CHAPTER II

CHILEAN HISTORY

_Inca Rule and Native Chiefs.—Spanish Colonial Period.—The Fight for Independence.—Republican Chile._

Neither in her deep woodlands nor upon her open plains does Chile possess monuments of ancient civilisation. The foundations of her flourishing cities date back no farther than 400 years at the most; the arts and crafts of daily life are based upon imported concepts, owning no native origin. As a settled, built, cultivated country, Chile is for the main part genuinely new.

The old races of the south, whether nomad hunters of the interior or fisherfolk of the coast and Magellanic waterways, built no towns, constructed and carved nothing that serves today as a memorial; bones hidden in caves, chipped spear and arrow heads, harpoons and fish-hooks, remain as the only evidence of the life of past generations, the only witnesses by which the condition of their present descendants can be measured. Farther north, where Inca culture penetrated, are such ruins of dwellings as those of Calama, with their burial sites. Traces of the Inca highways are yet to be found as far south as the Atacama desert and Copiapó. But in contrast with the archæological wealth of Bolivia and Peru, of Central America and Mexico, Chile has not a single pre-Spanish temple nor the rudest monolith to show. The north and central valley of Chile as far as the present Talca were under Inca control for about one hundred years before the Spanish conquest, Peruvian records yielding the only historical accounts of events in Chile prior to Almagro’s expedition.

A friendly connection between the Peruvian empire and the settled tribes of the Chilean north seems to have been of old standing, a tradition confirmed by the evidence of burial grounds. Upon the authority of the historian Montesinos, the Inca Yahuar Huaccac gave a daughter and a niece in marriage to two chiefs of Chile; these two princesses came later, with their children, to visit Peru, their uncle Viracocha being then Inca. A revolt took place during their absence, and the family was only reinstated by the might of the Inca, and under his tutelage. It was, however, the Inca Pachacuti who began the definite explorations and conquests that, continued by his son Tupac Yupanqui and his grandson Huayna Ccapac, increased the Inca dominion to a great empire extending from the Ancasmayu River, north of Quito, to the banks of the Maule in Chile.

Tupac Yupanqui (1439–75) conquered the Antis,[2] people of the Collao, and from Charcas decided to go farther south. He entered Chile, defeated the powerful Sinchi (chieftain) Michimalongo and later Tangalongo, the latter ruling country down to the Maule. Here the same fierce tribes who afterwards resisted the finest Spanish troops opposed him, and after setting up frontier columns, or walls, as a mark of conquest on the river banks, the Inca returned to Cuzco via Coquimbo. From this time Chile was officially organised. Quechua-speaking colonists (_mitimaes_) were sent here as throughout all the rest of the thousand leagues of Inca territory, registering the population and imposing tributes of country produce. Curacas were instituted as tribal leaders in lieu of the Sinchis, who were in old Chile obeyed only in wartime. Extension of this definite organisation was energetically carried on by the great Inca, Huayna Ccapac, and it was during this period that the Peruvians constructed the great roads that so astonished, and aided, the Spaniards. The effective transport system and the success of the Inca rulers in pacifying districts by the simple method of transporting the original population where disaffection was suspected, replacing them with settlers from a distance, the whole meticulous paternalism of the Inca system, regulating every part of the social frame from the cradle to the grave so thoroughly that initiative was stifled, rendered easy the task of the invading European. He did no more than step into Inca shoes, and the Inca’s subjects received the change of masters almost with apathy.

Footnote 2:

From which name the word Andes, in whose lower folds the Antis dwelt, was probably derived.

That careful observer Cieza de Leon, in Peru from 1532–50, leaves a precise account of the Inca roads that ran south from Cuzco both along the sierras and also throughout the coastal border. The highways were made, he says, fifteen feet wide in the valleys, with a strong wall on either side, the whole space being paved with cement and shaded with trees. “These trees, in many places, spread their branches, laden with fruit, over the road and many birds fluttered among the leaves.” Resthouses containing provisions for the Inca officials and troops were built at regular intervals, and it was strictly forbidden that Peruvians should interfere with the property of natives in nearby fields or houses.

In deserts where the sand drifted high, and paving was useless, huge posts were driven in to mark the way. Zarate, who gives the width of the roads as 40 feet, says that “broad embankments were made on either side,” and all early travellers in Inca territory agree that these lost highways were extremely well made. He adds that the posts in the desert were connected with stout cords, but that even in his day the Spaniards had destroyed many of the posts, using them for making fires. The road of the coast, like that of the sierra, was 1500 miles long; and of Chilean traces any traveller through the Atacama copper regions may see a survival at the station of “Camino del Inca,” where the modern railway cuts across the ancient road.

Along the Sierra highway came, in 1535, the first Spaniard to set foot in Chile, Diego de Almagro. He was not the first European to explore Chilean territory, for the Portuguese Fernão de Magalhães had discovered the Strait bearing his name in 1520; but he was the pioneer explorer by land. The name Chile is a native word which was probably the appellation of a (pre-Spanish) local chief; it was the name by which the Incas designated that part of the country under their control, and it persisted in spite of Valdivia’s later attempt to call it “Nueva Estramadura,” just as “Mejico” and “Cuba” survived and “Nueva España” and “Española” faded out. It has been frequently but mistakenly said that the word Chile actually does mean “chilly” in the Quechua tongue; as a matter of fact the Quechua word meaning “cold” is _chiri_. In early Spanish times the name Chile applied only to part of the central valley with “Copayapu” in the extreme north, “Coquimpu” just below it, and the central region partly ascribed to “Canconicagua.” But the name Chile was simple and was so quickly adopted that Almagro’s adherents were soon politically grouped as “los de Chile”—the men of Chile, and when the country was definitely colonised the name was extended to denote all the settled country south of Peru, that is, between Copiapó and Chiloé Island.

The original spur to conquest of Chile was rivalry between the Pizarro brothers and their fellow conquistador, the old Adelantado Diego de Almagro. The Pizarros wanted to retain rich Cuzco, and Almagro was an inconvenient claimant; the magnificent city of the Incas, today a grievous sight with its shabby modern buildings superimposed upon the stately stone walls of the Incas, was already a smashed and looted ruin; but it had yielded so much treasure that it was probably impossible for the conquistadores to give up search for other golden cities. Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and the Chibcha Kingdom, had followed in rapid succession, and it is not surprising that when Indians spoke of the riches of the south, Almagro, over seventy years old, should be ready to march into Chile. Almagro had a commission from Charles V to conquer and rule over 200 leagues of land south of Francisco Pizarro’s territory (New Castille); it was to be called Nueva Toledo. At about the same time, 1534, a grant was given to the ill-fated Alcazaba of 300 leagues of land, commencing at the southern boundary of Almagro’s territory, under the name of Nueva Leon.

