A LONGITUDINAL JOURNEY THROUGH CHILE 



261 



Photograph by Harriet Chalmers Adams 



IN FROM THE COUNTRY 



The town of Temuco is in the heart of the Araucanian region. Here the roads are muddy 

 most of the year, owing to the excessive rainfall, and ox-cart travel is the chief mode of 

 transportation. These Indians raise wheat, corn, potatoes, and apples. Their fellows in the 

 mountains to the east raise cattle and sheep. The men have adopted the Chilean costume, but 

 the women cling to the dress of their grandmothers. 



into the innumerable fjords that here 

 cleave the ragged mainland. We boarded 

 a decidedly ill-kept little boat bound for 

 Ancud, on the Island of Chiloe. 



Ancud, a galvanized-iron town fairly 

 reeking of the sea, is the seat of the shell- 

 fish industry. Here clams, mussels, and 

 shrimps are canned for export and oys- 

 ters-in-the-shell shipped to Valparaiso. 



Wheat and fruit do not thrive in this 

 moist climate, but potatoes form an im- 

 portant article of export, 200,000 sacks 

 being shipped the season of our visit. I 

 found Chiloe's autumn climate very damp. 



Here I ate my first supper of cooked 

 seaweed, which is not unpalatable. I was 

 interested in the little Chilote pony, wiry, 

 with great endurance, years of isolation 

 having here developed a peculiar equine 

 type. 



chile's unexplored regions 



It is five hours by rail from Ancud to 

 Castro, the last Chilean town of any im- 

 portance until Punta Arenas is reached. 



The unexplored portion of Chile lies 

 along the Andean range, in the provinces 

 of Llanquihue and Magallanes. In 1783 

 a Spanish priest, Fray Francisco Menen- 

 dez, explored and mapped a great portion 

 of the wild region east and southeast of 

 the Island of Chiloe. His long-neglected 

 diary was some years ago published in 

 Chile, and modern explorers found they 

 had followed the intrepid friar's century- 

 old trail. I have a copy of this fascinat- 

 ing diary. 



Last year an Argentine expedition, ac- 

 companied by several eminent Chilean 

 scientists, explored the unknown region 

 lying between latitudes 46 ° and 47 . An 

 exhaustive study was made of glaciers 

 and flora on the Isthmus of Of qui. Lake 

 Buenos Aires, one of a long chain of lakes 

 on this southern borderland, surpasses in 

 size all other South American lakes save 

 Titicaca. 



The Chilean Government is considering 

 the cutting of a canal through the Penin- 

 sula of Taitao, which will save steamers 



