CHAPTER X

BATHS OF CAUQUENES. CHILOÉ ISLAND. LAKE NAHUEL HUAPI

In Lady Anne Brassey's nonpareil book, _Around the World in the Yacht Sunbeam_, published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1882, she describes on pages 159-161 her visit to the Baths of Cauquenes where she sojourned two days, October 23-25, 1876. When I was in Chile in 1913, I never heard of these baths and returned home ignorant of their existence. In the interim I thoroughly read Lady Brassey's book and determined that if the opportunity ever presented itself that I would likewise visit them. Darwin visited them in 1836. While in Santiago in 1915, on looking at a map, I found that there was a city named Cauquenes in the Province of Maule in south-central Chile, it being the provincial capital. I had made up my mind to go to that place, when the bung-eyed girl who managed the Hotel Oddo showed me my error and informed me that the Cauquenes I was seeking, was not a great distance from Santiago and was reached by train from Rancagua.

One morning I left the Alameda Station at 9.30 and two hours later arrived at Rancagua. The ride was through a fertile country, well tilled and with great vineyards. Only two towns of importance were passed, San Bernardo with 8269 inhabitants which also has street-car connection with Santiago and Buin whose population is 2713 inhabitants and is the county seat of the Department of Maipo in the Province of O'Higgins. The Andean and wine-producing province of O'Higgins, named in honor of the father of Chilean independence lies directly south of the rather large Province of Santiago, its boundary line being the Maipo River. Its population is 92,339.

Rancagua, the provincial capital, is a dirty, odoriferous, dilapidated adobe city of 10,380 people with the outward appearance of decay. A walk down the main street which is named Brazil belies the general appearance of the town for its sidewalks throng with peasants from whose shoulders hang multicolored shawls. Horsemen wearing red ponchos, their spurs clanking, trot down the pebble-paved street that is lined with squalid one-story shops. Although only fifty-four miles south of Santiago, the place is a good market town; of the numerous shops those that deal in dry goods, draperies, and saddles appear to do the most lucrative trade. There is only one respectable appearing spot in the city, and that is the small plaza in the urban center which is embellished by a bronze equestrian statue of O'Higgins, his horse trampling a Spaniard. Of the several apologies for hotels, none were inviting and rather than to eat at one of their restaurants, it is best to go hungry. The only decent place to eat is at the railroad station. One of the taverns is named "The North American" with a proprietor of our own nationality but its business is mostly bar trade, catering to the incoming and outgoing trade of the miners at El Teniente Mine. The day I was at Rancagua was Sunday which I was told was the day on which the prisoners of the jail were allowed to receive guests. I imagine that nearly everybody in the town either had relatives or friends in jail for in front of the building which is on the main street a mob had collected to await admittance.

The inhabitants of the town are tanned dark brown, and although strongly built and powerful I noticed several who were afflicted with the same malignant blood disease which the Swiss guards imported into France from Italy during the Middle Ages. I was also surprised to see a little girl about twelve years old on the street who had the leprosy, the only case I have ever seen in Chile.

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The Braden Copper Company of North American ownership has a 2½-foot gauge railroad that runs up to their copper mine, El Teniente, which is about forty-five miles up the Cachapoal River above Rancagua; the Baths of Cauquenes is one of their stations. This mine which was opened in 1907 now has six hundred employees, many of whom are from the United States and Canada.

From Rancagua the train ride of an hour and a half first crosses the Plain where fat cattle graze in knee high clover, and then skirts along the ledge of the mountains overlooking the broad terraces or selvas of the Cachapoal River, winding around promontories on a roadbed no wider than the coaches; any mishap would be sufficient to send the train rolling down the mountainside killing all the occupants of the cars. The station of Baños, (meaning Baths) is high above the gorge of the river. Across the canyon on a ledge of rocks can be seen the buildings of the thermal establishment, but before the pedestrian gets there he must walk a good half-mile. A foot path zigzags to the canyon bottom and an arm of the river is crossed by a cement bridge to a rocky islet. Another bridge, this one a swinging one, suspended above a whirlpool brings one again to terra firma on the left bank. One now ascends another zigzag path to a forest of elm, ash, and locust, the foliage being so thick that the sun's rays never penetrate it. Another suspension bridge which spans a silvery cascade is reached and beyond it is the hotel, a low, squat adobe building painted red, whose many rooms open onto two patios.

The name Cauquenes is Araucanian meaning _wild pigeon_. This bird, the _ectopistes migratorius_, sometimes called the voyager pigeon or the wood pigeon originally had its range from Labrador to the Straits of Magellan. Half a century ago they were numerous in the United States, but in this country they have been absolutely exterminated due to their having been killed off by hunters; great numbers which escaped the gun were burned in the Arkansas forest fires four decades ago. Chile is the only country on the face of this earth where they still exist, and it is probable that they will continue to live there as the inhabitants are extremely averse to killing them, the ignorant classes believing that they bring good luck and that it is an ill omen to kill them. At the present time they are not found in Chile north of Cauquenes; formerly there were great numbers in the vicinity of the Cachapoal hence the name of the baths.

The Baths of Cauquenes are situated in the Department of Caupolican in the Province of Colchagua on the south or left bank of the Cachapoal River in Latitude 34° 14´ 17´´ south and in Longitude 70° 34´ 5´´ west of Greenwich. The altitude of the place above sea level has been a matter of argument. Eight different professors claim its altitude in different figures from 2200 feet which is the lowest and which is said by Domeyko to be correct, to 2762 feet which is the highest and is said by Gillis to be correct. 2490 feet which is the altitude claimed by Guessfelt seems to be the most exact and is the figure accepted by Dr. Louis Darapsky in his book, _Mineral Waters of Chile_. The season for the baths is from September 15th to May 31st, and in midsummer the place is generally crowded. Describing the scenery, Don José Victorino Lastarria, an illustrious newspaper man of Santiago, says:

"I have never seen a more impressing, and at the same time, a more charming landscape than that of the Baths of Cauquenes, nor have I ever seen in so small a space so many different kinds of views nor such surprising details. Nature has grouped there her most beautiful accidents. In sight of the snowy Andes, here rise in the foreground rounded hills covered with vegetation; there rise barren rocks through whose clefts rushes the turbulent Cachapoal. Here are gardens filled with flowers; there are impenetrable thickets. Light and shadows everywhere, colors without end, harmony and contrast which reflect or darken the rays of the sun."

The temperature is consistent and the variation during the day is neither rapid nor extreme although the mornings and evenings are cool and it is warm at midday. Even in the hottest months the heat is not irksome, due to the fresh breezes which blow down the valley from the cordilleras. In winter there is snow; the cold, however, is not excessive.