Almagro set out with over 500 Spaniards and 15,000 Peruvian Indians, after spending 500,000 pesos on equipment. He marched south from Cuzco, crossed the Andes and went by Titicaca Lake, following the Inca route; perhaps as a guide and a means of securing the loyal service of the Peruvians, who would never desert a member of their ruling clan, the Spanish leader took with him an Inca priest and the young Paullu Tupac Yupanqui, son of the Huayna Ccapac and brother of the Inca Manco. The latter had been crowned in Cuzco in early 1534 by Pizarro, probably with the double object of quieting Peru and to obviate charges made by his personal enemies in Spain. Both Charles V and the Pope emphasised their possession of tender consciences with regard to native American rulers. This young scion of the Incas survived the expedition into Chile, and was with Almagro’s son at the battle of Chupas.

Terrible sufferings were experienced by the expedition in the bitterly cold Andes, where deep snow and cruel winds killed the Peruvians by thousands. Many of the Spanish soldiers too were frozen to death, and food supplies failed. When at last they turned west an advance party of horsemen went ahead to bring food, cheerfully yielded by the settled natives, to their starving and exhausted comrades. Arriving in the green Copiapó valley, Almagro was well received at first, but pressing his search for gold to extremes, quarrels arose, the natives were “punished,” and Almagro moved on, after receiving reinforcements brought by Orgoñez. A strong party was sent forward to report on southerly conditions, and marched as far as the Rio Claro (tributary of the Maule) where savage Indians confronted the outposts of the old Inca empire. When Almagro heard this report, and realised that neither treasures of gold nor rich cities existed, he decided to return to Cuzco, making his way back by the coastal road and traversing the scorching, waterless deserts of Atacama and Tarapacá. At his arrival in Arequipa at the end of 1536 he had lost 10,000 Indians and 156 Spaniards. The rest of Almagro’s story—the news of the Peruvian revolt, his seizure of Cuzco, and his execution at the age of seventy-five by Hernando Pizarro, when fortune finally deserted him—belongs to the history of Peru. The fact that a man had made the Chilean journey with Almagro was considered, later on, as a claim upon royal consideration. The petition of Diego de Pantoja, in 1561, makes this point, while that of Encinas, 1558, is even more emphatic in speaking of the sufferings of the soldiers; he went south, he says, with Captain Gomez de Alvarado, fighting Indians of the “Picones, Pomamaucaes, Maule and Itata” and traversing painfully “snow and water, swamps, creeks, crossing rivers by swimming or on rafts” and with no food but wild herbs. For the moment the efforts of the Europeans were without result; during another two years Chile remained in the hands of her native rulers.

_Spanish Colonial Period_

There was no actual conquest of Chile by the Spaniards. Those native tribes which had submitted to the Inca régime accepted the Europeans: they who had defied the Inca continued to defy the Spanish.

There were angry outbursts on the part of certain northern and central tribes when the Spaniards returned in force in 1540, but when these had been overcome and peace made, the Indians remained consistently loyal. The “Changos” of the coastal border took up a permanent position as friends just as the Mapuches (“Araucanians”) took up a permanent position as enemies. The Spanish settled Chile, organised a social system, built cities and defences, cultivated the ground, brought in blood and culture, created a nation; but South Chile was never a conquered country in the same sense that Mexico and Peru were conquered countries.

The next attempt to plant the Spanish flag in Chile following the abortive expedition of Almagro was well planned and successful. Captain Pedro de Valdivia, thirty-five years old, a campmaster of Hernando Pizarro, and a man of formed and resolute character, wanted to increase his fortune, consisting of an estate near Cuzco. He obtained without difficulty from Francisco Pizarro a commission to open up Chile, a land of poor repute since the return of Almagro; his appointment was that of Lieutenant Governor. His chief difficulty was in raising men, for as he says in a letter written in 1545 to Charles V, those who turned most from the project were the soldiers who had accompanied Almagro on the first unfortunate journey, when 1,500,000 pesos were spent “with, as the only fruit, the redoubled defiance of the Indians.”

He set out at the beginning of 1540, however, with nearly 200 Spaniards and 1000 Peruvian Indians, and avoiding the Andes traversed the coastal deserts, arriving in the valley of the Mapocho at the end of the same year. On the eve of departure a blow to his hopes threatened in the arrival of Sanchez de la Hoz, armed with a royal commission for the settlement of Chile; but Valdivia, equal to the occasion, induced his rival to provide a couple of ships, equip a force with fifty horses, supplies, arms, etc., and agreed to meet him at a small port just north of the Atacama desert. The appointment was kept, but as soon as the new arrival went ashore Valdivia arrested him, made him sign a renunciation of his claims to leadership and henceforth obliged him to serve as a common soldier. Eventually Sanchez de la Hoz joined a conspiracy against Valdivia, was discovered, and was beheaded in Santiago de Chile.

In February, 1541, Valdivia founded Santiago “de Nueva Estremadura,” Valdivia naming his province after Estremadura in Spain, where he was born in the town of La Serena. The colony had a hard struggle for existence, the Indians attacking the fortifications of Santa Lucia hill, where the settlers built the first houses of wood and thatched grass; in the letter mentioned above Valdivia says that the third year of the colony was not so difficult, but that during the first two years they had passed through great necessities. They ate roots, having no meat, and the man who obtained fifty grains of maize each day counted himself fortunate. He says also that they got a little gold, and gives Chile the first praises, so often repeated subsequently, for its enchanting climate. For people who want to settle permanently, there is no better land in the world than Chile, he declares; there is good level land, very healthy and pleasing, and the winter lasts but four months. In summer the climate is delicious, and men are able to walk without danger in the sunshine. The fields give abundant returns, and cattle thrive.

Live stock, in fact, throve so well that within twenty-five years of the settlement the Indians of the south possessed flocks and herds, and, learning from the Europeans, went mounted on horseback into battle.

Needing men and supplies, early in 1543 Valdivia sent six Spaniards by land to Peru. Captured by Copiapó Indians, the Captain Monroy and a soldier named Miranda escaped by an act of treachery against a friendly Indian woman, and arrived safely in Cuzco after a terrible journey through the deserts. But, to cajole Peru into giving help, Valdivia had sent them with stirrups and bits made of gold, a display so successful that by the end of the year sixty new settlers and a ship with stores reached Chile, followed by captains Villagra and Escobar with 300 more men. Valdivia was determined to overcome the south, and set out with 200 men by land while a ship followed along the coast. The Indians rose behind him, burnt his embryo shipbuilding yard at Concon (mouth of the Aconcagua River), trapped and killed his gold-miners at Quillota, and besieged the little settlement of Santiago. It was here that Inez Suarez, who had followed Valdivia from Cuzco, rendered her name immortal by her active defence of the fort; tradition says that she cut off with her own hands the heads of six Indian chieftain prisoners and threw them over the palisades to intimidate the attackers. Valdivia returned, from the Maule, where he had received a check, and re-established his colony. He had founded La Serena as a check on the northern Indians and a post on the road to Cuzco, in 1544, but saw that stronger assistance was needed to colonise and hold Chile, and returned to Peru for more help in 1547. The country was in civil war, with Gonzalo Pizarro ranged against Gasca, President of the Audience of Peru. Valdivia adopted the royal appointee’s side, was an invaluable aid with his experience of Indian wars, and helped turn the scale, taking the old Pizarro supporter, Carbajal, prisoner. He got his reward when he received formal appointment as Governor of Chile, in 1548. With a large force of well-equipped men he started out anew, was stopped on the Atacama border with orders to return to stand a trial on certain technical charges, was acquitted, set out again, and reached Santiago in April, 1549. He found that the Serena settlement had been destroyed, rebuilt it, and made an agreement of peace with the northern Indians that was never again broken.

