2000 miles through Chile, the land of more or less

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Over the Rim into Antofagasta ... 3 Through Chile's Nitrate Desert into Its Metropolis

II Isolation and Self-Determination . . 18 Between the Mountains and the Sea a Hardy- Race Has Reared Its Home

CHAPTER I Through Chile's Nitrate Desert into Its Metropolis

AFTER weeks of travel by train, mule, automobile, and steamship on the earth's highest inhabited plateau I expected a reaction when we descended to the sea-coast of northern Chile. Stokes was that reaction.

The Comandanta and I were still thrilled with the wonders of South America — thrilled despite a chilly morning transfer from the comfortable state-rooms of the meter-gage Bolivian Railway to the clubby compartments of the narrow-gage Antofagasta & Bolivia Railway. The transfer was effected at the Bolivian town of Uyuni, which sustained its reputation as one of the coldest spots in South America. The bitter wind blew across the dismal desert, twelve thousand feet above sea level, just as advertised.

Stokes was surfeited with scenery. He had been with us over the Peruvian Andes, across isle-dotted and lofty Lake Titicaca, along an imposing procession of snow-capped Bolivian peaks, and past the colorful pipe-organ palisades at the lip of the pocket in which sits La Paz. Stokes had traveled that territory, selling American machinery, twelve years.

Because Stokes was a salesman he prevailed. Before we were fairly started on our day-long journey from Uyuni to the sea he had us playing bridge, with the Comandanta as his partner. I, who hate bridge, joined forces with "Pierre Palta" Popenoe, professional pursuer of plants for the United States Department of Agriculture.

So for hours as our long, slow train rolled through the Gran Salar de Uyuni, past lonesome adobe stations surrounded by blocks of glistening salt from that selfsame sea, past the great borax lakes, past fields of jagged rocks hurled in hotter days from the twin volcanoes, San Pedro and San Pablo, past hundreds of miles of sand and rock without one sign of green, Stokes abused me for looking out of the window instead of into my hand.

"That 's the trouble with you tourists," he grumbled. "You always want to see everything."

As is the South American custom, we spent the day in the dining-car. There were welcome interruptions for the Spanish high noon almuerzo or six-course breakfast, for the inevitable English four-o'clock tea, for a desert sunset that appealed even to Stokes. Then came an ample five-course dinner and, soon thereafter, bed.

At six the next morning the Comandanta and I rolled out of vicuna rugs, Mexican serapes, American bath-robes, and English railroad blankets to greet Old Ocean at the sleeping port of Antofagasta. Stokes and Popenoe were already on the station platform. Within ten minutes we knew we were in the land of mas 6 menos; in Chile, the land of more or less.

As our taxi scooted along smooth asphalt streets we asked the Hotel Londres portero when we might catch a south-bound steamer. He promptly replied in Spanish, "In four days, more or less." After a heated, vain protest at the airless, windowless rooms at Hotel Londres, the Comandanta inquired about desayuno. When might we expect that? The hotel portero or runner instantly answered, "Alas ocho, mas 6 menos" (At eight o'clock, more or less) . Our Chilean breakfast of coffee and toast was served in our rooms at exactly eight o'clock.

Out on the street the Spanish-speaking Popenoe asked his way to the American consulate. "It is in that direction, senor, three squares, more or less," the black uniformed policeman answered from beneath his helmet. Popenoe found the consulate exactly three blocks from where the policeman stood.

"When will Mr. Matthews, the consul, be in?" Popenoe asked the portero at the door of the consulate.

"At nine o'clock, more or less," murmured the guardian of the portal. At nine o'clock Mr. Matthews walked into his office.

There were many price-tags in the shop windows, but when consulted by his clerk the shopkeeper invariably replied, "reduce that for los Americanos three pesos, more or less." Daily bulletins in the railroad station announced frequent changes in passenger tariffs, corresponding to fluctuations in foreign exchange. But the hotel prices remained stable.

A neatly printed card hung on a wall in our room. It quoted the daily rate, including meals, at $32! We raised a row about that until the Jugoslav proprietor explained that in Chile our dollar-sign stood for the Chilean peso. At the current rate of exchange that meant that we were paying $3.20 a day for our board and lodging. We withdrew the protest, but not until we had complained bitterly at such an exorbitant charge.

