Part 31

It is not known how many lives were lost, and the inscription upon the monument--which stands in the centre of a plaza occupying the site of the church--gives no clew; but it is estimated that at least three thousand young ladies perished, and there was mourning in almost every house in Santiago. After the fire the bodies were found packed in a solid mass of flesh, the heads and upper portions of the forms being destroyed, while the limbs and lower portions of the bodies were uninjured. Since that calamity the Feast of the Virgins has been celebrated with mourning in Chili.

It is one of the rules of the Church that no women shall participate in the services except as silent worshippers. All the music and singing is given by men, usually monks, who are well trained. Sometimes, as on Easter or Christmas, when mass is celebrated with more than usual magnificence, opera-singers of both sexes are introduced into the choir to assist in the performance; but the women are compelled to dress in the clothes of men, for fear of offending St. Paul or some other anti-woman’s rights potentate by wearing petticoats.

At the beginning of the fishing season at Valparaiso it is customary to take the image of St. Peter, the patron of fishermen, in a boat and row it over the bay, in order to bless the fish; and those who expect to reap the reward of this patronage are highly taxed to pay for this performance. Every method by which money may be extorted from the people, every pretence which their ingenuity can invent, is practised by the priests to enrich the Church, and the funds are wasted by them in riotous living. Their looks are sufficient to convict them of the gluttony and libertinism of which they are accused, and it is a common thing to see them reeling through the streets in a state of intoxication.

In the wall of one of the handsomest residences, by the side of the main entrance, is a niche in which a statue of the Mother of Christ has been placed--a gaudy, tinsel-covered figure, with a halo of gas-jets and a mantle of gilt-embroidered satin. An iron grating protects the image from the street, but through the bars have been thrust garlands of flowers and gifts of various sorts--votive offerings from people in bodily distress or mental disorder. The lady who lives in this house, the wife of a wealthy native merchant, some years ago became very ill, and made a vow to the Virgin that if her health was restored she would show her gratitude in this manner; and there the statue stands to illustrate the woman’s piety. Almost daily people who are ill, as its owner was, and others in distress of mind from some cause or another, come to it with such offerings as their condition permits them to make, and trustfully appeal to the Holy Mother for relief. It is said that many miraculous cures have resulted from faith in the power of this image, and people always lift their hats and reverently cross themselves as they pass it by.

The 13th of May is the anniversary of the most destructive earthquake Santiago has ever seen, which occurred about forty years ago. The responsibility for the calamity lay with a woman who had a private saint, a household idol, to whom she offered prayers. This image deemed fit to withhold from her some favor she had asked, and she, angry, cast it violently into the street. This caused the earthquake! and it did not cease until the fear-stricken people took the image to the Church of St. Augustine, near by, where it was placed in a niche of honor, and has since been devoutly worshipped by them as the patron or preventer of earthquakes. For the lack of a better name, and because the image bears no resemblance to any saint that was ever known or told of, the people call him “Señor May.” Originally he was “Señor Thirteenth of May,” but now plain “Señor May,” for short. Each year, as the 13th of May comes round--the anniversary of his “martyrdom,” as the people call it--the entire population assemble to pay honor to the saint, and appeal for his intercession in preventing a recurrence of the earthquake, and, as everybody knows, these appeals have never been denied. “Señor May” protects the city at least one day in the year. As the church is not large enough to accommodate the multitude, the saint is taken out into the street and carried at the head of a procession, in which the bishop, the municipal authorities, companies of military, religious orders, and others march. The occasion is recognized by the Government and the municipality, and by commercial circles. Business houses are closed, and factories dismiss their workmen to take part in the ceremonies. The day is celebrated as universally as Thanksgiving Day in the United States, and the saint receives rich gifts from people who are grateful that their houses have not been shaken to pieces.

I was present at the celebration in 1885. First in the procession came a squad of policemen to clear the way, for the entire population was jammed into the streets; and in the windows and upon the roofs of houses the nobility and gentry of the city stood, watching the performance as eagerly as the gamins of the streets, and throwing garlands and bunches of flowers into the path over which “Señor May” was to pass. Men fought and cursed, struck and stabbed each other in the struggle to do homage to the image, and all the police in the city were present to preserve order and arrest disturbers of the solemn scene. The Government offices were closed, and the President himself, the leader of the anti-Church party, did not go to the palace.