The baths have been known since 1646, and were described by Padre Ovalle in his _History of the Kingdom of Chile_. There are three hot springs issuing from the porous and shaly rock, named Pelambre, Solitario, and Corrimiento. Their temperatures are 122°, 113°, and 107°6' Fahrenheit respectively. They are walled up and the waters of the first-mentioned two are run by pipes into a swimming tank and into tubs in the thermal establishment. During their course in the pipes Pelambre loses 3°6' Fahrenheit of its heat and Solitario 5°4'. Their waters more than supply their use so the water of Corrimiento is allowed to go to waste. The thermal establishment, though by no means primitive, is rather old-fashioned. I was surprised to see such an attractive place as the Baños de Cauquenes not made more of for in hot springs and natural scenery it is the zenith of God's works. Man also has done his share well but much improvement can be made, all of which requires capital. The natural lay out of the place is a paradise. It is something like the Cserna Valley in southeastern Hungary, but wilder and grander with also a soft touch of nature. The hills covered with live oak, laurel, and mesquite resemble those of California, yet are more fertile. A shaded walk leads from the hotel to an artificial lake bordered by fifty-five of the largest eucalyptus trees that I have ever seen. In its center rising from the water stand two willows. One is never absent from the swiftly flowing Cachapoal which murmurs like the Tepl at Carlsbad, only louder.

The baths are supposed to be beneficial in cases of gout, diuretics, rheumatism, anemia, and so forth, although one of the guests of the hotel evidently came there for relief for consumption. He was a bearded man about sixty years old and he made an unholy spectacle of himself by coughing and expectorating on the floor of the dining room while the other guests were eating dinner.

When I arrived at the place I was met at the door by a young man wearing white duck trousers and a blue double-breasted yachting coat. With the exception of his large yellow moustache he had a most cherubic countenance with a smooth, pink, babylike face without a wrinkle or blemish. I afterwards discovered that this cherubic individual had an inordinately strong passion for whiskey, gin, and beer as well as for any drink which had as a fundamental principle among its ingredients, alcohol. On several trips which I made later to the Baños de Cauquenes in 1916 I became fairly well acquainted with this Señor Hermann Manthey. He had arrived two years previously on one of the German merchantmen on which he was a steward. The ship was interned and he struck up-country to make a living and finally evolved in becoming manager of this hotel, as the proprietor, an old doctor had leased it for a few years and was too wrapped up in his own private affairs and also too lazy to give it his attention. Señor Manthey was doing well on the small salary and large tips he was getting but was not without ambitions. A few months afterwards I ran across him on a few days' vacation in Santiago, and he then was planning to get the owner to lease the establishment to him upon the expiration of the present lease to the doctor. The hotel with its grounds, fine fruit orchard, springs, lake, and six thousand acres of hilly grazing land, across which several rushing streams of transparent water flow headlong into the Cachapoal is owned by a gentleman in Santiago who leases it out as he has several other large properties. He will sell it for eighty thousand dollars which is dirt cheap. Some day I expect to buy it and make it my home.

At the hotel there are horses to let. On one of these I rode up a narrow valley and discovered that with nothing but mere bridle paths leading to them, and miles from the nearest houses, were lonely thatched and adobe huts, the homes of poor people and charcoal burners situated in mountain wheat fields or in clearings of a few acres. All of a sudden while riding I had a sensation as if the horse was trying to squat on its haunches. I reached for a stick from a nearby limb to put life into it and nearly lost my balance. A noise like distant thunder that I had already heard twice that afternoon, although the sky was cloudless, was audible, and in all directions stones and small boulders came rolling down the mountain side. It was a slight earthquake which the natives call _temblor_ in order to distinguish it from the great ones which they call _terramoto_.

In the center of one of the myrtle-carpeted patios at the hotel is a fountain encircled by an ivy-covered wall. Here evenings bats congregate and flap their wings in the vicinity of the faces of the guests. A party of Canadians, employees of El Teniente Mine, were stopping at the Baths when I was there. They filled up on liquor and made sleep impossible for the other guests by their sacrilegious bawling of _Onward Christian Soldiers_ and other hymns of the Episcopal Church.

On leaving Baños de Cauquenes I decided to take the twenty-three-mile horseback ride to the station of Los Lirios and from there take the train to southern Chile. The country road was very stony; in some places it was a mere cart track, while in others it was a broad avenue. During the first part of the ride it windingly followed the south bank of the Cachapoal and crossed two streams of transparent water, each known by the same name, Rio Claro. This means Clear River, and evidently the natives thought that if the name would do for one, it would be appropriate for the other. At every turn of the road a small freshet was crossed, for out of every cleft or dent in a hill gushed forth a spring. These small streams the peasants deviated from their courses by turning them into their gardens for irrigating purposes. The natives were very poor all living in adobe hovels with thatched roofs. A few acres of cattle, a dog or two, two acres of cultivated land, and some pear trees represented all their worldly belongings; yet they seemed very content. These peasants as a class were the poorest people that I have ever seen as far as worldly possessions go, yet every one of them always had a full meal at dinner time. They ate what they raised, and where they grew crops they worked them with infinite care. As they were too poor to buy fertilizer, they worked a new piece of land each year, coming back to the original piece after five years' time, because it had then enriched itself by remaining idle. There were many wheat fields, ripe and yellow, the sixty bushels to an acre kind. Central Chile gets plenty of rain but as it gets it only in the winter months, irrigation has to be resorted to in the summer.

Halfway to Los Lirios I arrived at the hamlet of Colihue (mispronounced by the natives Collegua) with its adobe hovels bordering the now broad and extremely dusty road. Everybody in rural Chile travels on horseback, and the people I met riding were many. A man loses caste if he journeys on foot. At Colihue another road turns off to the left to the Lake of Cauquenes in the mountains and which teems with fish. The road now left the Cachapoal and after skirting some barren hills on the right-hand side for a couple of miles it reaches the settlement of Cauquenes a most queer place. It consists of a great square compound of dirt which is surrounded on all four sides by a five-foot-high adobe wall excepting where there is a church on the west side and a few open sheds on its east side. An estancia house stood beyond the wall on the south side and there were some buildings beyond the wall on the north side where the priest and his servants lived. The highroad both entered and left this compound by openings rent in the adobe wall. It may be possible that this place once held a Spanish garrison, and that the compound was the parade ground, and that the open sheds were former stables. Everybody that I asked knew nothing about the early history of the place.

A broad avenue one mile long bordered by giant plane trees led westward from here. Their foliage was so thick that it made the road dark, and not seeing my way well I rode my horse onto a pile of bricks, the impact being so great that it nearly brought us both down. The road emerged to a pebble river bed, then forded a river, and wound around the sides of some high hills. Every horseman in Chile takes a slight upward grade at a gallop and I saw ahead of me a group of horsemen doing the same; behind us came galloping around the curves six horses pulling a carriage. These horses were three abreast and on each outside leader two lackeys were mounted. It was the doctor's wife from the Baños en route to Los Lirios where her sister has a post station. Chileans frequently travel on horseback, accompanied by their servants who follow a couple of horse lengths behind mounted on inferior animals. When the master stops, the servant likewise does so, but with the same distance between the two.

