been terraced as the town has grown, and the city now extends back upon the hills a long distance, one man’s house being above another’s, and reached by stairways, winding roads, and steam “lifts,” which carry passengers up inclined planes, like those at Niagara and Pittsburg. What roads there are were laid out by the goats that formerly fed upon the mountain side, and these twist about in the most confusing and circuitous fashion. One has to stop and pant for breath as he climbs them, and an alpenstock is needed in coming down. The hacks in Valparaiso have three horses attached to them, and the teaming is done in carts drawn by four oxen.

An evening view of Valparaiso from a steamer in the bay is quite novel, as the lines of lights, one above the other, give the appearance of a city turned up on end. Electric lamps are placed upon the crests of the cliffs, throwing their rays over into the streets and upon the terraces below with the effect of moonlight. During the day, however, the irregular rows of houses, of different shapes and elevations, clinging to the precipices, look as if a strong wind might blow them overboard, or an earthquake shake them off into the bay.

The business portion of Valparaiso along the beach shows some fine architecture, more elaborate than is to be seen elsewhere in Central and South America, there being a rivalry in handsomely carved façades and other adornments. The shops and stores are as large, and contain as complete an assortment of goods, as those in any city in the world. There is no city in the United States having the population of Valparaiso (125,000) with so many fine shops, and such a display of costly and luxurious articles. The people are wealthy and prosperous, the foreign element is large and rich, and the place is famous, as is Santiago, the capital, for the extravagance of its citizens. Some of the private residences are palatial in their proportions and equipments, and millions of dollars are represented under the roofs of bankers and merchants. There are clubs as fine as the average in New York or London, public reading-rooms, libraries, picture-galleries, and all the elements which go to make up modern civilization. The parks and plazas are filled with beautiful fountains, and with statuary of bronze and marble, much of which, to the shame of Chili, was stolen from the public and private gardens of Peru during the late war. The Custom-house is being torn away to give place to a magnificent monument to Arthur Pratt, an Irish hero of that struggle. Pratt’s reckless courage made him the ideal of all that is great and noble in the mind of the Chillanos, who have erected a monument to his memory in nearly every town. Streets and shops, saloons, mines, opera-houses, and even lotteries are named in his honor, and the greatest national tribute is to destroy the old custom-house in order to erect his monument in the most conspicuous place in the principal city.

The oddest thing to be seen in Valparaiso is the female street-car conductors. The street-car managers of Chili have added another occupation to the list of those in which women may engage. The experiment was first tried during the war with Peru, when all the able-bodied men were sent to the army, and proved so successful that their employment has become permanent, to the advantage, it is said, of the companies, the women, and the public. The first impression one forms of a woman with a bell-punch taking up fares is not favorable, but the stranger soon becomes accustomed to this as to all other novelties, and concludes that it is not such a bad idea after all. The street-cars are double-deckers, with seats upon the roof as well as within, and the driver occupies a perch on the rear platform, taking the fare as the passenger enters. The Chillano is a rough individual; he is haughty, arrogant, impertinent, and abusive. There is more intemperance in Chili than in any other of the South American States, and consequently more quarrels and murders, but the female conductors are seldom disturbed in the discharge of their duties, and when they are, the rule is to call upon the policemen,

who stand at every corner, to eject the obstreperous passenger.

Street-car riding is a popular amusement with the young men about town. Those who make a business of flirting with the conductors are called “mosquitoes” in local parlance, because they swarm so thickly around the cars, and are so great a nuisance. Not long ago a comic paper printed a cartoon in which some of the best-known faces of the swells of Valparaiso appeared on the bodies of mosquitoes swarming around the car of “Conductor 97,” who had the reputation of being the prettiest girl on the line. This put a stop to the practice for a while, and caused some of the fashionable young men to retire to the country, but it was soon resumed again. The conductors, or conductresses, are usually young, and sometimes quite pretty, being commonly of the mixed race—of Spanish and Indian blood. They wear a neat uniform of blue flannel, with a jaunty Panama hat, and a many-pocketed white pinafore, reaching from the breast to the ankles, and trimmed with dainty frills. In these pockets they carry small change and tickets, while hanging to a strap over their shoulders is a little shopping-bag, in which is a lunch, a pocket-handkerchief, and surplus money and tickets. Each passenger, when paying his fare, receives a yellow paper ticket, numbered, which he is expected to destroy. The girls are charged with so many tickets, and when they report at headquarters are expected to return money for all that are missing, any deficit being deducted from their wages, which are twenty-five dollars per month.