With the central and northern colonies secure, Valdivia turned his face south again, prepared a strong expedition and set out in January, 1550. He was checked at the Bio-Bio River, fought for a year in that region, attempting a settlement at Talcahuano, and built a constantly attacked fort at Concepción, where the present Penco stands on a beautiful curve of coast. In February, 1551, he went on, leaving fifty men in Penco; founded Imperial, leaving forty men in a fort, and in early 1552 reached the banks of the Callacalla River and founded Valdivia City, 1552. His next step was to create a chain of forts—Arauco, on the sea; Villarica, on the edge of Lake Lauquen; Osorno, opposite Chiloé Island some eighty miles inland; Tucapel, Puren, and Angol, “la Ciudad de los Infantes de Chile,” between Tucapel and the sea.

The fierce Araucanian Indians determined to destroy every settlement of the invader, and, themselves hardy nomads, were well fitted for the work of continual attack. The leaders Caupolican and the young Lautaro—the latter trained in Spanish ways and speech during some years of service as a groom of Valdivia’s—rose up, organised their people, adopting certain Spanish military methods, and began a series of relentless and systematic raids of destruction. Upon both sides, savage cruelties were practised, and from this time began to date the deliberate seizure of white women and children by the Indians. The courage with which many Spanish wives accompanied their husbands did not save them from the huts of the wild natives, and the children borne in course of time of Indian fathers by European mothers were so numerous that certain tribes became noted for their fair skins, pink cheeks and blue eyes.

In 1553, in attempting to stem the tide of Araucanian attacks on the frail forts, of which Tucapel and Arauco had already fallen, Pedro de Valdivia’s forces were overwhelmed by Lautaro and the Governor was made prisoner and barbarously executed. He was then fifty-six years of age. His policy in trying to establish settlements in the heart of Araucanian territory was not justified by the necessities of his colonists, who had more land than they could use in the fine central region. But he was impelled by false stories of gold to be found in the south, by hope of extending the territory under his jurisdiction for the Spanish crown, and no doubt also held the belief, based upon former experiences, that definite submission of the South American natives could be commanded by vigorous action. This idea had been proved correct with regard to all settled districts, but it did not apply to the elusive Mapuches. Nevertheless it was persisted in for a long time, costing a river of Spanish blood and an immense treasure in Spanish gold.

Flushed with success after the death of Valdivia, the Indians attacked all the forts simultaneously; Concepción was twice ruined and restored, in 1554 and 1555, and again smashed when Francisco de Villagra, successor of Valdivia temporarily, was trapped on the seashore after crossing the Bio-Bio and badly defeated. He redeemed his lost prestige when he broke the armies of Lautaro and killed this leader at Santiago soon afterwards, the Araucanians, emboldened, having ranged outside their own territory to attack the invading Europeans.

In 1557 there came to Chile as Governor the young Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, son of the Marquis de Cañete, Viceroy of Peru. He brought from Spain a well-equipped force of 600 Spaniards, and, arriving at Concepción from the sea, rebuilt the stronghold, mounted guns for the first time, restored all the southerly forts, and in the course of fierce battles in 1558 took prisoner and killed Caupolican.

When Garcia Hurtado left Chile in 1560 the Indians took heart and renewed attacks, and the anxious rule of Quiroga, with another interval of Villagra’s control, was concerned almost exclusively with Indian troubles. Quiroga, a determined man, was the first Spaniard to take possession of Chiloé, founding the town of Castro; he carried war into Araucanian territory relentlessly, shipping every able-bodied Indian he could catch to the mines of Peru. But his experience, and that of his successors, was that the natives were never more than momentarily beaten, that they rose behind him when his troops passed from one region to another, and that almost any fort could be overwhelmed by the extraordinary numbers that the savage chiefs brought into the field. The tactics of the Araucanians upon the battlefield, of attacking in great numbers, but keeping back enormous quantities of men who came forward when the first army was rolled back by Spanish guns, were disheartening; every settlement remained in a constant state of siege, perpetually harassed.

In 1567 Philip II of Spain authorized the establishment of a Royal Audience in Concepción; it endured until 1574, but was then suppressed owing to the insecurity of the colony. A year later the struggling settlements were further discouraged by a terrible earthquake and tidal wave that devastated the coast from Santiago to Valdivia, and in 1579 all western Spanish America was thrown into a state of consternation by the amazing news that Drake had rounded the toe of South America and had begun raiding the Pacific coast.

The enforcement of the “New Laws”—signed by Charles V in 1542, but suspended or ignored by the various Audiences as long as was possible—forbidding Spaniards to make the Indians work against their will, infuriated the colonists of Chile, who saw no other way of cultivating land or operating mines but by driving the natives to these tasks; a few Negroes were sent on from Panama or Buenos Aires, but transportation was expensive and farmers could not afford to import many slaves. Chile never yielded a large quantity of gold; it was pre-eminently an agricultural and stock-raising country, and therefore a poor one compared with such regions as Peru with its golden treasure or Charcas (Alto Peru) with its tremendous production of silver from the wonderful mines of Potosí. That in the face of all hardships and difficulties the colonisation of Central Chile steadily extended is a standing tribute to the courage of the settlers, as well as to the attractions of an exhilarating climate.