Los Lirios consists only of a small wooden railway station, a warehouse, a large open horseshed around a yard filled with wagons which is the post station, a small store, and a saloon. To this latter place I repaired, after dismounting, to get a glass of water after the hot dusty trip. The building and its stock of goods were poorer than the poorest backwoods blind pig, and yet for a third-class license the congenial and friendly proprietor, who was likewise barber and plied that trade in an adjacent room in the same building, had to pay yearly two hundred pesos ($34.12). From the appearance of the shack it did not look as if he took in that much money a year. Some of the moustached clientele that happened along, I called up to the bar to have a treat on me. The proprietor brought forth two goblets, each one being of a quart capacity, and filled them to the brim with red wine which he poured from a big jar. The contents of one of these goblets sells for 8½ cents, the cheapest wine that I have ever seen. If my surprise was great in seeing men take a quart of wine for one drink, it was even greater when I saw them drink it in nearly one gulp and put the goblet back on the bar in anticipation of a duplicate. I treated them two or three times and never once did they renege. I know what would have happened to me if I had followed suit, yet it seems incredible when I must state that it had absolutely no effect on the imbibers. It is inconceivable why a man in that part of Chile need ever touch an intoxicant, for the sweet, balmy air and the voluptuous appearance of Chile's maidens are sufficient to intoxicate any normal, healthy man.

An hour after leaving Los Lirios the train arrived at San Fernando, population 9150, the capital of the Province of Colchagua where we had lunch. Colchagua which has a population of 159,030 is one of the most productive provinces of Chile, but the next two provinces south of it, Curicó and Talca are not. It is a sorry sight after having passed through the well-tilled, highly productive country ever since leaving Santiago, to come suddenly upon land that is going to waste on account of lack of settlement. With the exception of the six northernmost provinces of Chile, Curicó and Talca are to me the least attractive of any of the republic. South of San Fernando the first town of importance is Curicó, its name meaning "Black Water" in the language of the aborigines; then are reached Molina, population 4327; Talca, the sixth city of Chile with a population of 42,088 inhabitants, and San Javier in the Province of Linares which has 4898 people. This town lies about three miles east of the railroad track but is connected to the depot by horse cars and to Villa Alegre, the next town south of it, by trolley.

The Andean Province of Linares and its southern neighbor Ñuble are very important agriculturally, both being two of the best in the republic. Their crops are diversified, run high in percentage of measure to the hectare and are of good quality. The capital of the Province of Linares is the city of Linares with a population of 11,122. It has good stores and buildings most of which are painted pink. Like in Rancagua the samples of merchandise on display in the shops are cloth, ponchos, and drygoods. Although but slightly larger than Rancagua it is a much finer town, and even though its streets are none too clean they are far superior to those of the capital of the Province of O'Higgins. In comparing the two cities it is fair to say that Rancagua presents more activity in street life and in business. There is one hotel which is fair, the Comercio. A peculiarity about Linares is that on the streets, especially that one on which the railroad station faces, native women are seated in front of portable stoves offering for sale cooked edibles which should be eaten on the spot. I saw one man who, when he had finished eating, left the spoon on the table near the stove. The woman who owned it licked it dry, and after having wiped it on her undershirt, replaced it in a dish that would be sold to the next customer. The native women have an art peculiar to Linares and nonexistent anywhere else in the world of weaving a certain delicate fiber into small baskets, jugs, and ornaments. These woven wares are very diminutive and are valuable only as ornaments and curiosities. They are multicolored and are in much demand by strangers. It is possible to buy them in Santiago but at an exorbitant price for all that are on sale there are imported from Linares.

A two-and-a-half-foot gauge railroad runs from a station a block and a half north of the main depot to the springs of Panimávida, two hours distant to the northeast. Having seen those of Cauquenes, in order to augment my education along thermal lines, it was up to me to see Panimávida and to especially sample its mineral waters, as its bottled water is the most widely drunk of any mineral water in Chile. It corresponds to White Rock and to Still Rock.

The place Panimávida is nothing. It is just as if somebody had erected a big hotel in the middle of an Illinois or a Wisconsin landscape. The attractions are absolutely nil. There are six practically tasteless lukewarm springs covered over with glass tops which supply the popular table water of Chile. These springs are the property of the Sociedad Vinos de Santiago (Santiago Wine Company), and as that stock company is well capitalized the Panimávida waters are well advertised by them. As people like to dilute their wine with seltzer, this company has installed a carbonizing plant here, which changes the still water into a sparkling one. The plant with hotel is leased to a man named Hernandez, a fine, fat, young fellow with a flowing beard. He is a good and accommodating hotel man and gets the trade, even having his runners meet the trains at Linares. Panimávida is an excellent old-maids' paradise. Under the shady roof of the patio porch they can sit, gossip, and knit. The proverbial parrot is present and a black cat could be easily imported. President Sanfuentes arrived during my visit to rest up after the strenuous strain connected with his installation. It was an ideal place for this with nothing to distract his attention except the broad meadows and the corrugated-iron, yellow-painted Catholic chapel.

Said His Excellency to me: "What Chile needs is population. Here we have thousands upon thousands of acres of the richest land in the world lying idle, because there is nobody to cultivate it. Until we have the proper number of inhabitants there is no use to cultivate these lands, because Chile produces four times more of an abundance of fruit than she can consume. You see how cheap fruit and wine is; there is an over production. Every year a million tons go to waste because there is no market. She cannot export them because the United States and Argentina are nearer to the European markets and the freight rates would eat up the profits. As there is a great demand for grain, people have gone more and more into the growing of cereals but as yet this industry is in its infancy. It should be encouraged for now there is grown just enough wheat to meet the internal demand."

"Supposing," I asked, "that Chile had four times more population than she now has, would she not have to import her wheat?"

"Never," he replied, "as there are here millions of hectares of the best wheat lands in the world that can be bought for a song. They are now lying idle. Something has to take the place of the timber of the southern provinces. When it is gone it will have to be cereals."

"I believe," he continued, "in encouraging a large immigration, chiefly from the northern countries--the United States, Germany, Scandinavia, and Great Britain. Their inhabitants have more initiative than the Latins and intermarried with the natives make a strong blood. Our people and those of all the Latin countries excepting the Frenchmen lack initiative and that is what we need. The Chilenos are content to live as they have lived for decades, which is all very well but it is unprogressive. Thanks to the British we now have a fairly large merchant marine; to the Germans is due the credit of the prosperous condition of the southern provinces. The only drawback to the foreigners here is that they run too much to cliques. They should scatter more. We should also have more capital to start factories, but I do not believe in, nor shall I encourage, any industry that will reap the profits here to spend outside of the country."