The swarthy Jugoslav doubtless knew we were merely practising on him. Our Spanish was bad enough. He studied us with keen gray eyes, gently fondled his black mustache, and courteously said, "Como no?" Why not, indeed, for the rich North Americans when times were so hard in the nitrate country and the Chilean peso, which should be worth thirty-eight cents in American money, could be had at the banks for ten?

Along the waterfront streets thousands of brown-clad, brown-skinned men, women, and children loafed among their household goods waiting for the Government to send them from the idle nitrate fields to the more kindly central valley, where houses, meals, money, and maybe work would be furnished by Don Arturo Alessandri, President of the Republic of Chile.

"Is it wise to ship these people farther south when there is no work down there?" I asked a government official.

"Como no?" he replied. "These rotos will then be near the capital where Alessandri can control them. We have too many I.W.W.'s and Bolshevikis up here. Our rotos are our best workers. We must keep them in hand."

"When will these rotos be able to leave the streets of Antofagasta and go aboard ship?"

"In a week, more or less," the courteous official replied. Happily it was less in that case, for most of the government charges departed ahead of us to join in Santiago the great throngs of the marching men in brown, and Antofagasta was left in comparative peace.

Antofagasta is unusual if not unique among the cities of the world. Encircled by the Pacific Ocean and the northern Chilean desert, its normal population of seventy thousand lives largely upon mining and exporting Chilean nitrate of soda, known also as saliter and saltpeter. Antofagasta is the largest of several nitrate ports.

Geological ages ago some volcanic upheaval created the Chilean coastal mountain range and imprisoned between it and the Andes a vast salt sea. As the sea-water evaporated, beds of seaweed, bodies and bones of fish, and other marine growths became the nitrogen-bearing caliche that lies in great sheets beneath layers of gypsum sand or chucha, and agglomeration of chemicals and rocks called costra and a similar layer called tapa. In this barren region back of Antofagasta is the greatest body of mineral fertilizer the world has known.

For eight hundred years rival nations have battled for this unfriendly plateau overlooking Antofagasta.

Armies of the Peruvian Incas traversed its rugged hills and sandy pampas in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to exact tribute from Atacamas, Diaguitas, and Araucanians. The conquistador^ Diego de Almagro, skirted its Andean edge when in 1535 with five hundred Spaniards and a horde of Peruvian Indians he descended from Cuzco to Copiapo and failed to conquer Chile. Five years later Pedro de Valdivia, Pizarro's master of camp, led another band of Spanish adventurers across the Atacama Desert, paused where Antofagasta now stands, then marched to the Mapocho River, and founded Santiago.

In 1839 a Chilean army under General Manuel Bulnes crossed the unvalued nitrate fields, annihilated a Peruvian army at Yungay, and disrupted a Peruvian-Bolivian confederation.

The War of the Pacific, or the Nitrate War of 1879-83, was caused by Bolivia's attempts to tax Chilean-owned nitrate works at Antofagasta. This war cost Bolivia its seaboard, running from Antofagasta to Iquiqui, wrested the provinces of Tarapaca, Tacna, and Arica from Peru and added two hundred miles to Chile's coast-line. It also gave Chile a monopoly of South American nitrate and control of the world's nitrate supply.

Prom a strip of desert forty-five miles wide and 250 miles long Chile exported fifty million tons of nitrate before 1914. In 1913 this exportation amounted to 2,722,254 tons valued at $110,000,000 in American gold and representing 58 per cent of the world's consumption of nitrogenous substances of mineral origin. This production increased enormously between 1914 and 1919. In this connection the Chilean White Book of 1919 says:

Chile, notwithstanding her small representation in the world, was a factor of immense importance, almost — and we use this word weighing well the terms of comparison— almost as important as the United States. Chile was the producer of the powder and explosives with which the allied powers carried on the war. Without the nitrate, materia prima indispensable for making them, the United States would not have been able to supply the belligerents with munitions.

The coming of peace found two million tons of Chilean nitrate at the mines or in the warehouses of the Association of Nitrate Producers or waiting sale in London, where the "pool" tried to fix prices and find markets. There were 250,000 workers or workers' families in the Chilean nitrate fields when the World War ended. As in other industries, war-time over-production caused peace-time suffering.

Most of the 150 nitrate reducing and refining plants or oficinas, representing an investment of $200,000,000, closed. Only a few engineers and caretakers remained in charge of the fields from which the caliche is blasted and shoveled into crushers and boiling-pans and from which it is shipped as crystallized nitrate of soda for the trade.

