Show da va 37 y i i 6 Z fig V fj C fig T A view of santiago chile prepared by the national society washington D C chile whose diplomats are in conference in ili washington with of peru in un an effort to solve the tacna arica problem might be called the south american california it is ia long arid aal narrow and its region of greatest development and population Is a great rich valley with low mountains bains separating it from the coast and with a steep snow capped range tow ealr above it to the east chile Is the longest and narrowest of all the countries of the world it stretches 2700 miles from cape ilor horn n to the deserts of tarapaca Tara paca and tacna within Nit bin the tropics its width Is rarely more than miles from the ocean to the andean crest if we were nere to place it upon a similar stretch of coast in nort north america mer cat it t w would on at cover lower ow california california oregon washington end british columbia to the st ellas elias district of alaska chile is divided into three set sections ions by the natural features of the pacific slope of the andes the northern Is that of the semiarid semi arid arld and desert region which reaches from peru southward to valparaiso it Is an utter desert in the north and becomes less inhospitable to board toward ard the south it Is traer traversed sed from the lie andes to the coast by short deep valleys separated by y high spurs of the mountains an and d communication muni cation catlon from north to south has always been exceedingly difficult nevertheless erth eless the chilean engineers found a route by which to extend the state railway which links puerto montt in a latitude comparable to ft 4 th that at of ne new W york with in the territories conquered con conquered quere d from peru ieru which lias has a latitude comparable to that of mexico city heart of the country the central section of chile extends through nine degrees of latitude for a distance of about COO CAM from val paraiso to tile the island of childe Cli iloe south of puerto montt tills this is the heart of chile the alie on only Y portion of the country which can an lapport a sufficient bent population to constitute rt a notion nation the area Is not large about square wiles and much of it is Occil occupied Pled by mountain ranges of great height and ruggedness but between theander the andes and the range ranee there extends in tills this section a valley similar to that of Calif californi Califor ornu nn which 16 tile the seat at of the chilean Cl illean people peoli many livers rising in the andes dk descend to it and alid meander mole or less directly me westward through the const coast range of the pacific lic but bilt the hie intervening ter divides ure are Dow nowhere liere of such altitude as to interrupt the continuity of the lie great valley that extends from in north to south Sari santiago tago Is situa situated ed nt at its northern end and flouri bli ng cities are arc located at each favor favorable le point on the railway that connects the lie capital with ANIth puerto the cli climate falate ns as we go from north to bouth be becomes colnes ever eier more humid and we pass from the irrigated lands about sant santiago lago to tile the dense forest swamps of tile the so southern portion of the district while much of the land lias has been cleared or Is in the lie process of clearing in a state which remels 3 one of our own ovan pacific coast 30 years ago other areng areas remain impenetrable forests still unexplored after nearly 00 years of occupation of the country the third section of chile extending bou bouchard thard from puerto montt through 1 14 4 degrees of latitude to cape I 1 porn lorn Is like our soli southern thern aliskan cow coast t a stretch i of islands final and peninsulas broken by intricate channels channel and profound that penk penetrate far fair into the land tumultuous ahers descend front from the andes and ill debouch into the alie fjords in ili swampy deltas which are covered cov oreil with j dense forets forests tile the large island I of cl Cli iloe which N conquered by valdivia Valdi vla before the nil dille of the sixteenth century Is well weil populated lind occupies si it position esith reference to the more frequented coast chiist si nillar to that lint which fiand holds to run ron francisco farther south the population boines very scanty glaciers descend from the andean heights anal tile the but majestic male maj eslic senery of if channel and ahr straits 0 r magellan jit ellan suggests that of the passage arid and lynn canal of the alas kan coast when chile expanded it Is the extreme northern portion of chile as shown by the maps that is now the center of interest chile did not always have a length of 2700 miles until the last quarter 6 of f the tha past century the northern boundary of the country fell more than miles short of 0 its present position north of it bolivia owned a coastal strip miles or more in length and reruns perus southern border extended some miles farther south thabit does today all of this region which now forms the northernmost miles of chile was wag considered of little worth and much of it had not been explored when extensive nitrate deposits were discovered in the bolivian portion of the coastal strip in the sixties there was vas a rush like that to califor nias gold fields in 1849 1840 A large proportion or of the newcomers were ch chil II 11 eans friction arose between chilean mining companies and bolivian tax collectors and finally in 1879 1870 war broke out between chile and bolivia peru ieru was drawn in as an ally of dolivia bolivia and the three cornered war ran on for several years at its conclusion chile was completely victorious ious and extended her boundaries at the expense of the two vanquished countries Bo bolgla llala became the switzerland ot of america in a double sense it Is not only perched high among mounta inq but by the loss of its ra pa cilc ciale provinces it became completely landlocked tills this mountain country has attempted in recent years to buy front from chile a corridor to the sea since the war of the pa pacific cefic as it was called peru has had toward chile the relations which italy held toward austria in ili the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tacna and arica have constituted its peru ieru atre derita denta and all its leaders have dreamed of restoring the lost provinces economically chile lias has pro profiled fled greatly by the war of the pacific Iaci fie out of the fornier former perzilan Pe province of tat Taia apace paca and the feinier cormer inn province of atacama Ata caina now the chilean have been taken the war nitrates worth many bolls millions lolls lol ls of dollars and much remains to be extracted valuable deposits of nitrate leave conie come to light lighta too in tana taina since the war the export tax on nn nitrates supplies nearly three fourths of 0 the income of the incidentally in tacna is one of the few areas along tills this desert portion of the const coast capable cap ible of g crops and the section is therefore of grout great strategic balue these tire lire some nie of the complex factors which make the tacna arica problem much more then a mere lucre question whether Nh ether ft a plebiscite shall be held to as assign igei the region perm ineptly to either cither peru or Chile santiago the capital santiago is the lie chief city of chile but not inthe in the same degree as buenos aires is of the argentine buenos aires lins blis become almost tite republic itself in it the sense that hat parts is prance france but santiago is but the capital of the he country which mach has other cities that may compare with it in local 0 o importance santiago contrasts with aires as the conservative capital of a sin small all country with the me lie trop tro polls odthe confluent you feel fee in n the chilean capital the alie conseria the character of 0 tin ilia people in ili buenos aires the liberal spirit of the world city ity valdivia ond ills his successors the in ili of 0 caille in the sixteenth con cell tury wera were sold soldiers lers bent solely on oil cou con quest such as the slad taken part in in peru ieru for immediate gain whereas wh areas the colonists who nho in c expeditions pe I 1 founded I 1 al e come tv with wires suid and hildren alt with mures aind implements of to settle in the land thus thele was a earled ference between chile annl i argentina Arsent lna from the beginning begin nin the averring arring Av of nt caille met let and mingled with etli a n indian race the bixl fhyr aln ir plue Is 13 1 without question Ine tIon tile lie 1110 most qt independent the boldest tile the t atras talve of south american people |