In 1583 came Alonso de Sotomayor, Marques de Villa Hermosa, setting out with Sarmiento and a splendid Spanish fleet of twenty-three ships; the original intention to pass through the Strait of Magellan was abandoned, and Sotomayor with a strong army marched overland from Buenos Aires. He too wasted lives and treasure in attempting to subdue the south, but inevitably the Indians rose behind his forces, burning forts and destroying the guard ships he placed upon the Bio-Bio River. By the time that Martin Garcia Oñez de Loyola succeeded to the Governorship in 1592 the endless wars with the Araucanians had become bitterly unpopular; the Indians had gathered new audacity under the _toqui_ (leader in war) Paillamacu, and with him Oñez tried to make a treaty. Hope was also placed in the pacifying influence of Jesuits, who entered in 1593, but these first missionaries were killed, and an armed force sent south in 1598 was wiped out, the Governor Oñez being amongst the slain. Paillamacu, jubilant, besieged all the forts at once, and Spanish rule was further threatened by the appearance in the Pacific of Dutch corsairs. The Cordes expedition of 1600 landed on Chiloé, sacked and held Castro. A Spanish force under Ocampo took back the town, but Spanish prestige suffered by the Indians’ realisation of quarrels among white men. Ocampo also raised the siege of Angol and Imperial, but carried away settlers and abandoned these places. Forts upon the sea border, although safer than inland points, were not impregnable, and the Araucanians had grown so bold that more than once when Spanish vessels visiting the seaports ran aground the Indians swam out, killed the crew and looted the ships in plain view of the settlers.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, with Ramon as Governor, it was practically decided to restrict Spanish occupation of the territory south of the Bio-Bio River to seaports, and to maintain a line of forts upon the frontier. For about 100 years 2000 Spanish troops were maintained for defensive purposes, chiefly distributed throughout fourteen frontier strongholds, of which the chief were Arauco, Santa Juana, Puren, Los Angeles, Tucapel and Yumbel, and in Concepción and Valdivia. Chilean revenues were insufficient for these army expenses, and Lima contributed 100,000 pesos, for Valparaiso, Concepción and the frontier, half in specie and half in clothes and stores; about 8000 pesos of this sum was used in repairing forts and in giving presents or paying compensation to the Indians. Valdivia, with Osorno and Chiloé, received an additional 70,000 pesos from the royal treasury of Lima, and these points were governed and supplied direct from the viceregal capital.

Determination upon none but defensive fighting was due largely to Jesuit influence in Spain, under Philip II, III and IV; Father Luis de Valdivia in 1612 brought a new band of missionaries, and the south was left to them and their prospective converts. The Audience was restored, in Santiago, in 1609, and the Governor of Chile, while subordinate to the Lima Viceroyalty, was President of the Audience of Santiago as well as Captain-General of the province, his jurisdiction including the territory from the desert of Atacama, where Peru ended, to all the southern country he could control (the Taitao peninsula was explored in 1618) and also the province of Cuyo, extending across the Andes and embracing the city of Mendoza on the post-road to Buenos Aires.

Pirates harassed the authorities in 1616, when Le Maire found the small strait bearing his name; in 1623, when L’Hermite, with thirteen ships and 1600 men, troubled the coasts; and notably by the Dutchman Brouwer in 1644, when Valdivia was seized and three strong forts built by the invaders. The death of Brouwer, three months after his arrival, disheartened the strong force of Dutch under his control; the region was also discovered to be less promising of easy wealth than had been imagined and the place was given up. The Spanish returned in 1645, occupying and completing the excellent fortifications of the Dutch.

A terrible battle with Indians near Chillan ending with the defeat of a new Araucanian leader, Putapichion, with great slaughter, the then Governor of Chile, Francisco de Zuñiga, Marques de Baides, attempted to make a definite peace, holding the celebrated first “Parliament of Quillin” in 1641; the second Parliament of Quillin was held in 1647, with reiterated understanding that the Araucanians were to be recognised as owners of independent territory south of the Bio-Bio, but not to invade territory to the north. A third peace meeting was held in 1650 and thenceforth it became customary for each new Governor of Chile to call a meeting at the Bio-Bio border, where he repaired in state, met thousands of Araucanians, feasted them for several days and gave presents, with mutual compliments and speech-making. None of these friendly conclaves, however, prevented the Spaniards from raiding in Araucanian territory on occasion, or gave pause to Indian chiefs who saw an opportunity. In the middle of the century a disastrous rising of all the Indians, supposedly converted and friendly, took place between the Maule and Bio-Bio Rivers; 400 farms were burnt, Concepción besieged, and enormous quantities of cattle, women and children taken to Araucania.

Nevertheless, outside the troubled zone Chile prospered; the Spanish colony grew from 1700 (with 8600 Indians and 300 Negroes) in 1613 to 30,000 in 1670. Vineyards and olive groves were planted, the wine of Chile becoming so famous that it was shipped all the way to Panama, Mexico and Central America, to Paraguay and Argentina. The Governor Juan Henriquez, a native of Lima, was responsible for much of this agricultural encouragement, and for construction of a bridge over the Mapocho River and of a canal bringing spring water to Santiago. It was this same governor who shipped hundreds of Araucanians as slaves to Peru, and sent to Lima for execution the young Englishmen of Narborough’s scientific expedition, treacherously captured at Corral in December, 1670. By this time the coast forts had been rebuilt, partly on account of anxiety regarding the activities of adventuring ships of rival nations, which, forbidden lawful trade, ranged the Pacific as corsairs and smugglers. The famous Captain Bartholomew Sharp, with one ship and 146 men, terrorised the coast in 1680; he sacked Arica and burnt Coquimbo among his exploits. After the day of the pirate Davis, raiding about 1686, it was decided to render the fertile islands off the coast less useful as rendezvous; Mocha was depopulated and an attempt made to kill all the goats that thrived on Juan Fernandez.

Many times during the seventeenth century the Chilean colonies were almost ruined by earthquakes; the live volcanos of the Andean backbone broke out from time to time, and in many cases the overthrow of dwellings by _temblores_ and _terremotos_ was accompanied at the unfortunate coastal settlements by furious onslaughts of tidal waves, when numbers of people were drowned. Santiago was badly damaged by the earthquake of 1642, but suffered worse in 1647; ten years later a terrible earthquake and tidal wave destroyed Concepción on its original site where Penco village stands today, and the city was later moved to its present situation on the north of the green-wooded, silver Bio-Bio, with its banks of black volcanic sand.

In 1700 the Spanish were able to regard the danger of active aggression on the part of the Dutch without alarm. Spain had preserved the integrity of her enormous American colonies in the teeth of an array of energetic rivals, sea-adventuring people with vigorous populations lacking space for new settlements, sharing the most jealously guarded regions of South America with but one country, Portugal. For sixty years, indeed, after the tragic death of Sebastião at El Kebir in 1578, Spain held Portugal and Portugal’s splendid colonies abroad, including Brazil; until 1640 the Kings of Spain were absolute masters of South America. The long-continued struggle with England and its constant threat to the colonies was one reason why Spain reluctantly made concessions from time to time in her dealings with Holland, a country openly displaying a keen desire to share in American profits. The formation of the Dutch West Indian Company, with comprehensive plans for settlement as well as for trade, received strong government backing, and the forcible occupation of the Brazilian coast region of Pernambuco between 1624 and 1654 caused great anxiety to Spain. Nevertheless, a commercial agreement for the supply of indispensable Negro slaves, brought from the Portuguese colonies of West Africa, endured until Holland’s sea power was definitely affected by reverses at the hands of the English.