Antofagasta lost a quarter of its population, as did Iquiqui, Taltal, and other nitrate ports. The hostile desert — perpetually arid because the Andean range saps the west-bound trade-winds and the cold Humboldt Current prevents precipitation from the Pacific — was once more almost depopulated as we crossed it into Antofagasta.

The fierce winds swirled about the mammoth copper mine at Chuquicamata. It almost stopped the trains up-bound to La Paz. An occasional caretaker, mounted Indian, or tireless prospector wiped the grit from his eyes or shaded them from the blistering sun. But the nitrate fields, which for years had yielded 70 per cent of the national income, awaited sale of two million tons of over-production, while the mining corporations watched the development of nitrogen manufacture from the air. It was thus we found the nitrate country and its metropolis.

As it waited and watched with the remainder of the nitrate region, Antofagasta was, in aspect, not unlike some of the California coastal cities. It had miles of level streets well asphalted by an

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American company. Its public market was modern and clean. Its few small plazas were bright with palms and semi-tropical plants kept green with water piped two hundred miles across the desert. Although close to the tropic of Capricorn, Antofagasta has a year-around springlike climate, for the Humboldt Current is just offshore.

On brown surrounding hills massive signs cut into surface rock urged the public to patronize local merchants. But there was little purchasing in spite of realizaciones (bargain sales), remates (auctions), and other inducements to the trade. Nitrate was down, and business was bad. Money was scarce and food prices high.

Only the dogs and cats seemed to thrive in Antofagasta. Felines and canines attained startling proportions, especially the canines. Once upon a time there must have lived in Antofagasta a white English bulldog of mighty prowess and Chilean virility, for his progeny had populated the land. With broad jaws, massive shoulders, flat backs, bowed legs, and stumpy tails, the great-grandsons of that noble sire trotted haughtily about Antofagasta sharing the spirit of their upstanding masters who had made the desert citv the most modern of Chilean communities.

Good times or bad, there is no one in Latin America to deny the beggar his rights. Saturday was beggars' day in Ant of agasta. Old men and women, husky boys and girls, sturdy children, all crowded the corners, preempted the sidewalks or stumped from store to store, dropping into practised pockets small coin donations or stiiffing into well worn sacks food and small supplies contributed by merchants in observance of ancient custom.

By nine at night Antofagasta retired to cinemas, clubs, and family dinners leaving the dark streets to cocheros and newsboys. About the only sound would be the clatter of a troop of caballeria or cavalrymen rounding the corner en route to some rendezvous. Only a few months before our advent Chile had mobilized twenty thousand armed men at the neighboring Peruvian border in response to a rumor that Peru was preparing for an invasion. Some said political powers in Santiago were seeking a diversion, but Chile is not adverse to showing its teeth and generally wins something by it. We wondered if another "invasion" impended.

Quite a bit of California enthusiasm was released at Antofagasta by Chileans, English, Americans, Spanish, Jugoslavs, and others. Nothing but optimism came from the lips of Senor Dr. Maxiliano Poblete C, in his seventh year as alcalde (mayor) of the city. He was a successful exponent of the theory that the public money should be expended for the public good. When not engaged in his medical practice he saw that Antofagasta got the asphalt streets, ornamented plazas, three-thousand-foot breakwater, and other improvements for which it was taxed. He fathered a law compelling erection of new buildings in stone, brick, or concrete instead of the mud and plaster characteristic of Latin America.

The punch and drive so typically Chilean were exemplified by Jose, who mounted the runningboard of our taxi the minute we arrived in Antofagasta and who was never far from us during our stay. Jose was a fletero or transfer man. He sought our business as soon as he laid eyes on us and almost before we had laid eyes on Antofagasta. As we taxied from railroad station to Hotel Londres that first morning Jose produced a card from the steamship company apparently recommending Jose. He seemed to know that the Comandanta, Popenoe, and I were going south to Valparaiso and that Stokes would stay at Antofagasta. We dismissed Jose tentatively because we were having our first argument in Chile, where many followed, over the taxi fare. In the end we left the case in Stokes's hands.

"What shall we pay this motor man?" I finally demanded in desperation.

"Let 's see. Four passengers and eight bags," the American salesman pondered. "Oh, I think we ought to give him ten pesos, more or less." So we paid the chauffeur ten pesos, about one dollar American, and turned our attention to other matters, among them Jose. He insisted on mattering.

