did. Larramendi was planning to catch you for his youngest daughter,

and likewise had you looked up. He thought you would have made a good match for her and has many times deplored that you went away. He was very fond of you and I honestly believe Anastasia loved you and still hopes you will return. However if you married her, you would be in the same mess that I was in. Larramendi is not so old as he likes to make out and I doubt if he will cash in his checks for twenty-five years yet. That is a long time waiting for dead men's shoes. I am satisfied where I am and when I reached Chile I knew that I was safe for even if my first wife hadn't obtained a divorce the Peruvian extradition laws are a joke and the Chilean government would never have given me up to be sent back to Peru to stand trial for bigamy there."

The time was approaching when I had to return to the United States; Prat was just as anxious to return to Barcelona, and Gumprecht was getting restless in Santiago and wanted to see more of Chile, especially the northern part. We accordingly made arrangements to go north by rail taking our time to the trip stopping off at different places. Prat and I had a great impedimenta of baggage constituting curiosities that we had collected on our travels besides live parrots, toads, turtles, etc. indigenous to South America not to mention a couple of trunks full of bulbs and seeds which I intended to experiment with by planting at home. We also had baskets, pottery, and Indian blankets. We did not care to be encumbered with them and as we met a roustabout in Santiago who was recommended to us for his honesty, and who was anxious to get to Lima to accept a position that was offered him there, but could not make the grade through lack of funds, we told him we would pay his passage to that port if he would take our baggage with him. This proposition he jumped at so we made arrangements for him to sail on a boat that was to leave Valparaiso the following month. That would make him reach Lima about the same time Prat and I would arrive. This roustabout's name was Angel Larrain. He was a tough looking customer about thirty-eight years old, was broad shouldered, and wore a full beard which he seldom kept trimmed. His facial appearance was adorned by an ugly scar on his right temple which he received in a saloon brawl some years previously in one of Valparaiso's waterfront dives.

Not far out of our route northward are the Springs of Jahuel which are so well known that we determined to take them in. To reach them it is first necessary to take the train to San Felipe, three hours distant from either Santiago or Valparaiso, and then drive twelve and a half miles.

San Felipe, with a population of 14,426 inhabitants, is the capital and largest city of the Province of Aconcagua which lies directly north of the Province of Santiago. This large province is Andine in character although it extends to the ocean and in its confines are the highest mountains in Chile. It is semi-arid although in its narrow valleys the largest vineyards in the republic are located. It is famous for its wines and its chicha. This last is a sort of grape cider, muddy brown in color, sweet and heavy and is apt to give the partaker indigestion. It should not be confused with the chicha of Peru. Peruvian chicha is an alcoholic beverage made from cereals and is akin to moonshine or corn whiskey.

San Felipe is a dull, old-fashioned town with a good hotel, the Europa. A couple of hours is sufficient to see all the attractions of the city unless the visitor is religiously bent for the city boasts of several large churches. The original city was square, its sides being about three-quarters of a mile long and was bounded by an alameda with a double drive on each side of a pedestrian promenade in the center. The trees between the roads and the walk are giant elms and maples. The city has outgrown its original boundary and extends some distance on the outward sides of the alameda; this growth has not been recent as can be testified by the crumbling appearance of the houses which are of adobe and have a height of but a single story. The appearance of the place is that of stagnation; a small brewery is the only manufacturing interest but like that of Julius Jenson in Chillán, its product does not meet the wants of the local trade.

The plaza is lovely and cool which is a great contrast to the alameda where the dust is insupportable. In it are statues of mythological goddesses which are of Carrara marble. In its center is a fountain surrounded by a large round pool while in the plots of earth grows a profusion of calla lilies. There are also some fine palms and a great trumpet vine. Situated on the plaza is a big church. It is adobe and has a frame top and steeple. It is painted pink, and on its façade cracks caused by an earthquake are in evidence. The interior is poor and on its walls hang cheap paintings. When any prominent citizen dies a marble slab is mounted in the church for his memory. At the eastern end of the city is a papier maché imitation Grotto of Lourdes, the alms box at its gates being the most visible of its sights.

The drive to Jahuel is devoid of interest. For a couple of miles the road runs eastward along a turnpike bordered by mud walls so high that it is impossible to see over them. The dust is terrible. Soon the village of Almendraz is reached with its narrow streets, ancient yellow church with a clock tower surmounted by a dome, and a Calvary on a high rock at the end of the main street. The turnpike has swung to the north and continues in this direction all the way to Jahuel. A large village named Santa Marta is traversed and the dry bed of a river is followed. Although there are plenty of small farms and the land is thickly settled, it is nevertheless a much poorer country than in the Central Valley. The mountains are devoid of all vegetation excepting a few sage bushes here and there. In the valley cactuses are abundant, but everything has a dry, parched look.