A couple of hours south of Panimávida are the springs of Quinamávida. They are said to be equally as good as those of Panimávida, but the hotel there is poorly managed and there is a lack of capital to well advertise its waters.

On the return to Linares something went wrong with the locomotive, which in appearance was similar to the dinky engines one sees in the lumber plants at home used in hauling lumber through the yards. A priest on the train who had a mechanical turn of mind got out of the car, and jumping into the engine cab soon had the locomotive in running order, much to the amazement of the train crew.

Southward from Linares the main line of the railroad passes through Parral, population 10,047, San Carlos, population 8499, Chillán, and Bulnes, population 3689. San Carlos is famous for its melons and Bulnes is likewise so for its wines. At San Rosendo, 315 miles south of Santiago, the train crosses a branch of the Bio-Bio River, which is named the Rio Claro in want of another name and Araucania is entered.

By the name Araucania is known that part of Chile bounded on the north by the Bio-Bio River and on the south by the Calle-Calle River. Its eastern limit is the peaks of the Andes and its western one is the Pacific Ocean. In area it is about the size of the State of Maine and comprises the provinces of Arauco, Malleco, Cautin, and portions of those of Bio-Bio and Valdivia. The Spaniards always spoke of this region as the _frontera_, meaning frontier, and so to-day all Chile lying south of the Bio-Bio is spoken thus of.

The original inhabitants of this country, the Araucanian Indians were the bravest and most warlike of any of the South American tribes, and it was not until 1883 that they were finally subdued after 340 years of warfare. Caupólican, Lautaro, and Colo-Colo, their great warriors have been immortalized in the poem "La Araucana" by Alonso de Ercilla. The Araucanians have intermarried so much with the whites that their race is fast becoming extinct although their facial characteristics and figures are prevalent in a multitude of South Chileans. Their political organization was as follows:

A large geographical division was called an _aillarehue_. These aillarehues were divided into nine smaller parts, each part being named a _rehue_. Ruling over each rehue were two _toquis_ or caciques who were responsible to the two _gulmens_ who ruled over the aillarehues. One gulmen ruled in wartime, the other in times of peace. So also with each toqui. The office of toqui was hereditary and many became famous through warfare or by their wealth, for example Colipí, Mariluán, Catrileo, and Huinca Pinoleví.

The Araucanians had no gods with anything definite attributed to them, nor did they have temples and idols, but they were exceptionally superstitious. Their principal god was Pillan, god of thunder, light, and destruction. He lived in the highest peaks of the Andes and in the volcanos. Dependent upon him were the Huécuvus, malignant spirits. Epunamun was the god of war. They also practised the cult of stone worship. Their most superstitious ceremony was Machitun or cure of the sick. The Araucanian does not believe that a man should die unless he is killed in battle, and when he dies a natural death through old age or sickness they believe that some of their own people inimicable to the deceased caused him to die. In order to discover the malefactor, they consult a witch doctor, generally an old hag named a _machi_. After having indulged in a number of ridiculous contortions and jumps she names the supposedly guilty party. Without any further ceremony they pounce on him and amidst a great drunken orgy and libations of _chicha_ (a native intoxicant) dedicated to Pillan they torture the innocent victim to death. When a man dies they generally perform a post-mortem examination upon the corpse to endeavor to extract the poison from it which caused death. The burial takes place with great lamentation and imbibitions of oceans of chicha to the tune of a lugubrious musical instrument somewhat like a drum and named a _trutruca_. They believe in an everlasting future devoted to earthly pleasures. They formerly believed that the deceased came to life again and dwelt on the island of Mocha off the coast, but they changed their thought when they discovered that the Spanish pirates formerly used that island as their base for excursions on the mainland. Marriage among the Araucanians has for some time past been a true compact, the father of the bride having to give his consent. It is not necessary for any other members of the family to be consulted, but it often happens that after the marriage has taken place, fights arise between the groom and the brothers-in-law who objected, several parties being severely wounded in these affrays. The plight of woman is miserable; she is practically a slave and the husband enjoys the fruits of her labor. Polygamy exists among them.

South of the Bio-Bio the landscape changes nearly entirely. The flat, cultivated plains of the river pockets which form the great central valley now give place to rolling hills intersected by small streams which lie deep in canyons spanned by bridges. At first there are evidences of viticulture on the side hills but these soon disappear as well as the trees, which now only are seen near the river beds. This absolutely treeless country of rounded hills swelters in the hot sun as it beats down upon the infinite miles of yellow wheat fields. In the villages frame houses take the place of adobe ones. There are numerous small lumber yards and sawmills which bear testimony that in the distant mountains there is still timber. Occasionally a deserted sawmill is passed which shows that the lumbermen are in the same fix as those at home, namely that a new location must be found.

At Santa Fé, the junction of a branch railway that runs to Los Angeles, of typhoid-fever fame, and the capital of the Province of Bio-Bio, a curious incident happened. A coffin had been taken off an incoming train to be put in our baggage car. Coffins in Chile are kite shaped and are not placed in boxes when transported. The top is not nailed but is fitted into a groove. I stood a couple of yards away watching the train crew lift this coffin into the baggage car. They had to lift it slantingly as some baggage stood in the way. Suddenly the train gave a jolt causing one of the baggage men to lose his footing. Since there was nobody now at the head of the coffin it fell onto the platform, the lid came off, and the malodorous and semi-decomposed cadaver rolled on top of the baggage man who emitted awful shrieks and howls. The two other men helping him immediately took to their heels. Women screamed, men ran, natives crossed themselves, and Germans laughed. The pinned-down baggage man howlingly extricated himself from beneath the corpse and made all haste to jump on the train which had now started, leaving the lich on the platform since nobody would go near it.

At Renaico where there is a large frame depot and restaurant, a branch line runs southwest to Angol, capital of the Province of Malleco and continues to Traiguén. At Collipulli, meaning "Red Earth" which has 3005 inhabitants, the train crosses the great viaduct over the Malleco River which lies deep at our feet, bordered by a dark fringe of oaks. This is the most beautiful vale in Chile. The clear, narrow, foaming river is a refreshing sight. A rich man has built a villa on the rise of ground overlooking the stream which gives the scenery a touch of the Rhein.

The landscape now changes again. Oak, laurel, and _lingue_ appear, at first scattered, then in groves, and later in forests, while everywhere possible in clearings are oat fields, the grain just turning color. The farther south we go the greener the grain is, until we reach Victoria, population 9840, where the grain has not begun to change color. Every three years the farmers cut off the branches from the laurels; these they scatter over their fields and set fire to. Among the ashes they drag the grain into the ground for by this procedure they are supposed to harvest better crops. Land here is worth eighty dollars an acre. The landscape is decidedly like that of our Northern States, and the climate is much the same as that of Oregon and Washington. At dusk Lautaro in the Province of Cautin was reached. This town has a population of 5968 and is named after Valdivia's Araucanian horse boy who murdered him and as tradition says ate him. As I mentioned before all the towns that we passed through south of the Bio-Bio are built of wood, but up to here their roofs were of tile, with a few exceptions of corrugated iron, tin, and shingles. The tile roofs now entirely disappear and their place is taken by those of shingles or slabs of lumber. The houses are unpainted and as to external appearances are veritable hovels. They resemble those dilapidated structures of the nigger villages in our Gulf States. Many towns resemble the one-time lumber settlements of the upper peninsula of Michigan.