There were three days of violent debate between Popenoe, our official spokesman, and Jose, who had produced a new card from my friend Archer Jones of Antofagasta, who endorsed Jose. The card was a forgery, but we did not know it then, nor did we know how Jose knew that we had secretly decided to abandon the all-rail route to Santiago and to sail south on the next ship.

BLASTING Caliche IN THE NITRATE DESERT

A CHILEAN NITRATE MINING CAMP

"Pierre Palta" Popenoe was an impressive orator. From near the apex of his long, lank frame issued a marvelous bass voice that rumbled and reverberated through the rambling hotel. Jose contended for thirty-five pesos as compensation for transferring our trio and our rive trunks and eight bags from hotel to dock by cart and from dock to steamer by rowboat.

Popenoe stood firmly upon a platform limited to twenty-three pesos. At the end of the third day of spellbinding, during which I distinctly heard the eagle scream thrice, Popenoe definitely discarded Jose and engaged Ramon at Popenoe's figures. Jose departed in dudgeon. But he was too much of a business man to remain angry long.

As Ramon rowed us through the breakers toward the bobbing steamer, Jose passed us in his own boat with two passengers. He had attached himself to the Chilean bridal couple who had permeated Hotel Londres during our stay in Antofagasta, and who were also going south.

As Jose passed us, close enough to endanger our baggage, which perched upon our rowboat's bows, he waved grandiloquently as if to say, " You see, we Chileans do not recognize defeat !"

Chapter II

Between the Mountains and the Sea a Hardy Race Has Reared its Home

MATE an army of haughty, adventurous Spaniards with a tribe of indomitable American Indians, allow the two strains to mingle for four hundred years in a remote and rugged region, award the growing human group a long series of martial successes, and there arises South America's most militant nation, the Chileans.

Almagro, Valdivia, and others of Pizarro's devil-may-care followers who fought the Araucanian Indians to a standstill — their standstill, not the Indians' — found themselves in the wilds of South America because they, also, were untamed and untamable.

When the swashbuckling conquistador es began to steal Indian women and the Indians to steal Spanish women, there was laid the foundation of the present population of Chile. The motto of modern Chile is "Por la razon 6 la fuerza" which is translated into "By reason or by force," or "By right or by might."

The Chileans are a proud, pugnacious, unbeaten nation of 3,750,000 fighters. They have fought for what they have. For what they may require they are as apt to fight as reason, although they may be counted upon to reason first. Just now they are reasoning with their Peruvian and Bolivian neighbors over the results of the Nitrate War of 1879-83, the "Banquo's ghost of South America."

Webster and experience teach that "chili, chile, or chilli" is Spanish for "red pepper." The encyclopedia says Chile, the country, derived its name from the Peruvian-Quechua- Indian words "chiri" meaning "cold," and "tchili" meaning "snow." Chile is, in fact, both hot and cold. It ranges from burning sands on tropical deserts to eternal snows on the Americas' highest mountain and to giant glaciers slipping into the southern polar sea. Although Chile is less than 250 miles wide, it is 2627 miles long from north to south, longer than from New

Orleans to the arctic circle or from New York to San Francisco.

The Chileans are a peppery people who supply the relish for Latin America's political table. Their ambitions have long seasoned South America's history. Through their restless activities they have made Chile a condimental country. Stir up Chile and you get a pungent suggestion of impending trouble. Meet the Chileans casually and they camouflage their national character by phrases most disarming such as their delightful mas 6 menos.

The Chileans are the offspring of isolation. The ancestors of the present inhabitants of this narrow lane between the Andes and the Pacific had to hustle for what they got. When they did not fight man they fought nature. Only within the last fortv years has nature revealed its riches to the Chileans. Hence only the fittest have survived in Chile.

Survivors of the early Spanish expeditions into Chile returned to Lima, the City of Kings, with disheartening tales of a goldless country whose unconquerable Indians repelled the white man. In the years following 1535-46 such Europeans as had the stamina to venture into

Chile were compelled to climb the snow-covered Andes, trudge through hundreds of miles of deadly desert, or beat their way in cockle-shell ships around frigid Cape Horn or through the treacherous Magellan Straits. The few who reached their destination found nature smiling only in the Chilean Central Valley between Santiago and Concepcion or in a few oases near the sea. Gold and precious stones were scarce. Chile was devoid of sinecures. Early arrivals, seeking plunder instead of development, found little fascination in Chile. For centuries Chile was one of Spain's poorest colonial investments.

