THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE 



227 



The main street of Antofagasta, from the corner of the plaza. 



decidedly primitive, especially as regards sanitary arrangements. It is 

 quite true that the camp commonly is placed where the wind will not 

 carry the odors to the houses occupied by the manager and his sub- 

 ordinates. But in the bright sun and dry air of the desert, most dis- 

 ease germs do not thrive, and there filth, unpleasant as it may be, does 

 not lead to the sickness which it might cause elsewhere. In order to 

 get some return from the monthly assessment of a peso for doctor's 

 services, so it is said, the people commonly feign illness, until the free 

 medicine is received, whereupon the medicine promptly is thrown away. 

 There probably is some truth in all the claims that the lot of the nitrate 

 workers is not everything which could be desired, yet it is undeniable 

 that they are better off than a good many of their own countrymen who 

 are working elsewhere. 



Living in the nitrate pampa has some compensations, as in the feel- 

 ings inspired by the desert and especially in the beauty of its nights, 

 but not even the mighty Pacific can lend charm to the seaports which 

 act as middlemen between the oficinas and the outside world. Iquique, 

 Antofagasta, Taltal, Chaharal, Mejillones, Pisagua and Tocopilla, 

 ranging in population from 50,000 down to 5,000, suggest mining 

 towns of our far west in varying early stages of evolution. Some of 

 the foreign residents profess to find enjoyment there, as in a morning 

 plunge in the ocean and a brisk canter along the beach, and with the 

 clubs later in the day, but all too commonly the pleasures take the form 

 of hard drinking as the only way of varying the painful monotony of 

 existence. Iquique, the largest, generally is regarded as somewhat 

 better than the others, but one who visits the others first is comforted 

 mainly by the feeling that it must be hard to find anything worse. 



A picture of one of these ports does almost equally well for all the 