Following the policemen came a line of monks in cowls and frocks of all colors. There were monks in white, monks in black, monks in gray, and monks in brown--Carmelites, Capuchins, Franciscans, and every order being represented. Then came a procession of priests in their vestments, with novitiates, each bearing a lighted candle and chanting some monotonous service. Behind them were a dozen altar-boys, some with incense-lamps which perfumed the air, and others with trays of flowers, which were scattered in the street for the bishop, who came next, to tread upon. He walked under a crimson canopy, wearing his most resplendent vestments, and bearing in his hands the Host--the Holy Sacrament--the body and blood of the Redeemer. Behind him were other incense-burners, and more boys with flowers. Then came, borne upon the shoulders of twenty men, the image of “Señor May”--an ugly and repulsive-looking effigy, draped with the most fantastic garments, rich embroideries, and much gold lace. Upon the pedestal were packages and caskets containing the offerings received that day; and as he passed along one and another would be added, handed from the houses or the crowd to the priests of St. Augustine’s Church, who surrounded the image to collect them.

The crowd fell upon their knees as this ghastly feature of fanaticism passed by. Every head was uncovered, and every reverent tongue murmured a prayer. Men pushed and struggled, women screamed, and the policemen struck forward and backward with their swords to prevent the people from surging into the streets. Then came more chanting priests, and another battalion of monks, then more incense-bearers, and a spectacle of even greater repulsiveness--an image of a bleeding Christ upon a crucifix, naked, with the drapery of a ballet-dancer about his loins! More priests and more monks, and then a band of music and a regiment of infantry in parade uniforms, followed by a long line of bareheaded men, each with a lighted candle in his hand. This part of the procession received large and continual additions. People from the crowd fell into line at the rear, and were furnished with candles by attendants, who carried boxes of them in a cart, until the line reached out for a mile or more. After the parade the images were returned to the Church of St. Augustine, where high mass was celebrated by the bishop, to which admission was secured only by ticket.

The next morning the newspapers contained long descriptions of the procession. The contest then, as now, going on between the Liberal party and the clerical element for political control gives the utterances of the official organ of the Government (Liberal) peculiar significance. I quote the brief paragraphs in which reference was made to the event of the month:

“The procession of ‘Señor May’ took place yesterday, accompanied by many religious festivities in the temple of St. Augustine. The people and the municipality joined with the church to give a transcendent recognition in a most solemn and impressive manner of the historic ‘Señor May.’ From the early hours of the day the surroundings of the temple of St. Augustine were occupied by great throngs of the faithful, who awaited the inauguration of the parade. A little before four o’clock there arrived the forces of the army, with the national band at their head, and took position in front of the church in accordance with the orders from the commander-in-chief of the army.

“Having been put in motion, the procession filed with difficulty through the great number of people who crowded the streets and followed with many prayers and significant rejoicing. The pedestals of the saints were beautifully adorned and covered with many valuable and votive offerings, the tender gifts of piety from the faithful. A committee from the municipal authorities, appointed to contribute to the solemnity of the occasion, participated in the ceremonies. The bands of music played various sentimental airs during the march.

“To resume, the acts of recognition to the most potent ‘Señor May,’ made in compliance with the vows of the year 1847, after the terrible catastrophe of the 13th of the present month, have been perfectly carried out by the Catholic capital of Chili.”

Farming in Chili is conducted on the old feudal system, very much as it is in Ireland. The country is divided into great estates owned by people who live in the cities, and seldom visit the haciendas. There are only two classes of people, the very rich and the very poor, the landlords and the tenants. On each estate are a number of cottages with garden patches around them, which are occupied by the tenants, and in payment for which the landlord is entitled to so many days’ labor each year at his option. Should more labor than is due be required of the tenant, he is paid for it, not in money, but in orders upon the supply store or commissary of the estate, where he can get clothing or food or rum--especially rum. Tenants are usually given small credits at these stores, and are kept in debt to the landlords. As the law prohibits them from leaving a landlord to whom they owe money, the poor are kept in perpetual slavery, like the party in mythology who was always rolling a stone uphill. Even under this cruel system of peonage master and slave usually get along pretty well together, but old-fashioned feudal wars are kept up between estates, as was the case in England centuries ago. The peon will always fight for his landlord, and bloody encounters are constantly occurring. There are in Chili to-day the same old family feuds that existed in the Middle Ages of Europe between the Montagues and the Capulets. Somebody stepped upon the coat-tails of somebody else, or kicked his poodle dog, away back in the early history of the country, and the two families have been slashing and hacking at each other ever since, while nobody can explain what it is all about. The tenant will always cut a throat in his master’s honor, but he can never get any richer in Chili than he is to-day.