Mountains were the millstones and the making of Chile. The Andean crest marked and still marks its eastern boundary. In the north this Andean range averages 15,000 feet in height; toward the center it soars 23,900 feet to the peak of Aconcagua, highest of all American mountains. Farther south, in "Swiss Chile," travelers may cross the divide into Argentina at an elevation of less than 4000 feet. Still farther south the Andes rise again, only to sink into the ocean off Cape Horn.

Many Chileans remember when the only short route between Buenos Aires and Santiago was through a pass 14,000 feet above the sea penetrated on mule or horse, frequently in blinding blizzards. In 1910 the Transandine Railway, a traction and cog-wheel combination, climbed the sides and tunneled the top of the Andes. In 1914 the Panama Canal was opened to navigation. Chile was in touch with the world.

But during the long critical period of its national development Chile was almost as much of a hermit nation as Tibet. The centuries of isolation— while fresh Spanish legions came out to fight and intermarry with warlike aborigines, and nature was not prodigal with her gifts — bred a centralized, self-sufficient people. Chile became the land of the Chileans.

Chile is still the land of the Chileans. Its population has developed without much immigration. A few Germans came in the fifties to southern Chile. Their descendants are numerous. In Tacna and Arica and elsewhere along the Peruvian border are about 12,000 Peruvians inherited from the Nitrate War. In the nitrate fields are a few thousand Jugoslavs. Living principally in Valparaiso, Santiago, and the Central Valley are some 50,000 pure-blood Spaniards, 25,000 Italians, 15,000 French, and

10,000 English and Americans. In the whole country there are not more than 8000 natives of other Latin- American countries and Armenians, Turks, Syrians, Arabians, Hebrews, Japanese, and Chinese. There are very few negroes. Slavery was abolished in Chile in 1811.

These nationals have intermarried among themselves and with the Araucanians in the south, but fully 3,000,000 of the 3,750,000 Chileans are of Spanish-Indian stock. Immigration remains negligible. There were fewer foreign-born residents in Chile in 1920 than in 1907. From 1910 to 1920 the white people of foreign origin in the United States increased from 32,243,377 to 36,398,953. Chile is not importing population because it has little land for free grants. Chile continues to develop its population.

The Chilean death-rate is about thirty per 1000, largely due to infant mortality, but the birth-rate is about thirty-nine per 1000. Government figures show an increase in Chile's population of 1.52 per cent per annum from 1895 to 1907. "Only five nations increased in population more rapidly than Chile," says the Chilean Blue Book, "Argentina, Uruguay, Aus-

200O MILES THROUGH CHILE

tralia, the United States of North America, and Brazil. But it should be remembered that all of these countries are continually receiving a great influx of immigrants, which is not the case with Chile."

Chile has worked out its own salvation within its borders and principally on its own resources. It has fought in several wars but has had only one revolution, in 1890, when President Balmaceda tried to rule against the wishes of the National Congress. Chilean political parties quarrel bitterly, but nothing happens to national unity.

State railways are equipped to transport troops from the southern port of Puerto Montt fifteen hundred miles through the interior of Chile to Antofagasta, close to the Peruvian border. Chile has two railroads reaching into Bolivia. Forty of Chile's sixty ports are visited by foreign shipping, or were until a new Chilean law limited all coastwise Chilean trade to ships of Chilean registry. Chilean capitalists are reaching out, particularly into Bolivia, to control resources and industries. Chile's control of the nitrate industry is perfected by a world-wide publicity organization. Chile has a snappy army and, for South America, an efficient navy. It is harnessing its water-power so that it may become a great manufacturing nation.

Since emerging from isolation Chile has taken prominent part in world affairs. While acting as minister of Chile in London, the Hon. Augustin Edwards declared for American solidarity in an address before the Chile- American Association of New York.

"There was a time," he said, "when Latin America was haunted by a specter called Anglo- Saxon Imperialism. To-day not only does no one (at least in Chile) believe in the American peril but every one hopes and expects much of the imagination and effort of the American people. A century ago the intimate and friendly understanding which the illustrious Canning succeeded in establishing with President Monroe consolidated the independence and liberty of all the peoples of America.