On the train I became acquainted with the Reverend Steerer, a divine of the Church of England who had resided for twenty-six years in Temuco and who gave me valuable information about the country. He had just returned from a trip to the mountains at the request of the British Consul in Concepcion who had sent him there to inquire into the mystery surrounding the murder of an Englishman who was stabbed to death in bed by some natives who wanted the money he had on him.

At Temuco the Cautin River is reached. The country around here has had a troubled history in the wars between the Araucanians and the whites. One of the anecdotes is that on July 31, 1849, the bark _Joven Daniel_ ran into some rocks near the mouth of the river and was shipwrecked. The cacique Curin lived near the spot and with the help of his tribesmen they saved the lives of the crew and passengers together with the cargo which was given to them out of gratitude. In the cargo was liquor which they immediately attacked. Under its influence they murdered every survivor except an eighteen-year-old girl, Elisa Bravo of Valparaiso, whom Curin selected to be one of his wives. She was betrothed to a Ramón Bañados of Valparaiso. His family immediately took up the matter with the government which immediately got into action to chastise the Araucanians. Dissentions had in the meantime arisen among the Indians, and two caciques, Loncomilla and Huaquinpan took the side of the whites. The Araucanians were beaten but no trace of Elisa Bravo was ever found as it was supposed that Curin married her and took her to a place of safety.

Another incident happened in 1861. A French adventurer named Aurelie de Tournes proclaimed himself King of Araucania under the title of Orelie I. He promised to free the Indians from the Chilean rule and had the ability to get the aid of several caciques and quite a large following. In a battle he was taken prisoner; he was tried for menacing public safety and would likely have been executed if it had not been for the intercession of the members of the French colony in Santiago, and of a judge who has previously declared him to be insane.

Temuco is the capital of the Province of Cautin and is the geographical capital of Araucania. It is the largest city of Chile south of the Bio-Bio and has a population of 29,557, ranking ninth in the republic. It is 422 miles south of Santiago, and owes its origin to a fort which was built here in 1881. In recent years its growth has been rapid. The city is situated west of the mainline of the longitudinal railroad, and is the junction for a branch line that runs to the town of Imperial. There is a considerable English colony which has a church and two schools, but like all over in southern Chile, the Teutonic element outnumbers all the rest of foreigners in a ratio of ten to one. The business is mostly in the hands of the Germans as can be seen by the names over the stores. Somebody with a Yiddish streak must have strolled in from somewhere because I noticed the sign of Benjamin Goldenberg over the door of a second-hand clothing shop. The city is a long-strung-out place of frame unpainted buildings presenting a most unattractive appearance; only in the center of the town one gets away from these eyesores for there brick and cement structures abound, especially in the neighborhood of the Plaza Anibal Pinto. The principal streets, Jeneral Bulnes, Arturo Prat, and several others are well paved with cobblestones over which horse cars rattle in the long ride to the railroad station. Driving from this station to the town the hotel omnibuses race each other much to the fright of the uninitiated stranger. Temuco boasts of an excellent hotel, the Central, owned by a large, fat German named Finsterbusch, whose facial adornment is a big aureate moustache. Like most of the Chilean hotels owned by Germans the place is clean, the beer good, and the cuisine excellent.

The 109-mile train ride from Temuco to Valdivia is made in four and a quarter hours through a country entirely different from any that is passed through from Santiago to this point. The low mountains come in such close proximity to the railroad track that one is pierced by a tunnel. They are heavily timbered with trees of good saw-log size, laurel and oak abounding. The only place of importance on the stretch is the sawmill town of Loncoche. The valley bottoms are impenetrable jungles of vines, bushes, thorns, and berry plants which reach a height of about twenty-five feet. It took the pioneers a month to traverse ten miles of this wilderness whose bottom is soggy muck, the average day's penetration being but one third of a mile. Antilhue is the junction for trains running south. The Calle-Calle River is crossed and its south bank is followed into Valdivia through a fragrant country covered with scarlet wild fuchsias, honeysuckles, snapdragons, and morning-glories. On all sides are the green mountains covered with primeval forests.

Valdivia has had its share of the world's vicissitudes and calamities. It was founded in 1552 by Pedro de Valdivia and was abandoned in 1554 on account of the attacks on it by the Araucanians who captured its founder and put him to death by torture. It was destroyed by an earthquake in 1575, and when rebuilt was sacked by Elias Harckmans, a Dutchman who fortified it. In 1645 the Dutch were worsted in a fight with the troops of the Peruvian viceroy, the Marquis de Mancera who drove them out. There was another earthquake in 1737 which again destroyed the place. Rebuilt, it was burned in 1748. In 1837 a third earthquake destroyed it. Since then it has burned down three times, in 1840, in 1885, and in 1911, the last one being an especially bad fire, wiping out the entire city. Thus it has been destroyed by earthquakes three times and burned four times.

It is beautifully situated on the south bank of the Calle-Calle which is navigable for small boats. The city is uninteresting as it is absolutely modern. In character it is German, for it is the leading German center in Chile. No other language is heard spoken on the main streets. The natives who slightly outnumber the Teutons and also speak German are to be found mostly on the back streets; they are employed by the Germans in the different industries. The population of Valdivia which is the tenth city in Chile is 24,743.

When one alights at the railroad station, it is better to take a launch to the city to the tune of sixty centavos (10 cents) than by the more arduous and long trip by cab over rough plank pavements. These launches owned by a man named Oettinger give the stranger a pleasant ride down the river and disembark him at a new cement quay near the center of the city from which place boys carry the grips to the various hotels. One is immediately impressed by the cleanliness of the cobble stone-paved streets of the business section and by the handsome though inexpensive structures. It is by far the cleanest city in Chile. With the exception of the buildings on the streets near the Plaza de la Republica, which are of cement construction, all the other buildings are of frame or corrugated iron, or of both, but painted freshly over. The side streets are paved with wooden planks, and in some places with wooden beams, six by sixes. The main industry is brewing. The colossal brewery named Compañia Cerveceria Valdivia, formerly that of Anwandter Brothers, one of the largest in Chile, looms up majestically on the water front across the narrow river opposite the landing quay. The storerooms for this amber and nut-brown beverage are on the city side of the river at the dock. The best hotel in Valdivia is the Carlos Bussenius, named after the host who in appearance could pass as a twin brother of Finsterbusch in Temuco.