Everybody goes on horseback; even the beggars ride. The gear of the Chili saddle-horse--and horses are seldom broken to harness, all the teaming being done with oxen--is a most curious and complicated affair. The bit is a long, heavy, flat piece of iron, which rests on the horse’s tongue, and presses against the roof of his mouth. At each end is a hole, through which is passed a large iron ring about four inches in diameter, which encircles the lower jaw. At each side of the mouth is placed another iron ring to which the reins are fastened. The whole affair weighs about five pounds, and is sufficiently powerful to break a horse’s jaw if suddenly jerked. The reins are made of fine-plaited hide or horse-hair, about the thickness of the forefinger, and are joined together when they reach the pommel of the saddle, terminating in a long lash called a _chicote_, at the end of which is either a handsome tassel or a small piece of lead. When not in use the chicote hangs down the flank of the horse, often dragging on the ground. Sometimes the load of lead is heavy, and furnishes a weapon of offence and defence as formidable as a slung-shot, and the poor horse is often beaten with it without mercy. Fancy bits are made of plated or solid silver, and bridles plated with gold, with reins made of golden wire, can be found in the larger cities. I saw a bridle in Chili, belonging to Señora Cousino, that is said to have cost two thousand five hundred dollars; and one often hears of gifts of this sort that are worth one thousand dollars or more.

The Chili saddle is even more queer and complicated than the bridle. First, six or seven sheepskins are placed upon the horse’s back, one on top of the other; a leather strap is passed around them and firmly secured; a skeleton saddle, or rather a piece of wood cut in the shape of a saddle-tree, with a cantle at each end, comes next, and on top of this any number of sheepskins; or, if the owner is rich, rare furs furnish a seat, which is called the _montura_. The four corners are fastened down by broad leather straps, ornamented with silver or brass buckles, to enable the rider to wedge himself in, and the whole is bound around the horse’s belly with a broad band of leather or canvas. Sometimes aristocratic and wealthy riders have a high pommel like that of the Mexican saddle, which is covered with silver, and stamped on the top with his family coat of arms. The amount of silver on a man’s riding equipment is understood to indicate his wealth and station in life, and there is a great deal of competition in this direction among the swell caballeros. The stirrups of the ordinary citizen are made of two huge pieces of wood, with a hole cut through for the foot, while those of the aristocrat are brass or silver slippers. The wooden affair, the poor man’s stirrup, is rudely cut out of oak, or other hard wood, by hand, and usually weighs as much as four or five pounds. The brass one is quite as heavy, but much more ornamental.

When the rider is seated in the saddle his legs are entirely concealed by the furs and sheepskins, which add to his warmth, and on his back he wears the _poncho_ of the country, which is the most comfortable and convenient garment that human ingenuity has ever produced. It is about the size of the rubber poncho used in the United States, but is woven of vicuña hair or lamb’s-wool, and keeps the wearer cool by day, as the rays of the sun cannot penetrate it, and warm by night. It answers as well for an umbrella as for an overcoat, and sheds the rain better than rubber, for the oil is not extracted from the wool of which it is made. The vicuña is the mountain-goat of the Andes, but is becoming scarce, and nowadays a vicuña poncho is as rare and expensive as a camel’s-hair shawl, which it very much resembles, being worth from one hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars. A fully equipped saddle-horse of a caballero, or gentleman, with vicuña poncho and spurs of silver, with saddle and bridle mounted with the same metal, often represents an investment of four or five thousand dollars. Very often the stirrup is made of solid silver, beautifully chased, and those used by ladies are generally so. The English manufacturers are able to produce the ornaments and stirrups so much cheaper than the native workmen, who have no labor-saving machinery, that nearly all are now imported, and they have succeeded in imitating the poncho very well too. But among the aristocrats it is considered the height of vulgarity to use modern English saddlery or the imitation poncho, for these articles have been handed down from generation to generation, and the older they are the more valuable, no sort of usage wearing them out.

In Guatemala I was presented with a pair of stirrups which had been worn by the cavalry of Cortez when they made their raid into Central America and conquered that continent in 1535. This pair was handed down from generation to generation, in the family of Mr. Sanchez, the “Minister of Hacienda,” or Finance, of the Guatemala Government: they are made of iron, with wide flanges to protect the feet and legs of the cavalier from the high grass and brambles of the country through which he had to ride. This style was long ago abandoned, and is now only seen in museums.