The women of Chili are not so pretty as their sisters in Peru. They are generally larger in feature and figure, have not the dainty feet and supple grace of the Lima belles, and lack their voluptuous languor. In Valparaiso half the ladies are of the Saxon type, and blonde hair looks grateful when one has seen nothing but midnight tresses for months. Here, too, modern costumes are worn more generally than in other South American countries, and the shops are full of Paris bonnets. But the black manta, with its fringe of lace, is still common enough to be considered the costume of the country, and is always worn to mass in the morning. The manta is becoming to almost everybody. It hides the defects of homely forms and figures, and heightens grace and beauty. It makes an old woman look young, a stout woman appears more slender under its graceful folds, and even a skeleton would look coquettish when wrapped in the rich embroidery which some bear.

In Chili mantas and skirts of white flannel are worn by penitentas—women who have committed sin, and thus advertise their penitence, or those who have taken some holy vow to get a measure nearer heaven, and who go about the street with downcast eyes, looking at nothing and recognizing no one. They hover around the churches, and sit for hours crouched before some saint or crucifix. In the great cathedral at Santiago and in the smaller churches everywhere these penitentas, in their snow-white garments, are always to be seen on their knees, or posing in other uncomfortable postures, looking like statues. They cluster in groups around the confessionals, waiting to receive absolution from some fat and burly father, that they may rid their bodies of the mark of penitence they carry, and their souls of sin. Ladies of high social position and great wealth are commonly found among the penitentas, as well as young girls of beauty and winning grace. The women of Chili are as pious as the men are proud, and this method of securing absolution is quite fashionable. Souls that cannot be purged by this penitential dress retire to a convent in the outskirts of the city, called the Convent of the Penitentes, where they scourge themselves with whips, mortify the flesh with sackcloth, sleep in ashes and upon stone floors, and feed themselves on mouldy crusts, until the priests by whose advice they go give them absolution. They are usually women who have been unfaithful to their marriage vows, or girls who have yielded to temptation. After the society season and the carnivals, at the end of the summer, when people return from the fashionable resorts, and at the beginning of Lent, these places are full. For those whose sins have been too great to be washed out by this process, whose shame has been published to the world, and who are unfitted under social laws to associate with the pure, other convents are open as a refuge. Young mothers without husbands are here cared for, and their babes are taken to an orphan asylum in the neighborhood, to be reared by the nuns for the priesthood and other religious orders.

It was from one of these places that the famous Henry Meiggs got his second wife, and the adventure is still related with great gusto by the gossips of Chili. An American dentist named Robinson lived in the same block on which the convent was situated, and from the roof of his house the garden of the nuns was plainly visible. Boccaccio never told a more romantic tale, for it involved notes tied to stones and thrown into the garden, rope-ladders, excited nuns, infuriated parents, and an outraged Church. But the adventure was followed by forgiveness and marriage, and the widow now lives in Santiago, in the luxury which her legacy from the great railroad contractor provides.

In the orphan asylum at Santiago there are said to be two thousand children of unknown parentage, supported by the Church, and this in a city of two hundred thousand people. There is a very convenient mode for the disposition of foundlings. In the rear wall surrounding the place is an aperture, with a wooden box or cradle which swings out and in. A mother who has no use for her baby goes there at night, places the little one in the cradle, swings it inside, and the nuns on guard hearing a bell that rings automatically, take the infant to the nursery. The next morning the mother, if she has no occupation to detain her, applies for employment as a wetnurse. However this plan may be regarded by stern moralists, it is certainly an improvement on infanticide, a crime almost unknown in Chili. But one may hunt the country over to find a house of correction for men. Sin, shame, and penitence appear to be the exclusive attributes of the weaker sex. Men are never seen at the confessional; they never wear white wrappings to advertise their guilt; and at mass in the morning the average attendance is about one man to every hundred women.

Santiago is reached from Valparaiso by a railway which is run on the English plan, and is similar in its equipment and system of management to those of Europe. The scenery along the line is picturesque, the snow-caps of the Andean peaks being constantly in view, and Aconcagua, the highest mountain on this hemisphere, can be seen nearly the entire distance. A few miles from Valparaiso, and the first station on the road, is Vin del Mar, the Long Branch of Chili, where many of the wealthy residents of the country have fine establishments, and usually spend the summer. It is by far the most modern and elegant fashionable resort in South America, and reminds one of the popular haunts along the Mediterranean. The journey to Santiago is made in about five hours, and one is agreeably surprised when he arrives to find in the capital of Chili one of the finest cities on the continent.

