A LONGITUDINAL JOURNEY THROUGH CHILE 



231 



Photograph from Harriet Chalmers Adams 



AN AMERICAN COPPER MINE OF CENTRAL CHILE 



It lies high up in the mountains, in the crater of an extinct volcano. In the winter the 

 buildings are deep in snow. By night the flare of electric lights gives a most fantastic appear- 

 ance to the isolated camp. 



their burrows. The task completed, the 

 men ride off, satisfied that the crops in 

 this particular section will no longer be 

 undermined. A mile or more away an- 

 other viscacha colony receives, in some 

 mysterious manner, an S. O. S. signal, 

 and off the animals scamper to dig out 

 their unfortunate neighbors. " 



The fleet pampa fox and the velvety 

 chinchilla dispute the borderland between 

 plateau and plain. Near the railroad we 

 passed a chinchilla farm, a new and 

 profitable industry. The area was in- 

 closed by a huge galvanized-iron fence 

 sunk deep in the ground that the valuable 

 animals might not burrow out. 



Cattle are driven from Argentina into 

 Chile over the mountain passes, making 

 the journey with their front hoofs shod. 

 Throughout the length of Chile there are 

 many of these Andean passes used by the 

 natives from time immemorial. Through 

 one of these natural defiles a railroad, 

 now building west from Salta, in north- 

 west Argentina, will eventually enter the 

 Chilean nitrate desert, bringing vegetables 

 and fruits now imported from the valleys 

 of the south. 



LAND SUPERLATIVELY RICH IN MINERALS 



If poverty-stricken in verdure, this 

 region is superlatively rich in minerals. 