Jahuel, which is the name given to the hotel, bathing establishment, and water is the property of Delano and Weinstein of Valparaiso. The place is sadly overrated. The hotel building is good and modern although the food at the meals is scarcely enough for a mouse; the rooms are small and plain, but clean. I remarked about the scantiness of the meals to the manager. "We can't have such luxuries as chicken every meal," he replied. "Nobody said anything about chicken," I retaliated; "anyhow who considers that a luxury in Chile when it is the commonest of meat? What I was kicking about is why you don't serve a square meal." A splendid vista of the Aconcagua Valley at one's feet can be had from the terrace and the verandas.

The altitude of Jahuel is 3835 feet above sea level, but strange to say the nights are not cool. The water comes from the near by Los Pajaritos Springs and its bottled carbonated adulteration is shipped all over Chile. There is a swimming tank and a sun bath at the establishment. A South American sun bath is a boarded-in yard with some wooden benches on which people recline in the Garden of Eden garb. A partition divides the sun bath into spaces for both sexes, the men being on one side of the wall and the women on the other. Some young Actæons had placed a ladder against the partition on the men's side at Jahuel in order to gaze upon the contours of female figures on the women's side.

At the present time there is nothing to see at Jahuel. In ten years' time it may develop into a lovely park. The trees are too young yet to afford shade. The lawn and flower beds are well arranged but they are now in the transition stage between a desert and a garden spot. Many of the famous California health and society spots to which thousands of tourists make their invernal hegira were worse twenty years ago than Jahuel is to-day. The establishment savors of Teutonic cliques. The majority of guests are of German extraction and pair off into groups. Some of the maidens that nightly promenade the terrace are such past mistresses in the art of cigarette smoking that their bodies and clothes reek with the odor of nicotine. This does not appear to have the effect of depreciating their charms for on several occasions in the _bosque_ I inadvertently caught amorous swains clandestinely exchanging kisses with these foul-breathed virgins.

One of the great advertised sights is the bosque. The word bosque means jungle of small trees. Trees are so scarce in that part of the country that when there is a similacrum of one it becomes famous and is advertised. This bosque is no better than a brush heap but it attracts visitors by a well-kept trail and painted signs. It is distant from the hotel by a seven and a half minutes' walk; nonagenarians walk it in fifteen minutes. The signs, therefore, read "To the Bosque of Quillayé, 15 minutes." Nonagenarians leave more money at Jahuel than young people because the former are so old that they spend at least two weeks there, while the latter, driven to distraction by ennui rarely remain more than a day, unless to enjoy the attractions of the cigarette-smoking German maidens.

It is possible to make the trip from Santiago to Pisagua, one of the northernmost ports of Chile by rail. Through trains run only as far as Iquique. It takes four days this way from Santiago to Iquique which includes a stop of one and a half hours at Illapel, a half hour's stop at La Serena, two and a half hours at Vallenar, one and a half hours at Copiapó, nine hours at Catalina, and four hours at Baquedano. Nineteen and a half hours are wasted at these stations yet the travel consumes less time than that by ocean steamer from Valparaiso to Iquique. I think that I am the first North American not officially connected with the railroad that made the trip as far as Antofagasta. The through train runs every Friday, and after the first day out the journey is most tedious and enervating, hot and dusty with vistas of the most desolate desert imaginable. I broke the journey at Copiapó, continuing thence by local trains.

The Northern Longitudinal Railway begins at the town of La Calera which is on the Santiago-Valparaiso Railroad. As far as Copiapó it is a narrow gauge but after leaving that town it has three rails for some distance in order to carry both broad gauge and narrow gauge traffic. The original railroads of Chile which ran from the interior to the coast towns were all broad gauge and as it is cheaper to lay another rail inside the already existing two rails to accommodate narrow gauge traffic than to lay a new roadbed this triple rail phenomenon is met with in many places in Northern Chile. The train composed of two sleepers and other coaches leaves La Calera upon the arrival of the Santiago-Valparaiso express. To reach La Calera from San Felipe I was obliged to change cars at Llai-Llai midway between Santiago and Valparaiso. The first day's ride is interesting, although the country is sparsely populated and semi-arid. It is a continuous slowly winding up the canyons, passing through tunnels at the Coast Range summits, and a mad race around curves down other canyons. The first summit is reached an hour after leaving La Calera; the train goes through a tunnel under the pass of Palos Quemados and enters the Valley of La Ligua. This is followed upward to Cabildo where the river is crossed. Then by means of sharp zigzags another summit is reached and we descend into the fertile but narrow Valley of Petorca. The small city of Petorca lies about fifteen miles up the river of the same name beyond where we turn up the Estero de las Palmas (Palm Creek). This brook gets its name from the great abundance of palms which grow wild all over the sides of the mountains at its source. There are several of these palmares in Chile, which are botanical freaks for this particular mountain specie is found in their natural state nowhere else in South America. The largest of these palmares is that of Ocoa near La Calera; another one is at Concon, at the mouth of the Aconcagua River. They are valuable for their honey. A hole is drilled into the tree near its base, a tube is inserted and the sap is extracted which is made into honey.