Although the climate of Santiago is similar to that of Washington or St. Louis, the people have a notion that fires in their houses are unhealthful, and, except in those built by English or American residents, there is nothing like a grate or a stove to be found. Everybody wears the warmest sort of underclothing, and heavy wraps in-doors and out. The people spend six months of the year in a perpetual shiver, and the remainder in a perpetual perspiration. It looks rather odd to see civilized people sitting in a parlor, surrounded by every possible luxury that wealth can bring (except fire) wrapped in furs and rugs, with blue noses and chattering teeth, when coal is cheap, and the mountains are covered with timber. But nothing can convince a Chillano that artificial heat is healthful, and during the winter, which is the rainy season, he has not the wit to warm his chilled body. It is odd, too, to see in the streets men wearing fur caps, and with their throats wrapped in heavy mufflers, while the women who walk beside them have nothing on their heads at all. During the morning, while on the way from mass, or while shopping, the women wear the manta, as they do in Peru, but in the afternoons, on the promenade, or when riding, they go bareheaded. Although the prevailing diseases are pneumonia and other throat and lung complaints, and during the winter the mortality from these causes is immense, the Chillano persists in believing that artificial heat poisons the atmosphere; and when he visits the home of a foreigner, and finds a fire, he will ask that the door be left ajar, so that he may be as chilly as usual. At fashionable gatherings, dinner-parties, and that sort of thing, I have seen women in full evening-dress with bare arms and shoulders, with the temperature of the room between forty and fifty Fahrenheit. They often carry into the salon or dining-room their fur wraps, and wear them at the table, while at every chair is a foot-warmer of thick llama wool, into which they poke their dainty slippered toes. These foot-warmers are ornamental as well as useful, have embroidered cases, and are manufactured at home, or can be purchased of the nuns, who spend much of their time in needle-work.

Every lady seen on the street in the morning carries a prayer-rug, often handsomely embroidered, which she kneels upon at mass to protect her limbs from the damp stone floors of the churches, in which there are never any pews. It used to be the proper thing to have a servant follow my lady, bearing her rug and prayer-book, but that fashion has now become obsolete.

The shops do not open until nine or ten o’clock in the morning, close from five to seven to allow the proprietors and clerks to dine, and are then open again until midnight, as between eight and eleven o’clock at night most of the retail trading is done. The finest shops are in the arcades or portales, like the Palais Royal in Paris, and are brilliantly lighted with electricity. Here the ladies gather, swarming around the pretty goods like bees around the flowers, and of course the haughty and impertinent dons come also to stare at them. It seems to be considered a compliment, a mark of admiration, to stare at a woman, for she never turns away. To these nightly gatherings come all who have nothing serious to detain them, and the flirtations begun at the portales are the curse of the women of Santiago. It is not rude to address a lady who has returned your glance, and while she may repulse her admirer, she will nevertheless boast of the attention as a pronounced form of flattery.

The shops are full of the prettiest sorts of goods, the most expensive diamonds, jewellery, and laces. The Santiagoans boast that everything that can be found in Paris can be purchased there, and one easily believes it to be true. There is plenty of money in Chili; the people have a refined taste and luxurious habits. Many of the private houses are palatial, and the toilets of the women are superb. The equipages to be seen in Santiago are equal to those of New York or London, and the Alameda, on pleasant afternoons, is crowded with handsome carriages, with liveried coachmen and footmen, like Central Park or Rotten Row.

The Alameda is six hundred feet in width, broken by four rows of poplar-trees, and stretches the full length of the city—four miles—from “Santa Lucia” to the Exposition Park and Horticultural Gardens. In the centre is a promenade, while on either side is a drive-way one hundred feet wide. The promenade is dotted with a line of statues representing the famous men or commemorating the famous events in the history of Chili, a country which has assassinated or sent into exile some of her noblest sons, but never fails to perpetuate their memory in bronze or marble. On the Alameda, from three to five o’clock every afternoon during the season, several military bands are placed at intervals of half a mile or so, and the music calls out all the population to walk or drive. During the summer the music is given in the evening instead of the afternoon, when the portales are deserted for the out-door promenade.