A sign of change of influence which had a significant and lasting effect upon the South American Pacific Coast was displayed when early in the eighteenth century Louis XIV of France induced Philip V of Spain to give to French traders the right to supply slaves to the American colonies in place of the Dutch. A certain amount of general commerce could not be denied to vessels bringing slaves, and presently limited agreements were made by which two French companies were allowed to do business with South America. The monopolist companies of Seville and Cadiz, crying ruin, protested vainly, for viceroys and governors as well as settlers found the visits of the French ships convenient and profitable; the corsairs of England too were being transformed by economic circumstances into smugglers whose operations were welcome in many quarters. France did not limit her interest in South America to commerce: we find from about 1705 onwards an increasing number of French scientists and writers visiting the West Coast—as Feuillée, the Jesuit Father and careful botanist, who published the first account of Chilean plant life; and Frezier, the distinguished engineer, who left a descriptive volume of perennial interest. It was this most observant writer who first noted the use of the Quechua word _maté_ as applied to the small gourd, often beautifully carved and silver-mounted, from which it was and is usual to drink an infusion of the “herb of Paraguay,” in Chile and Peru. Sidelights of great value are also presented by the letters of French Jesuit priests who came to the West Coast about this time, and many of whom, like the devoted Father Nyel, thought that the supreme reward for a laborious life spent among wild natives was to be killed—“meriting reception of the crown of martyrdom as the worthy recompense of apostolic work.” Father Nyel wrote, in 1705, when he was planning the establishment of a mission among the Araucanians, that in spite of having murdered the noble Father Nicolas Mascardi thirty years previously the Indians begged for Jesuits to enter their land again to instruct them. But in order to succeed with these people it was necessary to have “a strong constitution, complete indifference to all the comforts of life, a persuasive gentleness, strength, courage, and determination in spite of insurmountable difficulties encountered amidst a barbarous people.”

The most distinguished of the scientists who were, perhaps somewhat grudgingly, given leave to enter the Spanish colonies were the French Academicians, headed by La Condamine, who came to Ecuador in 1735 to measure an arc of the meridian upon the Equator, and whose Spanish associates, sent by Madrid, made a detailed, frank and brilliant report of the condition of Peru, Ecuador and Chile. The _Noticias Secretas_ handed to the King upon their return are extremely illuminating, especially in the light of the events of eighty years later, when the irritation which they observed between “creoles” (native-born Americans of European blood) and Spaniards from the Peninsula came to a head. The voyage of Juan and Ulloa, the accounts of Frezier, Feuillée and the Jesuits, were as eagerly read in Europe as the biographies of the corsairs, for whatever official reports were made by Spanish officials from Spanish America never saw daylight, strangers were forbidden to enter, and in consequence South America had the magic of the unknown.

By the middle of the eighteenth century Chile was still a small country, settled chiefly between Coquimbo and Concepción, yielding a little gold and silver from surface veins, but with her greatest activity in connection with agriculture; she was spared the feverish excitements and reactions of wealthier countries. Most of her trade was conducted by land, over the Andes into Argentina, with a brisk exchange of Chilean woollen ponchos, honey, hams and lard for _yerba maté_ from Paraguay and European goods imported at Buenos Aires; to Peru was shipped wheat and wine and beef or pork fat (_grasa_), exchanged for cargoes of _aji_ (red pepper) from Arica and silver from Potosí.

Commerce with the Araucanians, eager buyers of hardware, metal implements and ornaments in exchange for guanaco skins and cattle, went on in spite of the mistrust engendered by the events of 1723, when a general rising of the Indians took place, the settled villages of converts created by the Jesuit missionaries were deserted, and a new war commenced. The Araucanians themselves sued for peace on this occasion, a new Parliament was held with fresh agreements that the country below the Bio-Bio should be intact to the Indians, and the Governor agreed to withdraw the Spanish officials who had been posted in the villages of Christian Indians.

Castro, on Chiloé Island, traded its famous bacon and lard and planks of hardwoods (chiefly _alerce_) for manufactured goods, and maintained a sturdy if isolated existence; Osorno was little but a fort; Valdivia, with its port of Corral, was carefully guarded, since it was considered as the key to the South Sea, and five or six forts covered the bay and the waterway to the city. In 1720 there were a couple of thousand people here, chiefly convicts of Peru and Chile sent south during their period of punishment, and the garrisons were maintained by Spanish and Peruvian Indian soldiers. Concepción was not only a Spanish stronghold, but a genuine agricultural colony, its splendid soil and enchanting climate, bright, balmy and temperate, bringing the settler who forms the backbone of Chilean society. Valparaiso was nothing but a shabby port, lacking a customhouse, all goods being shipped by mule-back to Santiago, ninety miles inland, or rather, 120 miles by the Zapata pass and Pudahuel, the only road then existing. It was fairly well defended by upper and lower forts overlooking the curve on the bay’s south where the houses of Valparaiso lay along a narrow strip of beach. Santiago was a well-built city, the centre of a fortunate agricultural and pastoral region; northwards lay but one settlement of note, La Serena (Coquimbo), with Copiapó, a prosperous silver mining centre, farther north.

The changes affecting Spanish America were not limited to the entry of the French. Philip V, to induce Queen Anne of England to sign the Peace of Utrecht, agreed to give the right of supplying slaves (_asiento_) to the South Sea Company, for thirty years, from 1713 to 1743; by this agreement 4800 Negroes were to be annually taken to the Plate, and as a further and extraordinary concession the company was allowed to send one ship each year to the Porto Bello fair (below Panama, on the Atlantic coast). At the same time a peremptory stop was put to the overseas commerce of the French, who had been allowed by Louis XIV during the War of the Spanish Succession to trade from St. Malo to the American colonies of Spain, herself too much involved to aid them with supplies.

The war of 1739 between England and Spain put an end to the English traffic for nine years, but the terms of peace included an indemnity to be paid to the South Sea Company for their trading rights, a British merchant in Buenos Aires carrying on for a few years (until 1752) the transportation of African slaves; after this time a group of Spanish merchants took up this traffic. It was in 1748 that Spain, finding her commerce with the colonies greatly reduced by home troubles, and the more or less legitimate efforts of other nations, from the 15,000 or even 25,000 tons of shipping formerly sent each year under convoy across the Atlantic, stopped the yearly visits of the famous galleons and the protecting warships. This fleet had sailed annually for 200 years. A system of unguarded merchant boats was licensed, ships sailing for the Plate six times a year.

In 1774 the rules forbidding the Spanish American colonies to trade with each other were relaxed by Charles III, and the effect of this is illustrated by the figures of Spanish merchant shipping sailing for the Americas in 1778, the year of the erection of a Viceroyalty in Buenos Aires, the fourth of Spanish America; no less than 170 vessels sailed, as against twelve to fifteen in the days of the yearly fleet of jealously licensed vessels.