Across the mountains north of the Estero de las Palmas is the mournful desolate mountain pocket of Tilama, the headwaters of the Quilimari River. The Indians hereabouts weave rugs, blankets, and table-cloths of a fine durable texture which are in great demand. They are red with white flower designs. The Tilama ridge is crossed and finally two more, one to the Pupio River and one to the Choapa River before darkness sets in.

The Choapa is a fertile valley and the river of the same name forms the boundary line between the provinces of Aconcagua and Choapa. The Province of Choapa was created by an Act of Congress in December 1915, and to define it a large area of land was taken from the southern part of the Province of Coquimbo. Up to the time of this writing (1918) the limits of its various departments have not been defined. Illapel, the new capital, on a river of the same name was reached about 8 P.M. It has a population of about five thousand inhabitants and is filled with life owing to its sudden acquisition of importance. Salamanca and Combarbalá are the only other towns worthy of mention in the new province. Los Vilos in the Province of Aconcagua is the seaport of Illapel with which it is connected by railroad. I took a walk up the main street of Illapel. It is an old-fashioned town, very long and narrow. Its houses, mostly one story in height, are painted white. The streets were crowded and a band was playing.

I awoke the next morning at Ovalle, a growing stock town in the southern part of the Province of Coquimbo. It had by the census of 1907, 6998 inhabitants but I understand that it has increased considerably in population since then. It lies on the Limari River just below the junctions of the Grande and the Hurtado rivers which uniting form the Limari. For its port it has Tongoi on the bay of the same name to which place it is connected by rail, but now much of the freight goes to Coquimbo. At Coquimbo, which was reached a couple of hours later, I obtained my first unhindered view of the Pacific Ocean on this South American trip. From Ancud on the Island of Chiloé, I could look across the great expanse of bay to the headlands which formed the promontories beyond which the ocean was, but owing to the rain the ocean proper there was invisible. Coquimbo is a busy and dirty port of 12,106 inhabitants and has no attractions such as possesses the eight miles distant city of La Serena, the capital of the Province of Coquimbo.

La Serena is named in honor of the last viceroy of Peru. His name means serene. The city is also serene. It is one of the oldest towns in Chile, has 15,966 inhabitants and is admirably situated on a height of land overlooking the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Elqui River to the north. It is a quiet town of handsome buildings and is the residence of many retired men of wealth and of intellectuals. In this respect it can be compared with Paraná in Argentina and Graz in Austria. Its population has decreased slightly in recent years yet the city is stable and will always remain so. Its only industry is the Floto Brewery. To any Michiganders reading this book, I wish to call attention to the fact that it was visited in 1906 by Hon. Chase S. Osborn. The level country about La Serena and Coquimbo and the neighboring valleys are fertile and well-watered. Fields are given up to the cultivation of grain and vineyards abound. A native fruit named the pepina, akin to the papaya is grown and from it a soft drink is made which although palatable is rather insipid. About twenty miles south of the city among the foothills is the mineral spring of Andacollo famed locally, while thirty miles north of La Serena are the newly opened iron mines of La Higuera, controlled by North American capital.

After leaving La Serena, the all-day ride northward to Vallenar is for the main part uninteresting although it has a recompense in the wild mountain scenery when the train winds up the canyon known as the Quebrada del Potrerillos. At nine o'clock at night, Vallenar the second city of the Province of Atacama was arrived at. The train was scheduled to remain here for two and a half hours but there was some trouble with the locomotive which kept us here all night and part of the next morning. It happened that a telegram had to be sent to Coquimbo for an extra locomotive to be sent up to Vallenar.

Vallenar is the original home of the patio process for the extraction of silver from the ore by means of crushing. Mercury is added forming an amalgam and the silver is obtained by heating the amalgam, which evaporates the mercury leaving as a residue the crude silver. It is no longer a mining-town but is the center of the fruit growing Huasco district. Figs of Huasco are famous. Quite a trade is carried on by the exportation of raisins, here named _tapas_. Vallenar has 5561 inhabitants. It is on the Huasco River and is connected by rail with Freirina and the seaport, Huasco. It was pleasant to again see trees. It seldom rains in this region. When I alighted from the train at the railroad station there was such a heavy mist it resembled rain. It accumulated into drops where it had fallen on the leaves and as such fell onto the sidewalks. Near the depot is a large finca surrounded by gum and poplar trees, and the sound of running water in the irrigation ditches behind the high adobe walls was refreshing. It takes thirty-five minutes to walk the length of the main street, but the city is only six blocks wide. A half mile up this street is a plaza with a stagnant pool in its center where are gold fishes. A miniature Eiffel Tower whose top is crowned by an illuminated clock that does not keep time soars above a stand where an infantry band was playing. When a crowd had collected to listen to the music the band moved off up the street until it came to a moving picture show, whose proprietor had hired it for the evening as an advertisement. Nowhere in my travels have I seen so many bands both military and private as in Chile.