Fronting the Alameda are the finest palaces in the city, magnificent dwellings of carved sandstone often one or two hundred feet square, with the invariable patio and its fountains and flowers in the centre. Houses which cost half a million dollars to build and a quarter of a million to furnish

are common; and there are some even more expensive. The former residence of the late Henry Meiggs, surrounded by a forest of foliage and a beautiful garden, stands in the centre of a park eight hundred feet square. It is a conspicuous example of extravagance, having cost a mint of money, every timber and brick and tile being imported at enormous expense. It is at present unoccupied, and in a state of decay, there being no one, since the death of Meiggs, with the courage or the means to sustain such grandeur. But though the nabobs seek the boulevard of the city to display their wealth and architectural taste, some of the side streets have residences quite as grand, and even more aristocratic. These more retired quarters have an air of gentility which the Alameda has not acquired—a sort of established aristocratic repose—a riper, richer, and more honorable quiet, that suggests something of social distinction and haughty exclusiveness, venerable solitude and commercial solidity. Another monument to the extravagance of men is known as “O’Brien’s Folly.” It is a magnificent structure, modelled after a Turkish palace, and its cost was fabulous. The owner was an Irish adventurer, who discovered one of the richest silver mines in Chili, and who lived like a prince until his money was gone. His castle is now unoccupied, and he is again in the mountains prospecting for another fortune.

“Santa Lucia” is the most beautiful place I have seen in South America. It is a pile of rocks six hundred feet high, cast by some volcanic agency into the centre of the great plain on which the city stands. It was here that the United States Astronomical Expedition of 1852, under Lieutenant Gillis, made observations. Before that time, and as far back as the Spanish Invasion, it was a magnificent fortress, commanding the entire valley with its guns. Tradition has it that the King of the Araucanians had a stronghold here before the Spaniards came. After the departure of the United States expedition Vicunæ McCenna, a public-spirited man of wealth in Santiago, undertook the work of beautifying the place. By the aid of private subscriptions, and much of his own means, he sought all the resources that taste could suggest and money reach to improve on nature’s grandeur. His success was complete. Winding walks and stairways, parapets and balconies, grottoes and flower-beds, groves of trees and vine-hung arbors, follow one another from the base to the summit; while upon the west, at the edge of a precipice eight hundred feet high, are a miniature castle and a lovely little chapel, in whose crypt Vicunæ McCenna has asked that his bones be laid. Below the chapel, three or four hundred feet on the opposite side of the hill, is a level place on which a restaurant and an out-door theatre have been erected. Here, on summer nights, come the population of the city to eat ices, drink beer, and laugh at the farces played upon the stage, while bands of music and dancing make the people merry. This is the resort of the aristocracy. The poor people go to Cousino Park, at the other end of the Alameda, drink chicha, and dance the cuaca (pronounced quaker), the Chillano national dance.

The cuaca is a sort of can-can, except that it is decent, and the men instead of the girls do the high kicking. But when the dancers are under the influence of chicha—that liquor which tastes like hard cider, but is ninety per cent. alcohol—skirts and modesty are no impediments to the success of the dance. The couples pair off and face each other, while on benches near by are women thrumming guitars and singing a wild barbaric air in polka time. Each woman and man has a handkerchief which he or she waves in the air, and they sway around in postures that are intended to show the grace and suppleness of the performer, and often do. The dance usually ends with a wild carousal, in which men and women mingle promiscuously, embrace each other, and then go off to the chicha bars to get stimulants for the next. It is common in fashionable society to end the tertulias with the cuaca, as in the United States with the ancient “Virginia reel;” and if the young people are unusually hilarious, scenes occur which watchful dowagers desire to prevent. School-girls at the convents dance the cuaca when the nuns will allow them; and although in its ordinary form it is not nearly so immodest as some of our dances, license has been taken so often as to bring it into disrepute. One evening at the opera a pretty married woman was pointed out as the most graceful and agile cuaca dancer in Chili, and it was asserted that she could throw her heels higher than her head.

At the other end of the Alameda are the Exposition grounds and Horticultural gardens, laid out in good style, and improved to the highest degree of landscape architecture. There is a fine stone and glass building, a miniature copy of the Crystal Palace in London, used as the National Museum of Chili, whose contents were mostly stolen from Peru during the late war. A zoological garden has been added, to exhibit the animals brought from Peru, like the curiosities of the museum, as contraband of war. The elephant died from the severity of the climate, two of the lions are missing from the same cause, and the rest of the menagerie are suffering from exposure and cold to which they are unaccustomed.

The opera-house at Santiago is owned by the city, and is claimed to be the finest structure of the sort in all America. It certainly surpasses in size, arrangement, and gorgeousness any we have in the United States. It is built upon the European plan, with four balconies, three of which are divided off into boxes upholstered in the most luxurious manner. The balconies are supported by brackets, so that there are no pillars to obstruct the view. Under the direction of the mayor, each year, the boxes are sold at auction for the season, and the receipts given, in whole or in part, as a subsidy to the opera management.

