222 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
OBSERVATIONS MADE ON A WINTER TOUR IN 
SOUTH AMERICA 
Mr. J. McHutchison, of McHutchigon & Co., Importers 
of New York, has recently returned from an interesting ten 
weeks’ trip through the South American Republics. Mr. 
McHutchison was requested by the New York Florists’ 
Club to give an account of his wanderings, and did so at a 
recent meeting. We are unable to include the entire story 
of his trip, which was most interesting, but present the 
following extracts from the address. 
The trip I took was a ten weeks’ cruise in the Hamburg- 
American Line Steamer Blucher. There were 214 of us in 
the party—mostly widows and batchelors—and they had 
about every convenience on board except a matrimonial 
agency. January 21st, the day we left New York, was an 
unhappy mixture of fog, rain, and cold. Three days later 
overcoats were discarded, light clothes -brought out, and 
we were looking over the rail at the flying Ashes. 
Six days after leaving New York we were in Barbados, 
called sometimes “Little England,’’ in British West Indies. 
We had been passing the Caribbean Islands the whole day 
previously, though it was too dark to see Martinique, where 
Mt. Pelee destroyed the city of St. Pierre and did so much 
damage a few years ago. Barbados is beautiful. Ninety 
per cent of the people are black. It is the most densely 
populated place on earth—200,000 inhabitants in an area of 
i66usquare miles. We drove through avenues lined with 
cocoanut palms and mahogany trees with the flaming 
hibiscus, blue plumago and bougainvillea brightening up 
the roadside gardens. The principal products are sugar 
cane, cotton, tobacco, and so forth. 
We crossed the equator on January 3 ist with appropriate 
ceremonies. The ship’s crew were dressed up in fanciful 
costumes, and the men passengers and crew who had not 
crossed the line before were lathered with a whitewash 
brush, shaved with a two-foot razor, imaginary teeth were 
pulled, and salt water pills were given to them; they were 
then smothered’with toilet powder, and thrown over back¬ 
wards into a five-foot salt water tank, finally escaping 
through a canvas tube with a two-inch stream of water on 
his rear to facilitate his passage. 
. i SAN PAULI 
From Santos we went to San Pauli. How many North 
Americans ever heard of San Pauli? Yet it is the cradle of 
Brazilian independence and the most modern city in Brazil, 
with a population of 400,000, with broad tree-lined avenues, 
monumental public buildings, and handsome residences. 
Their open trolley cars were made from St. Louis models. 
The avenues are in most instances lined with coffee trees, 
the Australian silky oak, and the beautiful Jacaranda 
Mimosafolia, which grows with us in Southern California. 
The Municipal Opera House there is a beautiful building— 
built and owned by the city. It cost about 8,000,600 
United States dollars, and is, I think, finer than the famous 
Paris Opera House. 
I ought not to pass here without mentioning the San 
Pauli Railroad which covers the sixty miles between Santos 
and San Pauli, climbing 3600 feet up the face of the mount¬ 
ains. r never saw a railroad like it. It is mostly tunnels 
and viaducts, and there isn’t a square foot that is not water¬ 
proofed ; and that is something when you consider that the 
average rainfall is eleven feet per year, and ten inches of 
water has fallen in twenty-four hours. The railroad was 
built and is owned by the British, and English rolling 
stock is used. Its profits are over 40 per cent a year, but 
Brazilian laws prevent more than 7 per cent being paid 
in dividends, so all surplus goes into unnecessarily fine 
stations and improvements. ' 
VALPARAISO 
This is a cosmopolitan city and the principal seaport of 
Chile. Its population increased 100 per cent within the 
last two years, while New York gained only 48 per cent. 
There are still some evidences of the earthquake that 
visited them a few years ago. Chile is called the shoe¬ 
string republic, because it has a coast line of 2600 miles and 
an average width of only 150 miles. Santiago is its capital 
city. Like all South American cities, it is made as a fit 
place to live in. Too bad our cities are not built on the 
same principle. In Santiago and Valparaiso the street car 
conductors are mostly women. Santiago is built on a plain - 
surrounded'by mountains. Right in the center of the city 
is a rocky mountain called Santa Lucia. It has been 
landscaped and beautified with statues and hanging 
gardens. From the top at sunset, we get a fine view of the 
pinnacled, snowclad peaks of the Andes with the sun 
shining on them after the city is in darkness. It has not 
rained in Chile for two years, though the Aconcaqua Valley 
beats anything for productiveness I ever saw, not even 
excepting the Campagna in Italy. 
The famous Trans-Andean Railroad is a marvel of 
constructive engineering. It runs from Valparaiso, Chile, 
to Buenos Ayres, and we crossed it from end to end. Its 
mountain scenery is grand, and we pass at the foot of Mt. 
Aconcaqua, 23,200 feet, which makes it the highest moun¬ 
tain in the Western Hemisphere. Still I do not think that 
the scenery from the train is any finer than in many parts of 
Switzerland or over the Canadian Rockies on the C. P. R. R. 
By going under the central peaks of the Andes in the 
tunnel, we pass under the boundary line between Chile and 
the Argentine. You will remember that a few years ago 
these two countries were on the verge of-war, but a settle¬ 
ment was reached by King Edward’s arbitration. The two 
countries then built a monumental statue of Christ, “The 
Christ of the Andes,’’ and placed it in the pass, right on the 
boundary line amid the everlasting snows, and on the 
tablet is this beautiful inscription: “Sooner shall these 
mountains crumble into dust than the people of Argentine 
and Chile break the peace which they have sworn to 