The streets of Vallenar are narrow, and although lighted with electricity, they are dark. The city is ancient in appearance and as one passes by the gloomy structures in the misty night, a feeling is present that one of the doors leading into the adobe hovels might open and that the pedestrian will be yanked by unknown hands inside, where he will be robbed and murdered by disembowelment which is the favorite trick among Chileno thugs. Vallenar has not the street life of Illapel, yet I must say in its favor that never elsewhere in a town of its size have I seen so much beauty among women.

At Copiapó I stayed four days. It is the capital of the Province of Atacama and has a population of 10,287 inhabitants although it looks considerably larger. Fifty years ago it had fourteen thousand inhabitants. At that time it was a mining center, and much of the wealth among the leading families of Santiago to-day has its origin from mines formerly located here. The railroad to the fifty-two miles distant seaport of Caldera was opened to traffic in 1850 and is one of the oldest in South America. The original locomotive used is now to be seen in the National Museum at Santiago.

The city is situated in an oasis in the desert; this oasis is twenty-five miles long by two miles broad and is cultivated to an amazing degree. It is traversed by the turbulent muddy and narrow Copiapó River which furnishes irrigation to the many _quintas_. Peaches, figs, grapes, and apricots grow in profusion as do also loquats and other local fruits whose names are unfamiliar to me. A specie of willow is indigenous to the valley which in form is not unlike a Lombardy poplar and from a distance is often mistaken for one of them.

The environs of the city have a decidedly oriental appearance due to the high mud garden walls which shut off from the passer-by the rich verdure of the enclosed terrain, making the only objects visible to him the dusty windowless backs of sheds with an occasional tree rising above an adobe wall.

Copiapó is retrogressant and will become even more so. Work has long since stopped at the mines and the only thing that keeps the place alive is that it is the capital of a province. If asked for a description of the city, I would say that it is an old adobe town in an oasis surrounded by barren mountains, with a broad alameda bordered with giant pepper trees. This brief description is accurate. The pepper trees are the largest I have ever seen and some of them are nearly eight feet in diameter. The alameda has an abundance of statues to Atacama heroes with a soldiers' monument to the illustrious Atacama dead. The house roofs rise to a slight gable and nearly all are of adobe. This mode of construction could not be possible in a country where rain falls frequently, because in 1915 when there was a hard rainfall in Copiapó, the first time that it had rained in eight years, many of the roofs became mud puddles and were washed in.

There are only two hotels in the Atacama metropolis, the Atacama and the Ingles. I stopped at the former which is the best. It is owned by a Boer named Bosman who married a native woman. Since the proprietor finds mining more profitable than hotel business, he leaves the management of his inn in the charge of his younger son. The hotel is fair as well as the meals, although it has none of the modern conveniences. The primitive privy is reached by crossing a barnyard and is a favorite place for poultry which roost here. I discovered a tarantula on the seat. To reach this place one has to run the gauntlet of semi wild swine some of which were ugly. The Ingles is owned by a native who is the son of a once famous Spanish opera singer. This man thinks well of himself although his only claim for distinction is evidenced by a disgusting ringworm on his right cheek which is larger than a dollar. In his emporium coarse obscene jests and loud words are the order of the day. There are only two bars in Copiapó and these are in each of the hotels. It is needless to say that the proprietor of the Ingles does the most business in that line because he consumes half of his sales. Copiapó is a poor saloon town because the natives make their own wine and chicha. They often repair to a section of the oasis named the Chimba, where they roast a lamb, hog or an ox and there amidst a copious supply of fermented beverages indulge in an orgy that baffles description.

Some of the hovels near the river bank are the extremity of poverty. Any self-respecting sow in the United States would shun these shanties of mud, straw, and tin cans which here house Atacama's humblest natives. The open space in front of these hovels are littered with bones, garbage, dead rats, and excrement.

The cemetery is lugubrious, and in many a grave there is a cavity beneath the tombstone where can be seen the grinning skull of its occupant. It was founded in 1848 and a motto over the entrance denotes it as a place of peace. I cannot realize how this motto is appropriate because visitors are constantly perturbing the bones with their canes. The hook and ladder and fire engine date from 1868 but the Matriz or large church on the Plaza Arturo Prat antedates it fifty years. It is a large edifice with a square tower of New England colonial architecture. The church of San Francisco is after the style of the French Cathedral at New Orleans. Although the city has but a population of slightly over ten thousand inhabitants, it nevertheless boasts of five daily newspapers, none of which by the way are worth reading as their columns deal solely with local events such as a man stumbling on a toad and spraining his ankle, etc.