Everywhere one goes in Santiago and other cities in Chili are to be seen the ornaments of which Peru was so mercilessly plundered—statuary and fountains, ornamental street-lamps, benches of carved stone in the parks and the Alameda, and almost everything that beautifies the streets. Transports that were sent up to Callao with troops brought back cargoes of pianos, pictures, furniture, books, and articles of household decoration stolen from the homes of the Peruvians. Lampposts torn up from their foundations, pretty iron fences and images from the cemeteries, altar equipments of silver from the churches, statuary from the parks and streets, and everything that the hands of thieves and vandals could reach, were stolen. Clocks—one of which now gives time to the marketplace of Santiago—were taken from the steeples of the churches, and even the effigies of saints were lifted from the altars and stripped of the embroideries and jewels they had received from their devotees. In the courtyard of the post-office at Santiago are two statues of marble which cause the American tourist to start in surprise, for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln stand like unexpected ghosts before him. Their presence is not announced in any of the guide-books, which is accounted for by the fact that they, like most everything else of the kind in Chili, were brought from Peru.

The new hotel, in the eyes of foreigners who have been compelled to stop at the old ones, is the finest ornament in Santiago. It is a magnificent structure, with three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of furniture from Paris, and a five thousand dollar cook from the same place. All the rooms have grates for fires—which is an innovation—and are furnished as handsomely as any of the hotels in New York, while the restaurant is as good as Delmonico’s. Of course there must be some oddity about the place—it would not be suited to the country if there were not—and here it is that the bar is placed in the café where the ladies lunch. It is the only hotel bar in South America; and the proprietor, who wanted to introduce all the modern improvements, was rather bewildered in selecting the location of this one. It is a gorgeous affair of silver and crystal, and the ladies admire it as much as do the men. At first they were disposed to walk up and say, “The same for me, if you please,” with their brothers and husbands, but have been convinced that the proper form is to sit at the tables and take their drinks there. To see a lady drinking a cocktail in the bar-room of the Grand Central of Santiago may startle the prohibitionist who goes there, but it is quite as much the fashion as is the sucking of mint-juleps through a straw on the balconies of a Long Branch hotel.

The Chillano is the Yankee of South America—the most active, enterprising, ingenious, and thrifty of the Spanish-American race—aggressive, audacious, and arrogant, quick to perceive, quick to resent, fierce in disposition, cold-blooded, and cruel as a cannibal. He dreams of conquest. He has only a strip of country along the Pacific coast, so narrow that there is scarcely room enough to write its name upon the map, hemmed in on the one side by the eternal snows that crown the Cordilleras, and on the other side by six thousand miles of sea. He has been stretching himself northward until he has stolen all the sea-coast of Bolivia, with her valuable nitrate deposits, all the guano that belonged to Peru, and contemplates soon taking actual possession of both those republics. He has been reaching southward by diplomacy as he did northward by war; and under a recent treaty with the Argentine Republic he has divided Patagonia with that nation, taking to himself the control of that valuable international highway, the Strait of Magellan, and the unexplored country between the Andes and the ocean, with thousands of islands along the Pacific coast whose resources are unknown. By securing the strait, Chili acquired control of steam navigation in the South Pacific, and has established a colony and fortress at Punta Arenas by which all vessels must pass.

Reposing tranquilly now in the enjoyment of the newly acquired territory along the Bolivian and Peruvian border, and deriving an enormous revenue from the export tax upon nitrate, the Chillano contemplates the internal dissensions of Peru, and waits anxiously for the time when he can step in as arbitrator and, like the lawyer, take the estate that the heirs are silly enough to quarrel over. It is but a question of years when not only Peru but Bolivia will become a part of Chili; when the aggressive nation will want to push her eastern boundary back of the Andes, and secure control of the sources of the Amazon, as she has of the navigation of the strait.

On the beautiful Alameda of Santiago stands a marble monument erected several years ago, after the partition of Patagonia, to commemorate the generosity of the Argentine Republic. That statue will some day be pulled down by a mob. The people are already regretting the impulsive cordiality which suggested it, and are looking with jealous eyes at the progress and prosperity of their eastern neighbor. But Chili will find in the Argentines a more formidable foe than the nation has yet met, and her generals will have some of the conceit taken out of them if the armies of the two ever come into collision. Although the Argentine Republic is making more rapid strides towards national greatness, there is no