He who wishes to make the journey from the Chilian to the Argentine Republic and the east coast of South America has a choice of routes. He may go by sea, around through the Strait of Magellan, which will cost him fifteen days’ time and two hundred dollars in money, or he may climb over the Andes on the back of a mule, a journey of five days, three of which only are spent in the saddle amid some

of the grandest scenery in the world. The highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere is Aconcagua, which rises 22,415 feet above the sea to the northward from Valparaiso and Santiago, and in plain view from both cities when the weather is clear. Chimborazo was for a long time supposed to be the king of the Andes, and in the geographies published twenty years ago it is described as the highest summit in the world. No one has ever reached the peak of either mountain, owing to the depth of snow and impassable gorges, but recent measurements, taken by means of triangulation, give Aconcagua an excess of about 2000 feet over old “Chimbo.” Scientists have reached an altitude higher than the summit of either in the Himalaya Mountains of India, where Mount Everest is claimed to rise between 27,000 and 30,000 feet. Humboldt made Chimborazo famous, and very few travellers have gone beyond the point he reached; but no serious attempt has ever been made to explore the summit of Aconcagua, as the Chillanos do not often go where their horses cannot carry them. In mountain gloom and glory Chimborazo is said to surpass all rivals, standing as it does within sight of the sea, and surrounded by a cluster of twenty peaks, like a king and his counsellors. But Aconcagua is grand enough, and has nothing near it to dwarf its size. The latitude in which it stands brings the snow line much lower than upon Chimborazo and the other peaks of Ecuador, which are almost upon the line of the equator, and the purity of the atmosphere gives the spectator an opportunity to see its picturesqueness at a long distance.

From Santiago, Chili, there is a Government railway as far as the town of Santa Rosa, which passes around the base of Aconcagua, and furnishes the traveller with a most sublime panorama of mountain scenery. There mules and men are hired for the ride over the Cumbre Pass to Mendoza, on the eastern slope of the Andes, to which a railroad has been recently opened by the Argentine Government. Here one can take a Pullman sleeper, and ride to Buenos Ayres as comfortably as he can go from New York to St. Louis, the distance being about the same.

This railroad was opened in May, 1885, with a grand celebration, in which the Presidents of Chili and the Argentine Republic, with retinues of officials, participated. The event was as important to the commercial development of Argentine as was the first Pacific Railway to the United States, as it opened to settlement millions of square miles of the best territory in the republic, and furnished a highway between the two seas.

The people of the United States have very little conception of what is going on down in that part of the world. They do not realize that there is in Argentine a republic which some day is to rival our own--a country with immense resources, similar to those of the United States, situated in a corresponding latitude, prepared to furnish the world with beef and mutton and bread, and stretching a net-work of railways over its area that will bring the products of the pampas to market. Geographers do not keep pace with the development of this part of South America, and to present accurate accounts of its condition should be rewritten every year. Who knows, for instance, except those who have been there, that a man can ride from Buenos Ayres across the pampas to the foot-hills of the Andes in a Pullman car?

The late war between Peru and Chili robbed Bolivia of all her sea-coast, and the ports from which her produce was shipped, and at which her imports were received, now belong to the Chillanos, who charge heavy export and import duties. The opening of this railroad has caused the trade of Bolivia to be diverted to the Atlantic, and the extension of the line to the northward, which is already in progress, will make Buenos Ayres and other cities on the river La Plata the _entrepots_ for Bolivian commerce. It is not much farther now from the centre of Bolivia to the Argentine Railway than to the Pacific coast, and the feeling of resentment towards Chili

makes the difference exceeding small. Long trains of mules are passing up and down the mountains, and their numbers will constantly increase until the Pacific sea-ports will see nothing that is grown or used in the country which Chili so ruthlessly robbed. One great difficulty, however, lies in the fact that from April to November the mountain passes are blockaded with snow, and it is always dangerous, and often impossible, to make the journey. Native couriers, who use snow-shoes, and find refuge in “casuchas,” or hollows of the rocks, during storms, cross them the year round, carrying the mails. Sometimes, indeed often, they perish from exposure or starvation, or perhaps are buried under avalanches. The passes are about thirteen thousand feet high, and are swept by winds that human endurance cannot survive. During the summer the journey is delightful, and though attended by many discomforts, has its compensations to those who are willing to rough it, and who are fond of mountain scenery. Ladies often venture, and enjoy it. Not long since a party of thirteen school-ma’ams from the United States, who are teaching under contract with the Argentine Government, crossed the mountains to Chili, and had “a lovely time.” Plenty of mules and good guides can be secured at the termini of the railways, but travellers have to carry their own food and bedding. There are no hotels on the way, but only “schacks,” or log houses, which furnish nothing but shelter. Very often people who are not accustomed to high altitudes are attacked with sirroche, from which they sometimes suffer severely.