In 1785 there was further relaxation, all the ports of Spain and all the ports of Spanish America being allowed to trade mutually, and as other proof of liberal ideas there came, in 1788, the appointment of Ambrose O’Higgins as Governor of Chile. This excellent organiser was born in Ireland, in County Sligo, and spent part of his barefoot youth in running errands for the great folk of his native village; he went as a youth to Spain, enlisting in the Spanish army, as many adventurous Irish did about this time, and later made his way to the Spanish American colonies. He distinguished himself in the Araucanian wars, was made a colonel, and in 1788 was nominated to the Chilean captain-generalship by Teodoro de Croix, the Viceroy of Peru, a native of Lille. The name of Ambrose O’Higgins is as much respected in Chile today as that of his son, Bernardo, born in Chillan, who became Supreme Director during the early days of Chilean independence.

_Reproductions from Gay’s “History of Chile” (1854)_

[Illustration: Más a Tierra (Juan Fernández Group) in the 18th Century.]

[Illustration: O’Higgins’ Parliament with the Araucanian Indians, March, 1793.]

[Illustration: Capturing Condors in the Chilean Andes.]

[Illustration: Guanacos on the Edge of Laja Lake.]

Governor O’Higgins called the Parliament of Negrete with the Araucanians, and set about the improvement of Chile; found and rebuilt the ruins of Osorno fort, and made a road from Osorno to Valdivia; another highway from Valparaiso to Santiago; and a third from Santiago to Mendoza. He constructed bridges, notably over the turbulent Mapocho River, and his good Chilean work only ceased when he was created Viceroy of Peru, with the title of Marquis of Osorno. He remained in that post until his death in 1801. A spurt in town foundation during the eighteenth century also bears witness to the growing prosperity of Chile. Between 1736 and 1746 the courtly and wideawake governor Don José Manso de Velasco, Conde de Superunda, founded San Felipe, Melipilla, Rancagua and Cauquenes; the same official encouraged the operation of mines, making cannon for the defence of one of the Concepción forts from local copper, and reopening gold mines at Tiltil (between Santiago and Valparaiso) and developing the copper works of Coquimbo and of Copiapó. His successor, Don Domingo Ortiz, founded Huasco and Curicó, built the University of Santiago and began the Mint, completed during the régime of Don Luis Muñoz between 1802 and 1807. The plans, tradition says, were mixed with those for Lima, and by mistake Chile received authority for a much more splendid building than was intended for her, La Moneda still serving as Government offices in Santiago.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Europe had undergone violent spiritual as well as material changes that could not fail to affect the world and inevitably produced reactions in the Americas. The independence of the United States had less effect upon South American thought than the French Revolution, for with North America the South was not in touch. There was little commerce, and the language difficulty was a bar, while French literature and French movements were extremely influential. The ideas of the Encyclopedists fell upon fertile soil.

When Napoleon conquered Spain, putting his brother Joseph Buonaparte upon the royal throne of the Bourbons and driving Ferdinand VII into exile, there was little thought upon the West Coast of this misfortune as an opportune time for seizing freedom. Even when the action of Mexico and Buenos Aires pointed the road of independence, Peru and Chile demurred from disloyalty and declared their intention of returning to the king when he should be again upon the Spanish throne. The grievances against Spain of which so much was afterwards heard were not realised by the majority of the populace, and in fact the creoles were well aware that from narrow trading policies, the dictation of officials, sumptuary laws, and the still-existent although waning burden of the Inquisition, Spain suffered even more acutely than her overseas dominions. The rights of _mayorazgo_, that is the preservation, intact for generation after generation, of enormous estates which could not be broken up among a number of heirs, or divided for sale, were a source of definite complaint; but it was an inheritance from the land tenure laws of Spain, also inelastic, to which they were inured by custom. The most fertile ground for the growth of animosity between the colonies and the mother country seems to have been the tangible annoyance of the stream from the Peninsula, both of officials and merchants or adventurers. Don Antonio Ulloa, writing the “Noticias Secretas” for the King’s eye in 1735, noted that the big towns were “theatres of discord between Spanish and creoles.... It is enough for a man to be a European or _chapeton_ to be at once opposed to the creoles, and sufficient to have been born in the Indies to hate Europeans. This ill-will is raised to so high a grade that in some respects it exceeds the open hatred with which two nations at war abuse and insult each other.” He thought the feeling tended to increase rather than to diminish, and notes that it was more bitter in the interior and mountainous regions, because the coast people were bent to a more liberal spirit by their dependence upon commerce with strangers, had more work to do and something else to think about. He gave as reasons for the mutual dislike, first, the “vanity and presumption” of the creoles; and next, the wretched condition in which many poor Europeans usually arrived in the Indies. The native-born were lazy, thought the Spanish officer, and envied the industrious and intelligent Spaniard the fortune which he presently made. The succession of Peninsular officials to many posts in the colonies was not without its influence in providing grievances also, but as a matter of fact a number of minor berths were frequently filled by the native-born, who also became Inquisitors and clerics, the list of viceroys and governors also providing a few colonial names, and a large number of American-born receiving good positions in Spain. But on the whole the colonies were necessarily still dependent upon Spain for blood, ideas, intercourse with the world, and, but for Napoleon, independence would have been long delayed.

_The Fight for Independence_

In many parts of Spanish America people had to be almost cudgelled into rebellion, and would never have stirred had they lacked a leader inoculated with a grandiose vision.

But here again the quite accidental figure of Napoleon intervened. It happened that both San Martín and Bolívar, the two most powerful instruments of the South American Revolution, were actual witnesses of triumphal ceremonies of the Napoleonic armies. The day when Simón Bolívar saw the Corsican enter Paris at the head of magnificent conquering troops, greeted with all the hysteric adulation due to a second Alexander, the immediate fate of Spain’s South American colonies was sealed. It is easy to understand that such young men as San Martín and Bolívar, intelligent, trained to arms, well aware of the golden opportunity awaiting in their own countries overseas, and of the force behind the slogan of freedom, beheld themselves with rosy imagination in the same kingly rôle. Statues of these leaders stand all over Latin America, and it is but just that tributes should be paid. But the day of blind homage is past. Critics have dared to arise, and the skies have not fallen upon their blasphemy.

The formation of the “Gran Reunion Americana,” with definite aims towards self-government of the Spanish American colonies, was one result. Inaugurated in Buenos Aires, it spread “lodges” all over South America, following freemasonry in its terminology. One of the most influential of these branches was “Lautaro Lodge,” at Concepción, with Bernardo O’Higgins as a member. The illegitimate son of the brilliant Ambrose O’Higgins by a native woman, Bernardo, born in Chillan in 1778, was sent to England for education and returned to Chile upon the death of his father. Imbued with liberal ideas, candid and open-hearted, the young O’Higgins stood inevitably upon the side of emancipation, and served as one of the revolutionaries’ most valuable assets. The stars worked together for the success of the extremists, for a motive far removed from any idea of revolutionary merits brought them the powerful aid of the Roman Catholic Church. Napoleon the “antichrist” was anathema: the colonists were therefore encouraged to refuse obedience to his puppet kings, and we find the clerics of the Americas hand in glove with the members of the Reunion Americana.

