THE

REPUBLIC OF CHILI,

ITS PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS.

(An outline of her Geography, Geology, Social Manners, Political Institutions, Mineral and Agricultural Wealth, Commerce, Statistics, Public Education, Rail-Roads, and Hints on her present War with Spain.)

A LECTURE BEFORE THE TRAVELER'S CLUB OF NEW YORK, ON THE "PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF CHILI," BY B. VICUÑA MACKENNA.

Last Saturday evening, December 2d, 1865, a select and numerous assembly of ladies and gentlemen met at the elegant apartments of the Traveler's Club of New York, on special invitation, to hear a lecture on Chili by Hon. B. Vicuña Mackenna, special envoy of that republic. to the United States. The lecturer having been introduced by Mr. Dunbar, President of the Committee of Directors of the Club, proceeded to deliver his lecture in the following terms, in the English language:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I am afraid I have undertaken an enterprise beyond my abilities in addressing you on The Present State and Prospects of Chili," my beloved country. It is true that I have been accustomed to address large assemblies, but this is the first time I have dared to speak in the presence of ladies, or in a language not familiar to me. But I have surrendered myself to the kind invitation of the Traveler's Club, and undertaken the duty of serving my country in the best way possible for a foreigner in a hospitable land, and to that kindness and indulgence that is always the accompaniment of beauty and talent.

Permit me now, as an introductory remark, to point out to you some of the more peculiar topographical features of Chili, and which, I hope, will explain to you many facts and particular traits of our nation as a people, and as a prominent member of the family of South American Republics.

PECULIAR GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF CHILI.

In the first place, Chili has its boundaries laid out, as if by the hand of God, for forming a single nation, a people of a peculiar and defined character, a family, I dare say, of good and noble citizens. Chili has no neighbors, properly speaking. Its limits are almost impassable to all nations. On the east the lofty Andes, covered with eternal snow; at the north the desert of Atacama, a wilderness of six hundred miles, where neither man nor animal, nor even the hardiest of plants can live; on the south the boundless plains of savage and unknown Patagonia; on the west, its only vulnerable side, the mighty Pacific Ocean.

To this particular and almost isolated geographical position of Chili, and to its mountainous formation, have been attributed, by both the historian and the philosophical naturalist, the love of liberty and independence exhibited by her sons-a feeling which appears common to all peoples who live by themselves and for themselves. To the same causes may be ascribed that boundless patriotism of my countrymen, developed in such a unanimous and earnest manner on the very day when old and fast-decaying Spain unfolded her flag-so many times beaten by us-in new defiance of our honor and our power. (Hear, hear.)

UNITY OF RACES.

In the next place, Chili enjoys the great privilege of unity of race. Far from tropical climates, we did not incur that great calamity of greater nations-slavery; and, at the same time, the Spanish conquerors, finding in the proud and brave Araucanians and Promacas, the natives of the land, a race worthy of theirs, became intermixed with them in such a manner that to find in Chili an Indian or a negro is a thing next to impossible. In fact, small negroes are brought from Lima to be kept in the largest houses of Santiago as an ornamental piece of furniture. It is owing to this that, although we are only two

millions of men, we represent a population almost as great. as that of Mexico, which has six millions of Indians, entirely unfitted for civilization, and, in fact, more inclined to oppose than to accept it.

VARIETY OF CLIMATE.

In the third place, Chili possesses all varieties of climate, from the warm and semi-tropical valleys of Copiapó to the frozen regions of the Archipelago of Chiloe. So it is that at the same time are flowering, under a pure and diaphanous sky, the banana and the pineapple in the north, the peach and the watermellon in the central valleys, and the fruits of the piñones, or fir-pines, in its southern limits. It is to these circumstances, probably, that Chili is indebted for the name of the "Italy of South America," although it has also been called by some kind traveler, who wished to explain the name of our principal port, Valparaiso-" the Valley of Paradise." At least the Chilian ladies believe, as a matter of faith, that they are living in the spot first inhabited by Eve; and I may add that the immense woods of wild apple trees which cover our southern provinces give some reason for their romantic belief. (Applause.)

IMMENSE EXTENSION OF COAST.

