2l6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



General view of an oficina and its surroundings. In the foreground is rich nitrate 

 land. The white in the distance is a salar, where no caliche has been found. 



ests, and in 1874, in return for the cancellation of a debt owed Chile, 

 Bolivia agreed not to impose any export tax on nitrate for twenty-five 

 years. Four years later, however, attempts were made to levy a tax of 

 ten cents per 100 pounds on all nitrate exported. When the Chilean 

 companies refused to pay the tax, the Bolivian authorities seized their 

 property and declared that it would be sold. Chile was forced to step in 

 to protect the interests of her citizens. Since Bolivia had entered some 

 years earlier into a treaty with Peru against Chile, Peru also was 

 dragged into the quarrel, the result of which was the beginning of war 

 by Chile against both Peru and Bolivia in 1879. 



It was an epoch-making conflict in which Chilean naval successes 

 against Peru were largely responsible for the outcome. The treaty of 

 peace, signed in 1883 found Bolivia driven out of her seacoast province, 

 Peru deprived of her nitrate lands, and the Chilean boundary pushed 

 more than four hundred miles northward. In some quarters the im- 

 pression is common that the treaty provided for a return of the nitrate 

 areas to Peru, if after ten years the people of the region should so vote. 

 Such a provision was applied to the province of Tacna, and has been ig- 

 nored by Chile, but Tarapaca, with its great nitrate resources, was 

 handed over "forever and unconditionally" (perpetua e incondicional- 

 mente). It was predicted then that possession of the nitrate lands 

 would ruin Chile, as guano and nitrate were believed to have ruined 

 Peru, but this gloomy forecast has not been verified. 



Since the war, and especially in the last fifteen years, a number of 

 things have led to great progress in the nitrate industry. Foreign cap- 

 ital, English, German, Belgian, French, Austrian, and some from this 

 country, has been added to the large investments made by Chileans. 

 Thus more than £20,000,000 of English capital alone is tied up in 



