AWAKENING OE ARGENTINA AND CHILE 



137 



tern. We are on the northern borders of 

 Patagonia, the synonym for remoteness 

 and isolation. Yet within its confines are 

 to be found immense sheep ranches, man- 

 aged not only by Argentines, but the 

 largest and best of them by Scotchmen 

 and Australians, who direct the invest- 

 ment of English capital. National rail- 

 ways have been extended at government 

 cost from several ports of the Atlantic 

 coast into the interior, and when the wave 

 of prosperity once more returns to Ar- 

 gentina, as following the present depres- 

 sion it soon will, Patagonia will invite 

 still larger investments of capital and take 

 rank among the growing territories of 

 the Republic. 



A HIDDEN SWITZERLAND 



One is constantly surprised at the mag- 

 nitude of the far southern country. Hid- 

 den in the Andes of Patagonia and occu- 

 pying but a small part of their great 

 length is a country as large as Switzer- 

 land — a region of beautiful lakes, forests, 

 and snow-covered peaks, 



We have now spoken of southern Bra- 

 zil and of Argentina. There remains of 

 the temperate lands of South America 

 only Chile, that longest and narrowest of 

 all the countries of the world. Having a 

 greater extent from north to south even 

 than Argentina, it stretches 2,700 miles, 

 from Cape Horn to the deserts of Ata- 

 cama, within the tropics. Its width is 

 rarely more than 125 miles from the 

 ocean to the Andean crest. If we were 

 to place it upon a similar stretch of coast 

 in North America, it would cover Lower 

 California, California, Oregon, Washing- 

 ton, and British Columbia to the St. Elias 

 district of Alaska. 



Chile is divided into three sections by 

 the natural features of the Pacific slope 

 of the Andes. The northern is that of 

 the semi-arid and desert region, which 

 reaches from Peru southward to Valpa- 

 raiso. It is an utter desert in the north 

 and becomes less inhospitable toward the 

 south. It is traversed from the Andes to 

 the coast by short, deep valleys, sepa- 

 rated by high spurs of the mountains, and 

 communication from north to south has 

 always been exceedingly difficult. Nev- 



ertheless, the Chilean engineers have 

 found a route by which to extend the 

 State railway which shall link Santiago 

 with the territories conquered from Peru. 



THE HEART OP CHIEE 



The central section extends through 9 

 degrees of latitude for a distance of about 

 600 miles from Valparaiso to the island 

 of Chiloe, south of Puerto Montt. This 

 is the heart of Chile, the only portion of 

 the country which can support a suffi- 

 cient population to constitute a nation. 

 The area is not large, about 100,000 

 square miles, and much of it is occupied 

 by mountain ranges of great height and 

 ruggedness. 



But between the Andes and the coast 

 range there extends in this section a val- 

 ley similar to that of California, which is 

 the seat of the Chilean people. Many 

 rivers rising in the Andes descend to it 

 and meander more or less directly west- 

 ward through the coast range of the Pa- 

 cific ; but the intervening divides are no- 

 where of such altitude as to interrupt the 

 continuity of the great valley that extends 

 from north to south. Santiago is situ- 

 ated at its northern end, and flourishing 

 cities are located at each favorable point 

 on the railway that connects the capital 

 with Puerto Montt. 



The climate as we go from north to 

 south becomes ever more humid, and we 

 pass from the irrigated lands about San- 

 tiago to the dense forest swamps of the 

 southern portion of the district. While 

 much of the land has been cleared or is 

 in the process of clearing, in a state 

 which reminds one of our own Pacific 

 coast 30 years ago, other areas remain 

 impenetrable forests, still unexplored 

 after nearly 400 years of occupation of 

 the country. 



The third section of Chile, extending 

 southward from Puerto Montt through 

 14 degrees of latitude to Cape Horn, is 

 like our southern Alaskan coast — a 

 stretch of islands and peninsulas broken 

 by intricate channels and profound fiords 

 that penetrate far into the land. Tumul- 

 tuous rivers descend from the Andes and 

 debouch into the fiords in swampy deltas 

 which are covered with dense forests. 