Taking a walk with Gumprecht down the railroad track we saw behind a wall a large tree laden with luscious purple figs. We climbed upon the wall to reach some when I noticed a girl driving some sheep across a trestle. I called Gumprecht's attention. He was startled thinking the owner of the quinta was coming and fell from the wall into the garden. In falling he accidentally tripped me up and I took a header in the opposite direction landing me into a bush which had prickly burrs which littered my clothing, clinging tenaciously to them. In extracting them I got my hands full of the barbed nettles which these burrs were composed of. As I fell I heard a yell from the other side of the wall and upon climbing it again saw that Gumprecht was having a lively fight with an enraged bull dog which had bitten him a couple of times. I came to his rescue with my revolver. In the meantime Gumprecht had drawn his revolver and between us we made short work with the bull dog. The shooting aroused the neighborhood and we could see farm laborers running to the scene with pitchforks. We took to our heels and finally hid by lying down in a dry irrigation ditch where we remained half an hour. When the hunt had somewhat subsided we struck out for the town by a detour but lost ourselves at a river which we forded. We started up a trail between some Kaffir corn when we suddenly came to another fig tree. When we were devouring this fruit we were caught by the owner of this quinta which was a full mile from the one where the bull dog was. We offered to pay him for it, but in excellent English he told us to help ourselves.

This man was Professor Platner, president of the Chile College of Mines whose three-story yellow institution we could see through the trees. He was a German, had lost a fortune in mining, owned a fine quinta, had lived in Copiapó for twenty-five years and was anxious to sell out and get away on account of being tired of the place. He showed us his quinta, gave us all the fruit we could eat, and revealed to us much information about the mining past and present in the province. He had installed an ore crusher on his place which he rented to miners on the percentage system. It was the Chilean process of gold extracting originated at Copiapó. There were several stone bottom tubs each holding a wheel perpendicular to the base and which is revolved by means of a large horizontal wheel which fits into grooves. The large wheel is set into motion by water power from the river. The tubs are filled with a layer of ore and the crushing begins; mercury and water are then added. The mercury and the gold form an amalgam which is carried off by a pipe into another tub along with the water. After straining, the amalgam is put into a retort which is heated at its base. The mercury escapes through a tube and is caught in a pail of water to be used again. Platner said that either gold or copper was mined according to the value of copper. When copper falls below fifty pesos a ton, gold is mined. At the time of my visit, copper was worth 112 pesos a ton.

During the colonial times the silver mines in the neighborhood of Copiapó were worked by the Spaniards, and it is said that more than twenty thousand Indians were exterminated through overwork in these mines. About four generations ago these mines became the properties of about a dozen individuals, most of whom lived in Santiago. They were worked successfully until they died. The mineral property was then divided among their heirs and when these heirs died, there were other divisions among new heirs. On account of these divisions work soon ceased. Now in order for a man to get a clean title to any of this mineral property all the heirs have to agree to the sale and there are a multitude scattered all over the world which makes getting a deed nearly impossible. There have been instances when nearly all the heirs were found and agreed to a sale only to have it held up at the last minute by one or more parties backing out. A bill is before the Chilean senate for the state to take over all mineral lands that have not been worked for fifty years; if it passes these mines will again be in operation.

Copiapó boasts of one millionaire. He lives in a ramshackle salmon-colored house of stuccoed adobe which has been cracked by an earthquake. The city is also the birthplace of Martin Rivas, the hero of Blest-Gana's novel _Martin Rivas_ which is considered to be a classic of Spanish literature.

From Copiapó northward the longitudinal railroad to Iquique runs over a great arid desert winding its way across sandy plateaus hemmed in by barren mountains. The southern part of this desolation is named the Atacama Desert and here on the high mountainsides are seen the shafts and settlements of the gold and copper mines. Dulcinea is the first large mine reached. San Pedro is reached in the afternoon and later on Pueblo Hundido, the junction for Chañaral, and the headquarters of the Andes Copper Company. The next morning the train arrives at Catalina, the junction for Taltal and now enters the nitrate country. The same day it stops at Aguas Blancas, the junction for Antofagasta, Chuquicamata, the newly opened copper mining town of the Guggenheim interests, and Bolivia. The railroad from Catalina northward goes through the center of the nitrate country and has several branches running down to the seaports such as that from Toco to Tocopilla. Toco is passed in the middle of the night as well as Quillagua, the last mentioned place being an oasis in the Desert of Tararugal. Pintados which is reached forty-eight hours after leaving Copiapó is the terminus of the longitudinal railway and here trains must be changed for Iquique and Pisagua, the northernmost nitrate port.

Although my ticket was bought for Iquique, I was obliged to leave the train at Aguas Blancas and go direct to Antofagasta. I had the misfortune to break a blood vessel in my right foot in Copiapó shortly before boarding the train, which dolorous accident was due to the injury I received when a rock hit my foot as I was trying to escape from the catapult of stones that were shot from the crater of Volcano Chillán. I consider that my quickness in reaching Antofagasta was what saved me from crossing the River Lethe. I was flat on my back in that prosperous seaport for three weeks.

