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the " Epoca," a leading journal of Madrid, and which was published, with some editorial comments, on the 2d December, 1865.

III. An address delivered by the same author at a public meeting in Panamá, held on the 9th of November last, and intended to explain the origin, character, and probable issue of that obnoxious question.

IV. The proceedings of a general mass meeting which took place in New York on the night of January 6, 1866, and was got up with a view to exhibit the sympathies of the American people for the South American Republics, and especially Chili.

V. A short description of a political banquet offered, on the 6th of December, to the Press of New York, and to the Spanish-American diplomatists residing in this city, together with some remarks made by Mr. Vicuña Mackenna at the monthly meeting of the Union League Club of New York, on the night of the 14th of December, on the Telegraphs of Chile; and lastly

VI. A short biography of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, written in Chili, with the purpose of exhibiting the feelings of the Chilean nation towards the United States in the hour of her most critical trials.

In the form of an Appendix, we publish some other documents relating to the main subject of this pamphlet.

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:

on

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I am afraid I have undertaken an enterprise beyond my abilities in addressing you "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

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