There is another peculiarity of the physical structure of Chili-its immense extent of coast of more than two thousand miles, indented by hundreds of ports and bays, which make the country fitted for carrying on, throughout its entire extent, an active and profitable commerce with the rest of the world. In fact, internal locomotion in Chili is almost unnecessary; and so near are the Andes to the coast, that a witty Venezuelan critic, the tutor of Bolivar, used to say, "that the country being so narrow, the Chilians were obliged to cling with their nails to the sides of the Andes to avoid falling into the sea." But I make this remark only to show you how easy it is for the foreigner to reach our country without any expenses of inland traveling and settling, and to point out what splendid prospects are there open to foreign emigration.

And that is the very country, ladies and gentlemen, with such boundless extent of shores, that the Spanish Admiral Pareja dares to declare is generally and completely blockaded with five old frigates, when it is in the memory

of every one that you needed no less than 462 ships to keep up a blockade (not always effective) of just the same extent of sea-coast during your late gigantic war. Pareja declared the blockade of all our ports, which are sixty or seventy, and do you know how the Government of Chili answered that ridiculous threat? Declaring free and accessible to all nations sixty or seventy ports more.

But in the present age, when Don Quixote is dead and buried for ever in La Mancha, with all the pride and chivalry of the old Castilians, the invention of steam has, it seems, brought them to sea; and there is Admiral Pareja, the Don Quixote of the Pacific, trying to shut up to the commerce of the world no less than a hundred ports with a fleet of five frigates! The story of the wind-mills recurs to every one. (Laughter.) But I have now, with your kind permission, to follow steadily the thread of my lecture.

PARTICULAR INFLUENCE OF THE OCEAN.

There is yet something worthy of your notice in the formation of Chili. Exposed as it is in its whole extent and widely open to the direct influence of the Pacific Ocean, the soil derives from its grateful breezes a robust and wholesome vegetation, which covers her fields with carpets of flowers and boundless prairies of pasturage. This climatogical peculiarity is most striking when the traveler to Chili from the east of the Andes crosses from that petrified ocean of earth called the "Pampas of Buenos Ayres." There, on the oriental side of the lofty mountains, every trace of natural vegetation disappears, as if Chili was ambitiously taking for itself, and pumping into the other side, that moisture from the surface of the ocean which renders rich and beautiful her plains and valleys. It is supposed at the same time, that the elasticity of the atmosphere along the shores of Chili has a certain influence on the minds of the people-giving a more acute intelligence to those living in the vicinity of the ocean than the inhabitants of the interior enjoy. That was, at least, the opinion of an old Jesuit historian, MIGUEL DE OLIVAREZ, who probably lived on the sea coast.

GEOLOGY OF CHILI.

I will devote a moment to giving you a passing idea of the general geological formation of Chili. No country

has, perhaps, more to interest the modern geologist than that unexplored region. With the exception of the German traveler MEYER, the eminent English naturalist DARWIN, and our Professor PISSIS, nobody has devoted even a superficial study to that branch of science in our country. If the famous LYELL, or Prof. AGASSIZ, now busily engaged on the banks of the Amazones, had visited our shores, many important discoveries would have been added to that beautiful science.

But, nevertheless, it is clearly demonstrated from what is now known that Chili is quite a modern country. There are, indeed, persons still living who, I can properly say, have seen it growing, and coming but as a new-born giant from the bottom of the sea. The phenomenon of the gradual rising of the shores, which has been observed as well in Norway and in some other parts of the world, is plainly visible in Chili. Admiral FITZROY saw it with his own eyes, when the earthquake of 1835 (the last severe one we have experienced) took place. In a few minutes the land was raised in some places many feet; a small island appeared in the bay of Talcahuano, and so uniform was and is yet continuing to be this gradual rising of the land, that the theatre of Valparaiso stands now in a place that thirty years ago formed part of the anchorage for ships.

These facts prove, in my humble opinion, that Chili is quite a new country, comparatively, and as far as I know, no traces have ever been found within its limits of an age previous to the tertiary period. The general opinion that the Andes belong to the last epochs of the formation of the earth, is entirely confirmed in the Chilian system of those prodigious mountains.

And upon that matter allow me to relate a very simple fact which illustrates fully in its own simplicity the tremendous revolution which that part of the Continent has gone through. The geologist Darwin found, in 1837, in the pass of the Pinquenes, at the elevation of 15,000 feet, the trunk of a pine standing with its roots firm on the rocks, and saturated with marine salts and incrustations of shells. The trunk was cut, brought to England, and there the analysis proved that it had been under the water of the sea for many years, perhaps centuries.

Well, now, the conclusions that we derive from that modest discovery are very striking. In the first place, it