Antofagasta, the commercial metropolis of Northern Chile has a population of 60,297 inhabitants although it does not look nearly so large. It is the fourth city of Chile and has in recent years taken away much of Iquique's trade, although the latter place does not appear to be dull. The downtown business streets of Antofagasta are paved with asphalt and work is now under way to pave the whole city. Sewers have been extended and the mule power street cars have been discarded for autobuses; a man named Yankovich having obtained the concession for this means of passenger traffic. The old buildings of adobe, wood, corrugated iron, and stuccoed cane are fast being replaced with metropolitan structures of brick and cement. Among these new edifices can be mentioned the city hall, the fire department, the Mercantile Bank of Bolivia, the Victoria Theater, and Luksic's Hotel Belmont.

The city from being a pestilential port in the past is now scrupulously clean, although in its suburbs improvements can be made. The municipality has waged war against the butchers and vegetable dealers compelling them to screen their goods from the flies. Protesting mass meetings were of no avail. A new railroad station has been built on the heights above the city and the old ramshackle wooden structure which is an eyesore to the city will be torn down to make way for the opening of a new street. Antofagasta is proud of its cemetery. To me it is a nightmare. Most of the graves are marked with wooden crosses painted white, many of them being enclosed by picket fences. The bodies of the poor are thrown naked into a pit and covered with quicklime. The stench emanating from this spot is appalling and the litters for the transportation of the cadavers which are much in evidence in this neighborhood do not add any attraction to the scene.

In 1910 a mania struck each resident foreign colony to donate to the city a reminder of themselves. The British colony erected an ornate and useful clock tower in the Plaza Colon; in the same park the Spaniards built a bronze monument signifying the Union of the Waters; the Slavs built a bandstand. In the Plaza Sotomayor the Germans erected a column to Germania, and the Greeks gave a statue of a couple of wrestlers. The Chinamen donated the expensive entrance to the cemetery while the Turks gave the city the benches which are in the parks. The North Americans are not represented in these donations, because at that time the city had only one of our countrymen as a resident, Mr. William Stevenson, and it could not be expected that he himself would pay out of his own pocket a sum of money equivalent to what a whole colony did out of theirs.

The best hotel in Antofagasta is that named the Francia y Inglaterra of Nowick and Dutrey; the Grand and the Belmont are also good. On Sunday Antofagasta is drier than a powder horn; at least it is supposed to be. But like in most towns where unwelcome laws are imposed on the people, they are made to be broken. I judged this to be the case here from the number of Sunday "drunks" that I saw being led off to jail, or else encumbering the sidewalks of the suburbs by reclining on them in a horizontal position. The lid goes on promptly at five o'clock Saturday afternoon and the clamp is not taken off until eight o'clock Monday morning. For violations of the liquor law the names of those men arrested for being drunk during this period of drought are published in the Monday newspapers and stiff fines are imposed upon the vendors of liquid refreshments that contain an alcoholic percentage. On Sunday, April 30, 1916, 120 saloon proprietors were fined for selling drinks. The Quinta Casale proprietor was fined 1000 pesos (about $200.00), the proprietor of the Hotel Maury was fined 500 pesos and another saloon-keeper the same amount. One Saturday night during this enforcement while I was a guest at the Hotel Francia y Inglaterra, the three _mozos_ of the second floor of the hotel got hold of a case of Guinness' stout to which they proceeded to make short shift of. In their inebriated condition they started a fight which at first was as near to the Marquis of Queensbury rules as a triangular affair of its kind could be. It soon developed into a rough and tumble and all the participants were put _hors de combat_. This occurred during the dinner hour and the unedifying expletives used which generally accompany such a fracas were audible to the diners much to the mortification of Nowick and Dutrey. One of the combatants repaired home where he attempted to assail his better half with his fist; she retaliated by seizing a chair and breaking his head. I related this affair to a North American, a Mr. Rowe, a resident of Antofagasta. Rowe then told me that a year previous in La Paz, Bolivia, he was stopping at the Hotel Guibert. Mr. Guibert did him a trick that angered him, so he in turn filled up all the servants of Guibert's hotel to get even. For a whole day there was no service at the Hotel Guibert for all the domestics from the manager to the cook were roaring drunk and all the guests were forced to seek other quarters.

One of the famous characters of Northern Chile and Bolivia was a brutal bully named McAdoo who was continuously quarreling with everybody. He died in 1915, and on his tombstone in Antofagasta his acquaintances had the inscription carved: "May he rest in peace."