"Canning's policy, turning to the New World, as a source of life for the Old, ended, in close cooperation with Monroe, the machinations of the miscalled Holy Alliance and its sinister designs of conquest and reconquest in our continent. Tradition, then, and the very origin of liberty which we enjoy to-day, both proclaim that Latin America has nothing to fear and much to hope from the harmonious cooperation of the two great Anglo-Saxon powers. "

This was the same distinguished Chilean journalist who became president of the League of Nations and presided over the Fifth Pan- American Conference held in Santiago, Chile.

It was a Chilean, Professor Alejandro Alvarez, who proposed to the Institute of International Law at Grenoble a new plan for a World Association of States, to link the League of Nations, the Pan-American Union, and those governments not members of either.

Chile has been able to take its place among the nations of the world because during its isolation the Chileans became a homogeneous people. Now they are "more or less" on their way. And they are going to have their way or know why.

Chapter III

The San Francisco of the South Has Its Storms of Earth and Air

THE biologist, "Pierre Palta" Popenoe, undertook to get us off the steamer at Valparaiso.

Getting off the steamer at "Valpo" was much more of a sporting proposition than landing at Arica, Iquique, Antofagasta, Coquimbo, or other northern Chilean seaports. It was even more sporting than landing at Mollendo, Peru, where the Pacific waves roll high in the open roadstead and a steam-winch hoists your chair and you from a bouncing launch upon a thrice-welcomed quay. For Valparaiso was the paradise of fleteros.

Those initiated in South American travel will understand that, with the exception of Talcahuano-Concepcion, the Pacific coast ports from

i Copyright, 1923, by Robert M. McBride & Company, Inc.

Panama to Cape Horn are but poorly protected roadsteads, where one lands, if at all, via launch, lighter, or rowboat. This explains why the fletero flourishes on the West Coast of South America. This bus man of the sad sea waves was especially numerous and vociferous in Valparaiso, because "Valpo" is the largest of the West Coast ports.

We had rescued Popenoe from the "flu" in Bolivia. He gallantly proposed to rescue us from the fleteros in Valparaiso.

From the upper deck of the Santa Luisa we surveyed the bobbing fleet of Chilean water taxis, while their chauffeurs talked volubly in sign-language. Each fletero displayed a license tag and number. Each pointed with eloquence to the size, color, and gaudy cushions of his skiff. The port captain, harbor police, health inspector, and steamship agent came on board, concluded their business, and departed. The fleteros rushed the ship. Those who were not knocked off the emergency ladder presently reached our deck and mobbed us. The air was smoky with conflicting prices and terms.

"Leave it to Dr. Popenoe," advised the

THE CLIMBING CITY OF "VALPO"

Comandanta. "He will see us through, while we admire Valparaiso," she added.

Popenoe's Colombian-Peruvian Spanish was, in itself, a rebuke to the crude Castilian of the Chilean boatmen baggage hustlers. Popenoe's eloquence and endurance were equal to those of the besiegers. After a few minutes, he shouted above the clamor to us:

"You take the large, blue boat — Fletero Number Twenty-two. He will carry you two, your four trunks and eight bags to the hotel for thirty pesos, three dollars. I am going in the green boat, Fletero Number Forty-three. So-long. I got to hurry. Lots of business for me on shore. Look me up when you reach the Royal."

We thanked him and put our faith in Fletero No. 22, who had deceived Popenoe as to the size of his craft. But, after shipping much water and nearly sliding our trunks into the sea, he landed us at the mole, pushed us gently through the perfunctory custom-house, and delivered us promptly at our hotel room. There we paid and tipped him as became rich Yankees.

Hours afterward Popeno put in an appearance. In spite of his official credentials and government diploma, done in four colors and gold ink, he had been held up because his sampletrunks were filled with fancy fruit and flower specimens. The absurdity of their contents had confused the customs men. Why should a Yanqui turista carry such provender as this as personal baggage?

"The Good Samaritan always suffers," I remarked, hurrying away to survey "Valpo."

Valparaiso lies about one third of the way down the coast of Chile, approximately a thousand miles south of Peru. It is one of the great hillside cities of the world.

Awakening in its busy harbor and raising our eyes from the myriad liners, sea-tramps, war-ships, and lighters riding the water, we had seen to the east a metropolis rising from the sides of a huge horseshoe bay until it became a panorama a thousand feet high. In the picture were bits of Seattle, Messina, Constantinople, Trebizond.