A pleasant trip from Valdivia is the two hours' ride down the river to Corral but another and far grander is that to Lake Riñihue and across the mountains to the wretched hamlet of San Martin de los Andes in the greatly overrated southern part of Argentina known as Patagonia.

I left Valdivia about the middle of an afternoon and got off the train an hour and a half later at the station of Collilelfu where I put up for the night at a wooden shack with a tin roof which was an apology for a hotel. Early the next morning I arose to catch the seven-thirty train for Huidif, the railroad terminus of the branch line which will in time be continued to Lake Riñihue. The ride of an hour only brought the train to its destination where the passengers alighted to change into carriages which cover the six remaining miles to the lake in three quarters of the time. The whole landscape is rolling and is semiforested, and as the lake is approached vast marshes abounding in wild fowl are traversed. Lake Riñihue is about fifteen miles long by four miles broad and is a favorite summer resort for the inhabitants of Valdivia. The landscape is beautified by vistas of the snow-capped volcanos, Choshuenco and Mocho.

The seventy-five-mile trip to Osorno from Valdivia consumes four hours and lies through a smiling farming country with villages, farms, and soils characteristic to those of the best part of Wisconsin. It was dusk when I arrived at Osorno, metropolis of the Province of Llanquihue. The city has a population of about 12,000 and is 601 miles south of Santiago. A daily train makes the entire distance in 25 hours and 40 minutes, a sleeper being attached to the train as far as Renaico. Osorno is a miserable-looking place of frame buildings built close together as is the custom in all the towns of southern Chile where lumber plays the main rôle in the erection of edifices; but few of the houses and stores are painted. Valdivia is the only place in this section of the country where the inhabitants take enough pride in the appearance of their town to give the houses a fresh coat of paint. I was told by Bussenius to go to a German hotel which had just been opened by a former chef of one of the interned Kosmos Line steamers. I did not go there, however, because Americans do not stand in good repute with the Germans and Chilenos of German descent in southern Chile. Although the United States was not at war with Germany at the time of my visit, nevertheless the Teutonic inhabitants of that section took pains to show their dislike of North Americans. Although I was subjected to no personal discourtesy at either Temuco or Valdivia, but on the contrary was treated well, I was obliged to listen to much tirade against the United States and the inhabitants of our country in general. The Germans were angered because North American firms were supplying the Entente with munitions of war and it was a current topic of conversation among them that the United States was afraid to declare war upon Germany, saying that if it did so there would be an uprising there against its Government by the great number of Germans and Americans of German extraction. They anticipated a Bürgerkrieg or Civil War in the United States if the latter joined sides with Great Britain.

As there were a couple of spruce-looking runners at the railway station for the Hotel Royal, a native hostelry, I gave them my grips and was driven through the unprepossessing streets of the city. The cab eventually stopped in front of a building that has the outward appearance of a certain large residence on the outskirts of Ashland, Wisconsin, where lumberjacks and sailors were wont to congregate after pay days and sojourn until their savings were gone. I was wondering whether this establishment was of the same nature. Fortunately it turned out to be a very good and comfortable hotel, absolutely Chilean. Osorno has several other hotels, all German. Osorno has more Teutons in proportion to its size than any city in Chile. In numbers, Valdivia has a larger German population, but the ratio is smaller for Valdivia is the larger place. Three-quarters of Osorno's population is German, their numbers here being in excess of nine thousand. In southern Chile where most of the hotel-keepers are German, the inns all have the Gastzimmer or Bürgerzimmer as in Germany, where the merchants and clerks assemble nights to discuss news and the events of the day over large schupers of health-giving beer. A non-trust brewery has recently been inaugurated in Osorno by a man named Aubel and his wet goods certainly hit the right spot when partaken of. Outside of his brewery there is no manufacturing in the town excepting the large flour mill of Williamson and Balfour. Both these enterprises were born in 1914.

While standing on the plaza one night listening to the military band, all at once was heard the pealing of bells and booming of gongs. Everybody started to run in all directions and not knowing what was taking place, thinking it was either an earthquake or a revolution, I followed suit and hid behind a maple tree. This scare turned out to be a fire alarm. The whole crowd now raced and tore down a street that leads across the railroad track, and I presently saw by the blaze that the fire was of no small importance. Slipping up to my room I took my valuables from my valise, and putting them in my pocket joined the crowd. Above the din of conversations, orders from the police, and the noise from the fire pumps, could be heard the agonizing screams of four victims that were being burned to death at the windows of the second story of a dwelling. They were caught like rats in a trap while asleep, and when aid came they were beyond all mortal help. The policemen standing in the road with drawn sabers suddenly ordered the crowd to run for their lives, which they did in all directions. An intonation like the sound of a cannon boomed, followed by two or three sharper reports. Impossible for the firemen to stop the fire which was spreading to all the neighboring closely packed frame dwellings, the police had started dynamiting. This last process which was successful claimed another victim and blinded another person. I saw the remains of the dynamite victim; what remained of him resembled a pudding. No vestige of either teeth or bones was found of the four persons who perished in the fire and whose heart-rending screams are now ringing in my ears.

All the small towns of southern Chile have flour mills and grain elevators; throughout the countryside on the farms and in the towns are seen tall block houses, reminiscenses of the days of Indian warfare. From Osorno the railroad continues ninety-three miles southward to Puerto Montt, the terminus of the longitudinal railroad southward. Puerto Montt, with 5408 inhabitants, is the capital of the Province of Llanquihue. It lies on the north end of Reloncaví Bay, 694 miles south of Santiago, and is an uninteresting modern frame town, inhabited mainly by Germans. When a southeaster blows the breakers beat with terrific force against the docks.

Small vessels belonging to a local navigation firm ply thrice weekly between Puerto Montt and Ancud, the capital of the Province and the Island of Chiloé which lies eighty miles to the southwest on the extreme northern end of the Chiloé archipelago, on the Bay of Ancud. Large ships of the Compañia Sud-Americana de Vapores, generally known as the Chilean Line, also make both Puerto Montt and Ancud weekly, while those of intermediate size sail from Puerto Montt and make all the small ports on the Gulf of Corcovado en route to Punta Arenas. At eight o'clock in the morning following the day that I arrived in Puerto Montt, I boarded the steamer _Chacao_ in a blinding downpour of rain with a ticket for Ancud which cost about $1.20 in the equivalent of our currency. The sea was not rough but was rather choppy, while the rain prevented the passengers from remaining on deck. Unfortunately the clouds hung too low to permit me to get a good view of the mainland. The islands of Maillen and Guar were skirted and three hours out we anchored off the port of Calbuco, county seat of the Department of Carelmapu in the Province of Llanquihue. This town is situated on a peninsula at the south end of the Bay of Reloncaví and from the steamer deck resembled the lumber villages of Puget Sound. It is connected with Puerto Montt by a rough wagon road and there is talk of extending the railroad here, although I can see no reason for its necessity, excepting that the harbor at Calbuco is sheltered while that of Puerto Montt is not. The difficulties of engineering and the cost of construction, I imagine, would never make it pay. Shortly after leaving Calbuco we entered the Gulf of Ancud and after skirting the south end of Llanquihue entered the narrow roadstead of Chacao, and arrived at the hamlet of that name about two o'clock in the afternoon. Chacao was founded in 1567 and until about fifty years ago was the principal port of Chiloé when it was practically deserted in favor of Ancud whose growth at that time had been rapid, and which owing to its being a port on the Pacific Ocean was fast getting the commerce.