In 1916 the Antofagasta public was indignant at the way some of its indigent dead were handled. When an unknown man or a pauper died, he was dumped into a sack and a carter was hired to carry the bundle to the cemetery. These carts are two-wheeled open affairs. If the cemetery happened to be closed, the carter was apt to drop his unwholesome burden anywhere. Two or three of these lichs were found tied up in sacks in different parts of the city during my sojourn in Antofagasta, which perpetration was severely excoriated by the newspapers. Speaking of it to Captain Rowlands of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company's steamship _Guatemala_, he related to me an incident which happened on his ship.

A man died of bubonic plague in one of the nitrate ports but before dying he told a relative that he wished to be buried in Santiago. This relative was returning to that city so he tied the corpse in a sack and carried it on shipboard. As the lower-class Chilenos all carry their possessions in burlap sacks slung across their backs while traveling, he managed to get his burden on board unnoticed. He stowed it underneath his berth, but the odor was such that he could not sleep so he made friends with the bartender and hired him to hide it until the ship reached Valparaiso. The bartender placed the cadaver underneath the sink in the service bar. The next day Captain Rowlands smelt a stench while he was making the inspection, and opening the door of the sink discovered the body, which he had thrown overboard. The frightened bartender owned up to his part of the transaction but the passenger, the relative of the defunct when taken to task retaliated by threatening the captain with arrest upon the ship's arrival at Valparaiso. Rowlands told him that he could start anything he wanted to, but if any arresting was to be done, it would be the passenger who would be arrested for breaking Chile's sanitary law.

The harbor of Antofagasta is never quiet owing to a heavy swell and a project is now on hand to build a breakwater. I boarded the _Guatemala_ at that port with a ticket for Iquique. It had been over three years since I was a passenger on that boat and the great improvement on it was marvelous. In 1913 the food, service, and filth on it were so abominable, combined with the slipshod actions of the officers, that I made up my mind never to embark upon it again. Since Captain Rowlands has been its skipper everything has changed, and it is now one of the cleanest and most comfortable steamers on the coast. The food cannot be beaten. One of the passengers on board I found to be Angel Larrain, the efficient but villainous looking bearded roustabout whom Prat and I had delegated to bring our baggage to Lima upon consideration of his passage.

The morning after leaving Antofagasta we arrived at Gatico, a copper port, where the mountains came down to the ocean. About a league south of it was seen the small village of Copoapa on a narrow sandy plain at the foot of the barren cliffs. Gatico and Tocopilla are the only towns on the Pacific Coast of South America where copper is found near to the ocean. There is a smelter at Gatico and it is up a canyon here that run the wires of the electrical power plant at Tocopilla to the Chuquicamata mines.

Tocopilla is a two hours' run north of Gatico. We reached it in the early afternoon and remained there all night taking on cargo. According to the last census it had 5366 inhabitants, although it does not appear to have half that number of people. Next to Salaverry and Mollendo it is the vilest hole that I have ever stepped foot into, although I am told that it is a paradise compared to Pisagua. It is a long, narrow place, built on a sandy fringe between the mountains and the sea. Its houses are mostly one-story frame shacks, the majority unpainted. A point juts into the ocean off which are two small guano islands. Near the end of the point is the large electrical power plant of the Chuquicamata mines. It gets its power from the ocean, a tunnel having been dug out under the water and thence upwards so as to cause great pressure. There has been much trouble on account of the tunnel getting clogged with seaweed. The Siemens-Schukert Company of Germany installed the machinery, which has given such poor satisfaction that I understand the Chuquicamata Mining Company (Guggenheim interests) have taken it over under protest.

Tocopilla has a comparatively large German element, most of the male members being employees of the Sloman Copper Smelter. This plant is on the side of a mountain and some of its mines are visible from the port.

The town is not only exceedingly wretched in appearance but also has the reputation of being pestilential. The captain of the Chilean vessel _Condor_ landed here in 1912 sick with the yellow fever. He recovered but this pestilence nearly wiped out the whole town. There is no verdure of any description hereabouts with the exception of a few plants in front of the houses, the country being a sandy and a stony waste; the same is true about Antofagasta, yet in both places mosquitoes thrive. This yellow fever epidemic was singular because south of Lima the West Coast of South America has always been absolutely free from it. In 1915 Tocopilla was a closed port for four months on account of bubonic plague, which is ever present in the seaport towns from La Serena northward to Panama.

In company with Mr. B. Brice of Valparaiso, accountant for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, I took a walk to the cemetery. The two gates were locked so we started to walk around it to see if there was another entrance. Since walking was obnoxious in its neighborhood on account of tin cans and nondescript rubbish, we made a detour by going out onto the plain. Suddenly our nostrils were assailed by a disgusting odor which caused us to hold our breath. "Look here," said Mr. Brice, pointing to a myriad of mounds which we had previously taken to be rubbish piles; we found that they were graves for at the head of some were wooden crosses and desiccated bouquets.

"I believe that we are in the yellow fever burial ground," I said.

