166 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1917. 



respects, has made little effort to study or keep account of its mineral 

 deposits. 



The narrow strip of coast occupied by the Republic is in few 

 places more than 150 miles wide, but extends from the eighteenth to 

 the fifty-sixth degrees of south latitude- From latitude 20° to 36°. 

 a distance of 1,200 miles, this part of the Pacific slope is mineralized 

 in a complex and manifold way, while the remaining distance to 

 Cape Horn contains extremely few gold and silver deposits. This 

 is surely a remarkable feature. 



It is not my purpose to describe the great resources in copper 

 which have lately been developed in Chile; these deposits as a rule 

 contain little or nothing of the precious metals. Chile has never 

 yielded very large amounts of gold. At the present time the pro- 

 duction appears to be diminishing, as may be seen from the following 

 table, and does not exceed a few hundred thousand dollars per 

 annum. The silver production is a little more valuable, but scarcely 

 reaches 30,000 kilograms (960,000 ounces) per annum. At no time 

 has the silver reached the figures of Bolivia and Peru, although 

 the rich deposits of the northern coast during a short period in the 

 nineteenth century made Chile prominent among silver-producing 

 countries. 



The present moribund condition of the industry certainly appears 

 strange when we consider the almost continuous chain of mining 

 districts extending over a distance of 1.200 miles. 



The total gold production of Chile from the sixteenth century up 

 to 1906 is estimated by Herrman 1 at $212,000,000. or less than a 

 third of that of Colombia. 



The total production of silver is estimated at 6,600,000 kilograms, 

 only a small part, it will be observed, of the yield of Peru and 

 Bolivia. 



The northern half of Chile shows in general a geological structure 

 similar to that of the western cordillera of Peru. The Jurassic and 

 Cretaceous formations are strongly developed with contemporaneous 

 lava flows of great volume. Into these are intruded granite por- 

 phyries and diorite porphyries in smaller stocks, as well as many 

 batholithic masses of granodioritic rocks. Both of these kinds of 

 intrusions have brought mineral deposits. There are finally heavy 

 masses of late Tertiary lava flows, and in these we find a few repre- 

 sentatives of the type of precious metal veins which were formed 

 near the surface. The great majority of deposits are associated with 

 intrusive rocks and many of these carry tourmaline with copper 

 and gold, indicating that they were formed under conditions of high 

 temperature. It is necessary to read the descriptions critically, "for 



1 La Production en Chile de los Metales y Minerales Santiago de Chile (1903). See 

 also Malcolm Maclaren (Gold, p. 6G2 (London, 1890)). 