Ancud was reached about four o'clock in the afternoon after a trip that consumed eight hours. It lies at the south end of the bay of the same name, an indentation of the ocean, and is protected from the dreaded southeasters by a mountainous headland named Lacui. The bay is filling up so fast with mud which is washed into it by the rains, that vessels of large draught have to anchor from one to two miles out. Our ship anchored about half a mile out and we were transferred to terra firma by gasoline launches. The village has 3424 inhabitants and is a dirty settlement smelling of dried fish, built on the side of a hill. It is the seat of a bishopric, the frame cathedral being the best building in the town. There is absolutely nothing to do in the place which for amusement has but one moving picture theater. Numbers of mixed bloods and Indians are in evidence seemingly outnumbering the whites, many of the latter being Germans.

Chiloé has an area of 8593 square miles, being larger than the State of Massachusetts; its population is slightly in excess of eighty thousand inhabitants many of whom are Indians. These Indians are not warlike like the Araucanians nor are their physiques as good. Their numbers are on the decrease owing to alcoholism and to diseases which always follow in the wake of the advent of the white men. A continuation of the Coast Range, the Cordillera de Pinchué runs the extreme length of Chiloé from north to south, its summits from 1500 to 2000 feet in altitude being near the Pacific Coast which is inhospitable and has no harbors. The east coast of the island, separated by the thirty-five-mile-wide Gulfs of Ancud and Corcovado abounds in good harbors and it is here that the settlements are. These gulfs teem with small mountainous islands, most of them being uninhabited.

A railroad runs southward from Ancud sixty-five miles to Castro, the distance being made in four hours. There are no towns on the route but numerous stops are made at small settlements such as Quichitue, Puntra, Quildico, and Dalcahue. Midway between Ancud and Castro are the Puntra and Putalcura River valleys of great fertility. Here are many farmhouses with fields of green oats and with pastures of clover in which feed droves of cattle and swine. Hides are one of the chief exports of the island. Where there are no clearings the forests are primeval and are beautiful in their green coloring. It is a dripping forest of moisture with lianas, giant ferns, purple and crimson fuchsias, and species of orchids. The bark of the tree trunks and of the windfalls are covered with inch-deep moss. The density of the woods and the exuberance of plant growth is the nearest approach to a tropical forest imaginable in a temperate zone for the whole island of Chiloé lies south of Latitude 42° South.

Next to Ancud, the most important place on the island is Castro which was the capital until 1834. It is the oldest town on Chiloé and here the Spaniards made their last stand. It is a well-built village of 1243 inhabitants, situated on the west side of the long and narrow Putemun Bay, and is well sheltered from the winds by the ten-mile-distant mountains to the west. It consists of several parallel streets running lengthwise along the bay. A wagon road runs southeastward from here about thirty miles to the settlement of Ahoni. I only remained a few hours in Castro because there arrived in the afternoon a steamer from Punta Arenas on its way to Puerto Montt. Its route lay through the channel which separates the large island of Lemui from Chiloé, and then took a course eastward between several islands and rounded Cape Chegian at the southeastern extremity of Quinchao Island. This last mentioned island is about twenty miles long and is very narrow excepting at its northwestern end where it broadens out, and is separated from Chiloé by the Strait of Quinchao. It and an archipelago of smaller islands form a political department of which the town of Achao, where we anchored at dusk, is the county seat. Achao has a population of 1571 inhabitants and has taken away much of Castro's former trade. It is a long-strung-out fishing village on the side of a hill, the forest on which comes down to the water's edge. Shortly after leaving Achao, the ship sailed westward to Chiloé again and stopped at Dalcahue on the Strait of Quinchao. Dalcahue has a road leading to a three-miles-distant railroad station on the Ancud-Castro line. During the night, Quincavi was touched at and after a steam through the Gulf of Ancud and the Bay of Reloncaví, Puerto Montt was again reached at 11 A.M. It was a nice clear morning and the snow-capped Andes on the unexplored mainland were resplendent in sunlit brilliancy.

On the mainland southeast of the Island of Chiloé is Chile's largest river, the Palena. It rises from Lake General Paz, whose waters are traversed by the international boundary line of Argentina and Chile; it flows northward through western Patagonia and bending to the west after a course of about thirty miles finally empties itself into the Gulf of Corcovado. North of the Palena and at its source, separated from it by a low range of hills in Patagonia, is the Futaleufu River whose origin is in the Argentine Valley of the 16th of October. It flows westward through the Andes into Lake Yelcho which in turn empties into the Yelcho River. This river finds its way into the Gulf of Corcovado south of the Quinchao Archipelago.

The person who visits Chile and returns home without having seen the Llanquihue lake region has made his trip in vain. Here is a country as grand as Switzerland, which although its mountains are not quite so high, they seem higher and are better for vistas for the valleys are lower. Moreover the snow line is here lower. In Switzerland one gets the best views of the giant peaks from altitudes of valley bottoms that are themselves six thousand feet and over above sea level; here one gets the same view from low-lying rivers and lakes which makes the sheer abruptness grander. There are no great thick forests in Switzerland which are here omnipresent, garbing the mountain sides from the barren, snow-capped peaks down to the very water's edge. This Llanquihue country is beginning to become popular with excursionists and it will not be long before it will be one of the world's famous playgrounds.

Twenty-one miles north of Puerto Montt on the railroad to Osorno is the large triangular Lake Llanquihue, much indented with bays and coves on its western shore. Its breadth is over thirty miles, and it is the largest freshwater lake in Chile. Its outlet is the Maullin River which flows in a southwesterly direction into the ocean to the north of the Bay of Ancud. The scenery in the neighborhood of the lake is most charming. The west and north shores is a rolling country much of which is cleared into farms, well kept up and showing a high degree of prosperity. From the south shore rises a steep incline tapering towards the top into the conical snow-capped volcano, Calbuco, whose lower reaches are embowered in forests of hardwood. Many small streams rush from its sides and pour into the lake. At the eastern extremity rises the mighty, majestic dome of the volcano, Osorno, rising 8645 feet, nearly perpendicularly from the clear waters.