The colonists were by no means inclined in every region throughout South America to commit themselves unreservedly to the apostles of liberty; here and there the feeling of revolt was genuinely national, a spontaneous movement from the inside; in other regions the native-born only after some years, and when separation was practically forced upon them from the exterior, disavowed Spain. Confusion was introduced, that made it difficult for the most loyal to discover where allegiance lay, by the several claimants overseas. To Joseph Buonaparte no one wished to submit, and the French emissaries were coldly received; Seville setting up a Junta (Council) loyal to the deposed Ferdinand, asked and received the adhesion of the Viceroys in the Americas, but when this body was overthrown a new Junta established in Galicia sent out a new set of Viceroys. Next came the Central Junta, also obeyed until the French occupation of Andalusia dissolved it, and later a new authority of Spanish royalists, a Regency of three members, was announced in an edict sent out by the Archbishop of Laodicea.

Confronted with these various claims, and taking breath after the English occupation of the Plate, Buenos Aires decided to form her own provincial Junta, in the name of Ferdinand, action supported if not suggested by the Viceroy Baltazar Cisneros.

In the middle of 1810, with Abascal, Marques de la Concordia, as Viceroy of Peru and General Carrasco Governor of Chile, there arrived to the West Coast the request of exiled Ferdinand that his American colonies should obey Napoleon. This bombshell was received with disgust by Carrasco, who wished to work with the Junta of Buenos Aires, but he did his official duty and read the document aloud to the populace of Santiago. This was in June. A tremendous public uproar followed, Carrasco and the rest of the Audience were turned out, and by popular acclaim an Assembly of Notables was formed, headed by Mateo de Toro Zambrano y Urueta, Conde de la Conquista, a highly respected old aristocrat who had been Governor of Chile in 1772. This body ruled on the understanding that Chile would refuse French control and would remain wholeheartedly Ferdinand’s.

The Conde de la Conquista died in November, 1810, was replaced by Dr. Juan Martinez de Rosas, and elections for a popular congress were held in April, 1811, giving the signal for open strife between the different parties evolved by the confused political atmosphere. The first blood shed in Chile on account of independence was not a struggle with the mother country, but the result of dissensions among adherents of the Spanish or Argentine Juntas, “old Spaniards,” groups desiring complete independence, the church party, and foreign interests. It was during this fight that the young José Miguel Carrera came first into military prominence; he was the son of a Chilean landowner, Ignacio Carrera, secretary of the Junta.

Congress held its first meeting in Santiago, in July, 1811, the deputy from Chillan being Bernardo O’Higgins, educated in England and endowed with the prestige of his father’s name. It was not long before O’Higgins, then but thirty-five years old, was regarded as the leader of the “Penquistos” (southerners of Penco or Concepción, who wanted to see that pleasant city restored to her ancient pride as capital of Chile), in opposition to the rich central group, with Santiago as their stronghold and the Carreras as one of the most ambitious families. In common with many another new clique, the Carreras were growing rich upon the property which was now eagerly confiscated from the “old Spaniards” and from the wealthy religious orders, whose accumulated lands and long ascendancy had engendered such bitter enmity that, during the long war of Spain with England, Juan and Ulloa reported, many people said openly that it would be a good thing if England took possession of the Pacific Coast, so that they would be free from the oppression of the clerics. The Carreras, however, wanted more than money: their determination to seize political power was demonstrated when, in December, 1811, a military coup put the three sons of Ignacio into complete control of all the newly recruited Chilean land forces, with José Miguel as the commander-in-chief.

This young man dispersed the national congress by force, proclaimed himself President of a new Junta, and banished Dr. Martinez to Mendoza: all this still in the name of Ferdinand. But the confiscation of property, removal of Spanish officers from the army, declaration of free trade (a tacit invitation promptly accepted by many foreigners), abolition of slavery and collection of church income, spelt practical independence from Spain, and strong exception was taken in more than one quarter. Valdivia and Concepción set up juntas independent of Santiago, and over a year of disruption followed, until the viceroy of Peru sent reinforcements to the Spanish commander in Chiloé Island, General Antonio Pareja, and the latter sailed north, landing at the mouth of the Maule with 2000 royalist troops for the disciplining of Chile.

José Miguel Carrera marched a Chilean army southwards, falling in with the Spaniards at Yerbas Buenas, fifteen miles from Talca; the ability of O’Higgins, commanding the forces in the field, brought about the defeat of Pareja, who was driven to Chillan—the extreme south remaining pro-Spanish and, in one spot or another, subject to Spanish influence until late in the year 1824.

A strange accident now turned the political tide against the Carreras. The central provinces, determined to endure no longer a rule of loot and tyranny worse than that imposed by Spain, deposed José Miguel in his absence by a vote of the Junta, and gave complete control of the army to Bernardo O’Higgins; the Carreras hurried north to watch their interests, were caught by a Spanish patrol and sent to Chillan. The Spaniards were presently reinforced by troops under Gainza, took Talca, and became strong enough by May, 1814, to arrange the Convenio de Lircay with the new political leader of Chile, Henriquez Lastra, Governor of Valparaiso. By this agreement the Spanish troops were to retire to Lima, on the assurance that Chile remained faithful to Ferdinand VII; its execution was guaranteed by Captain Hillier of the British man-of-war _Phoebe_.

But before the Convenio could be ratified, two events happened to prevent this solution of complications. The Carreras escaped and collected an army opposed to the agreement; the Viceroy Abascal received strong reinforcements from Spain, changed his mind about signing, and sent, instead of his signature, 5000 troops under General Mariano Osorio.

The parties of Carrera and O’Higgins composed their differences in the face of this aggression, marched to the encounter at Rancagua, and were there signally defeated, in October, 1814. The overthrow was so complete that the Chileans who had opposed Spain felt certain that no mercy was to be expected, and, with their wives and families, began an extraordinary exodus from the country over the Andes to Mendoza. The weather was cold, with deep snow and bitter winds; without proper baggage or sufficient food thousands of unhappy refugees crowded the mountain paths and passes for days.