"Possibly," answered Mr. Brice. "Let us ask that individual," indicating a man in the distance who was scraping with a stick among the mounds and whose actions savored of those of a ghoul.

Upon asking the "individual," whose appearance was that of a degenerate, we were informed that we were in the bubonic plague graveyard.

"The yellow fever cemetery is there," he exclaimed, pointing with evident pride to a large square enclosure bristling with white crosses.

The degenerate creature was carrying a burlap sack which he dragged on the ground. Through a large hole in it, we saw red meat and the knee-cap of some animal.

"What have you got there?" I asked.

The degenerate pointed to the distant carcasses of mules rotting in the sun and above which soared carrion. Said he:

"I have just cut off a hock of mule."

"What for?"

"To eat. One must live, of course."

This disgusting habit of feeding on the carcasses of animals that have died a natural death or through disease is prevalent among the inhabitants of the arid zones of Peru and Northern Chile; where probably nowhere else on earth is the human race so degraded.

Shortly after leaving Tocopilla, I chancing to be on the starboard deck of the _Guatemala_ ran into the bearded ruffian Angel in deep conversation with an English divine. He was gesticulating during his conversation and would occasionally point towards land in the direction of the cemeteries fast vanishing in the distance. I walked up to the pair, and after turning the topic of conversation to things commonplace when I approached, Angel made some excuse and disappeared.

"A real brilliant man that," said the Anglican, turning to me. "It is curious how often a rough exterior reveals great brains."

"How do you mean?" I inquired.

"You noticed that uncouth bearded man in conversation with me when you approached. A person unacquainted with him would imagine him to be one of the great number of vagabonds that abound on this coast. He belies his appearance for he is a distinguished professor of the University of Buenos Aires. He is making a tour of the West Coast towns studying the causes of bubonic plague. He is a member of the Argentine Commission on Bubonic Plague and many interesting things he has told me about this malady that I have never heard of before."

I did not spoil Angel's story by revealing to the Anglican his real nature. The roustabout had been listening to a conversation the previous evening between Captain Rowlands, Mr. Brice, an English army officer, and myself about bubonic plague and had remembered everything he heard. Owing to this knowledge he was able to carry on a fairly intellectual exchange of words on the subject with the English minister.

The so-called harbor of Iquique is no more than a roadstead with a barrier of rocks jutting into the ocean, which breaks in two places forming narrow entrances to a natural basin. The waves beat with violence against the rocks so the _fleteros_, as the boatmen are called, are obliged to wait until a wave has broken and then by quick rowing speed past the entrances before another wave has the chance to dash against the barrier.

Iquique's population numbers 46,216. In 1907 its population was 40,171, which shows that although Antofagasta has taken away a great deal of its trade, yet the city has had a slight increase. There is a great rivalry between the two cities which is soon bound to cease on account of Antofagasta having a good commercial future ahead of it. The nitrate industry of Iquique is on the wane, and is now confined to the Iquique and the Pisagua pampas while that of Antofagasta is in its prime. As a residential place most people prefer Iquique; there is a large British colony here and the foreigners are of a better class; among the foreigners in Antofagasta the Slavs (mostly from Croatia and Dalmatia) predominate and these were originally the scum of their countries. In Iquique's favor also are better residences, pretty plazas, and a fine _malecon_ or sea boulevard with a nice beach. Nevertheless I prefer Antofagasta because it is cleaner, its streets are paved, its buildings are more substantial, and it does not seem so remote, having better railroad facilities.

Iquique is built in the form of a square on a sandy point of land. All of its buildings are frame, many of them being painted brown or dark red. Quite a few have ornamental balconies, some being of Moorish design. The streets, on some of which run horse cars, are narrow and straight. Many have irregularities for some buildings are set farther back than others and the curbs in these places likewise recede. The main street is named Tarapacá from the province of which Iquique is the capital, while the next important commercial street is that named Anibal Pinto. Ordinarily the dust on these thoroughfares would be insupportable, but the municipality has inaugurated the sprinkling of the streets with sea water. This causes much dampness in places where the sun does not reach.

Like most of the West Coast towns of the arid zone, Iquique is devoid of edificial interest. It has, however, an imposing opera house, a good city hall, a Moorish tower in the center of the plaza, and a rather pretty cemetery, besides some good residences, that of the governor with broad verandas and large plate glass windows being the finest. The Hotel Phœnix, owned by an Italian, Sorbini, is not at all bad. Here and in Tacna no fruit is served with the meals provided by the hotel, but native women perambulate between the tables carrying baskets from which they sell fruit to the diners. Sometimes these greasy hags become insulting when a guest refuses to buy from them.

Late at night of the evening after leaving Iquique the lights of two towns close together were visible on shore. These were Junin and Pisagua, the last mentioned being a few miles north of its neighbor. Pisagua is a nitrate port with 4089 inhabitants. Bubonic plague was formerly so bad there that the town had to be burned down twice.