Puerto Varas at the southwestern end of the lake is the summer resort where the travellers leave the train. It is a clean little village of frame houses in the heart of a country renowned for its frutillas, or diminutive wild strawberry which grows here in abundance, and whose name should not be confounded with _fresas_, which is the name for the strawberry of larger size which we are acquainted with. The whole region is a German settlement, and this is especially true at Puerto Varas where scarcely anybody of any other nationality is seen excepting some of the laborers. The Bellavista is the best hotel. It is a clean, comfortable house where the proprietor is a professional landscape photographer. Transportation of passengers to San Carlos de Bariloche in Argentina is effected thrice weekly during the summer season and once a week the remainder of the year. A little steamer belonging to the South Andes Transportation Company leaves Puerto Varas at 8 A.M., and after a four hours' steam across the placid waters of Lake Llanquihue brings one at Ensenada at the base of Mount Osorno in time for luncheon. Here one now has the choice of a carriage or horseback ride to the twelve-mile-distant Lake of Todos Santos (All Saints). This short journey crosses a saddle of the divide between Lake Llanquihue and the valley of the Petrohué River, of which Lake Todos Santos and its tributaries are its source. This ride is over a road which in wet seasons is poor and full of ruts but is decidedly charming on account of the darkness of the forest which comes down to both sides of it. The Petrohué River of unsurpassing beauty winds in a gorge between the high Santo Domingo Mountain and the Calbuco Volcano, and empties itself into the fiord like Reloncaví River. Behind a mountain chain to the west of which Calbuco is the culminating pinnacle, is the large and beautiful Lake Chapo, nearly inaccessible owing to the steepness of the mountain sides which have to be climbed first in order to get a view of it.

At Petrochué which is reached at 3 P.M. there is nothing but a dock from which one embarks on another small steamer that takes one in four hours more to Puella at the eastern end of Todos Santos Lake. The lake is long and narrow with several arms running like the legs of a spider up into the pockets of the mountains which are formed as their sides dip to unite with one another. The verdure of the forests is dark and primeval, while the water itself is dark blue with barely a ripple on its surface. The appearance of the entire landscape is somber and mysterious. A small round island, named Isla de las Cabras, rises precipitously in woodland glory from the center of the lake. Ever present in the distance are snow-crowned domes, those of Osorno and Santo Domingo behind us to the west, while in front of us rises the awe-inspiring rugged peak of El Tronador (the Thunderer) white in its icy altitude of glaciers. At Puella is a primitive hotel where the traveller stops for the night. This place is at the very foot of the Thunderer, so named from the loud intonations caused by the glaciers breaking off at their edges and falling with roars into the ravines. El Tronador is 11,278 feet high; its summit is only ten miles from the deep-lying lake. Thus one can imagine its great perpendicular steepness. This continues downward for an infinite depth in the lake, whose banks are so sheer in many places that it is impossible to obtain a foothold. The bottom of Todos Santos Lake has never been found although it is believed to exceed a thousand feet in depth. The water made by mountain springs and eternal snows is so cold that swimming is impossible. About a third of a mile from the hotel at Puella is a large waterfall, while at frequent intervals throughout the sublime landscape are numerous falls and cascades.

Taking an early start from Puella, one arrives by carriage or mules in two and a half hours' time at Casa-Pangue, a small frame chalet where are stationed the Chilean custom-house officers. From here to the international boundary at the top of the divide is an ascent of about two thousand feet, the road lying through a thick forest. It takes two hours to reach the summit where there is an iron post with a sign on one side of which is the word Chile while on the other side is Argentina. The divide is covered with snow from May till September which on the hillsides reaches a great depth. Not far from the international boundary marker on the descent is a crude wooden cross, which denotes the burial place of workmen who died in a snowstorm while constructing the road.

About halfway down the descent one suddenly perceives through the thick foliage the turquoise blue of Lake Frio. This lake fed by the torrential Frio River derives its name from the frigidity of its waters whose origin is the glacier on the east slopes of El Tronador. A launch is waiting at a pier to ferry passengers across it which takes about twenty minutes. A road follows the left bank of the lake, but it is not passable for carriages; it is used now for freight only. Rounded rails lie on it parallel to each other and over them pass the concave surfaces of bullock carts. All passengers were formerly transported this way. A couple of miles beyond Lake Frio the western extremity of Lake Nahuel Huapi, Argentina's largest lake is reached at the hamlet of Puerto Blest by means of a mule-back ride.

Puerto Blest consists only of a dock and a frame building which is the rest house for travelers and which is owned by the South Andes Transportation Company. Here one stops for the night to continue on the following morning the four-hours' steamer trip to the thirty-mile-distant Argentine town of San Carlos de Bariloche. Lake Nahuel Huapi is over fifty miles long by seven miles wide at its broadest place, and is very irregular in shape, having many antennæ or arms which reach into the mountain depressions. In its center is a large island whose proper name is Victoria Island. It is long, wooded, and mountainous and comprises about ten thousand acres. The Chileans call it Menendez Island after the wealthy family of Menendez whose seat is in Punta Arenas, and who formerly owned much property across the Chilean frontier not far from the lake. The Argentine government made a present of this island to a Señor Anchorena of Buenos Aires upon condition that in ten years time he would expend on it for improvements eighty-eight thousand dollars which was the amount that they considered it worth. His own idea, which he has carried out, was to make Victoria Island a private game reservation and to this end he has imported wild animals from the north of Europe which have here thrived and propagated. It abounds in deer, huanacos, and pheasants, but so far he has not improved it commercially.

The farther eastward that one goes on Lake Nahuel Huapi, the less beautiful and interesting the scenery becomes. The mountains become lower, rockier, and more treeless, until the trees become stunted and finally disappear so that the eastern end of the lake instead of having the beautiful sylvan nature that was omnipresent in Chile has now the sterile aspect of the west end of the Argentina pampa with barren mountains and plains of dried grass. San Carlos de Bariloche is a lonesome, God-forsaken village of about five hundred inhabitants on the south shore of the lake. On the wide semblance of a street are rough brick, adobe, and frame buildings with two churches, a parochial school, a bank, and a government office. The inn which goes by the name of Hotel Perito-Moreno is as much a disgrace to a hostelry as San Carlos de Bariloche is to the name town. The paper was falling off the walls and the broken windowpanes were repaired by having newspapers pasted over the apertures. Straw mattresses with blankets, which I imagine teemed with vermin, took the place of regular beds, while the food was so execrable that it was nauseating. As the place is rarely visited by anybody excepting cattle-buyers, it is not supposed to be up to date.

The inhabitants of wind-swept San Carlos, however, are not complaining. They have passed that stage and have resigned themselves to face whatever misery might present itself to them. There is talk of the Southern Railroad continuing from Neuquen to make the town its terminus. This would effect another Transadine route and open up the country to civilization. Not far from San Carlos de Bariloche the Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe has an eighty-thousand-acre ranch. It is said that he bought this to make his home on in case he should be deposed in Germany. For manager he has Baron von Bülow, the nephew of the former Chancellor of the German Empire.