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Present Condition of Chile. 
[July, 
V. ON THE PRESENT CONDITION OF CHILE. 
t HOUGH Chile has only had a settled Government for 
some twenty-five years, the country has now been 
autonomous for about half a century, and it will, 
therefore, not be uninteresting at the present time to con- 
sider briefly the results which have been achieved in that 
limited period. With this end in view we propose in this 
paper to abridge some notes from an exhaustive report, re- 
cently furnished to the Foreign Office by Her Majesty’s 
Secretary of Legation at Santiago de Chile, on the progress 
and general condition of the Republic — a report which 
reflects great credit on its writer, and, apart from a few 
defeats in the arrangement of its details, is one of the most 
complete that we remember to have met with in a long 
experience of such like documents. 
We need not dwell at great length on Mr. Rumbold’s 
introductory remarks on the geographical position and phy- 
sical configuration of the country, for they are more or less 
familiar to all ; but we may mention that Chile claims to 
extend from the 24th degree of southern latitude to Cape 
Horn, with a coast-line rangingover 2000 miles, the greater 
part of her territory — from the province of Aconcagua 
southwards — being describable as one broad valley running 
due north and south, with narrower lateral and intersecting 
valleys, each of which rises step-like above the other to the 
foot of the giant wall of the Andes. However genial the 
climate and fertile the soil, the extent of land available for 
cultivation is necessarily limited by the large proportion of 
hills and rocks, and by the extensive desert traCts of the 
northern districts. At the same time the natural declivity 
from the mountain to the ocean, distinctive of the whole 
country, as well as its inconsiderable breadth (nov/here 
much exceeding 120 miles), greatly facilitate communication 
with the coast at all points. It is thus marked out by Nature 
for easy exportation of its own produce, and is equally con- 
venient of access to the sea-borne produce of other nations. 
The Chileans would therefore seem destined to become both 
an important agricultural and an important commercial and 
maritime community — points of resemblance with ourselves 
which they no doubt include in their claim to be considered 
“ the English of South America.” Mr. Rumbold does not 