Meanwhile, General Osorio marched north and entered the capital in triumph, welcomed enthusiastically not only by those citizens who remained royalist but by thousands who were tired of the partisan intrigues and condition of civil war to which the Carreras had reduced the country for over two years. A new Spanish Governor, Francisco Casimiro Marco del Pont, was inaugurated, about one hundred citizens prominent in the growing independence of Chile were deported to Juan Fernandez island, and for another twenty-eight months Spain resumed the rule of Chile, as she still retained control of Lower and Upper Peru and Ecuador. A fierce struggle between the Spanish and the northern patriots under Simón Bolívar had begun in 1811 and continued with tremendous reversals of fortune; Venezuela and Colombia (New Granada) were drenched in blood. Over the Andes, Buenos Aires had been actually independent since the middle of 1810, although the Spanish authorities held out with peninsular troops in part of the northwest of Argentina, holding the roads into N. W. South America. Pueyrredon, the Supreme Director of Buenos Aires, seeing that Chile with comparatively facile mountain passes was the key to the West, decided to bring her to the fold of independence, raised an army, and put José de San Martín at its head. While the eldest of the Carrera brothers, with whom San Martín was upon hostile terms, went to the United States to try to get help in the Chilean struggle, a strong force of 4000 men was collected in Mendoza, the celebrated “Army of the Andes.” By this time events had put Spain and the South American colonies into the position of furious opponents; the Peruvian Viceroy’s actions forced Chileans to see patriotism as hostility to Spain. For the plain citizen, lover of his country with a desire to live in peace and to give and take fairly, it must have been difficult to choose sides as regards the authorities to whom he gave recognition and paid taxes; but for such revolutionaries as San Martín the vision was simpler. He hung his own portrait on the wall beside that of the Corsican; the memory of that superhuman conqueror infected his blood and filled his landscape.

The Spaniards in Chile, aware of the situation of the Army of the Andes, were tricked into believing that the main body intended to descend into the central valley by the southerly Planchon Pass. But early in February when the army was ready to set out, most of the troops were marched by the Putaendo and the Cumbre, emerging near the plain of Chacabuco on the 12th. The Spanish troops sent hurriedly to the encounter were scattered like chaff by the hardy South Americans, inured to wild country and able to march for days with sun-dried meat and a handful of toasted maize as their only food. The battle of Chacabuco was a rout so decisive that the Spanish leaders did not even attempt to enter and hold Santiago: they fled hastily to Valparaiso, and, accompanied by scores of their panic-stricken sympathisers, filled nine ships and sailed away to Peru.

[Illustration: In the Chilean Andes.]

[Illustration: A Chilean Glacier, Central Region.]

[Illustration: Rio Blanco Valley, above Los Andes.]

Bernardo O’Higgins, to whose energy this success was chiefly due, was made Supreme Director of Chile, openly independent now, with no more talk of Ferdinand, although the actual proclamation was delayed until February 12, 1818, upon the anniversary of Chacabuco. In the same year Osorio came back, with 5000 Spanish troops, and in March San Martín was surprised and his army badly defeated at Cancha Rayada; it was followed by a repetition of the exodus over the Andes as after the Rancagua defeat, but in better weather. Nor did the exile of the patriots last so long, for on April 5, before the Spaniards could take possession of Santiago, the Chileans attacked again and won the final victory of Maipu. Only about 200 Spaniards escaped to take ship for Peru, all the rest falling upon the Maipu plain or being taken prisoner.

Three days later, in Mendoza, the two younger sons of Ignacio Carrera were shot upon a frivolous charge, an event generally regarded with regret in Chile and always ascribed to the revengeful spirit of San Martín. These young men had been refused permission to join the Army of the Andes, were on parole in Buenos Aires and were still in that city when José Miguel returned from the United States. Here he had obtained means to fit out an expedition, promising to pay the debt with funds obtained from Chilean import duties later on; he chartered five ships, took on arms and ammunition sufficient for several thousand men, and received as volunteers a number of technical workmen, and over a hundred military officers, including seventy French and British.

But when Carrera in his first ship entered Buenos Aires on the way to the Horn, the vessel was seized and he was placed under arrest on board a brig, from which he escaped into the Argentine interior. The remaining vessels of his fleet put back to North America. His two brothers also fled in disguise, but were captured, sent in chains to Mendoza, and there executed by the order of San Martín’s secretary.

The place of the Carreras in history is not great, but they were Chileans of energy and courage deserving a better fate: the story of their youth and good looks, and the tale of Juan José’s beautiful wife who shared his miserable prison until his execution, are still remembered. The fate of the elder brother was no more fortunate: during three years he allied himself with various guerilla revolutionaries in the heart of South America, but was eventually caught and identified, sent to Mendoza, and shot, in 1821.

Chile, now upon her own feet, was still not given up by the Viceroy of Peru, now General Pezuela, and since a land attack could not be again contemplated for a time, the Frigate _Esmeralda_ was sent with the brig _Pezuela_ to blockade Valparaiso. These vessels were driven off by the brilliant action of the _Lautaro_, a vessel recently bought and armed by the Chilean government and commanded by a young British naval officer, Lieutenant O’Brien, killed at the moment of boarding the Spanish ship. This was Chile’s first naval victory, herald of almost unbroken success upon the sea; she was heartened to the immediate strengthening of this service, and set about the acquisition of vessels while also sending abroad for naval leaders. Chileans had up to that time, of course, no experience in this arm of a nation’s defence: the first Chilean-born admiral, Blanco Encalada, had had no experience but that of a midshipman in the Spanish navy for a few years in his youth. Chile was wise in looking overseas for technical skill. It happened that many British soldiers and sailors, fresh from the Napoleonic wars, were in England when the Chilean envoys came to seek help: hundreds of men took service, partly no doubt for the sake of adventure but also from a genuine sympathy with the gallant fight put up by a little country ranged against the ancient enemy Spain. Among the naval officers who came was Lord Cochrane, with a most distinguished naval career to his credit, the hero of a score of daring deeds at sea and an extremely competent organiser; no personality of Independence is more revered in Chile today than that of Cochrane, and he who said that republics are notoriously ungrateful could never make such a charge against Chile.

But before Cochrane arrived a new success had cheered the embryo navy. Serious danger threatened with news of the coming of a formidable Spanish naval force: a courier brought the story hotfoot from Buenos Aires, where the squadron had put in. Nine ships convoyed by the _Maria Isabella_ of 50 guns set sail from Spain with two thousand troops, but one ship mutinied off the Argentine coast and joined the new Republic; another transport disappeared in the Pacific; seven, with the fine frigate, arrived in Talcahuano Bay in October, 1818, in a wretched state, over 500 men having died on the way. Chile’s new little navy by this time consisted of five vessels: the _San Martin_, carrying 1000 men, was formerly the British East Indiaman _Cumberland_, which entered Valparaiso in August, laden with coal, commanded by a Briton named Wilkinson, and went out as a vessel of war of Chile, under the same command. The _Lautaro_ was now commanded by Captain Worcester, an American merchant skipper; the _Chacabuco_, by Captain Francisco Diaz, an “old Spaniard” who sided with the cause of Independence; the _Pueyrredon_, Captain Vasquez; and the _Araucana_, commanded by another Briton, Captain Morris. This force set sail southwards on October 9, and ten days later found the enemy ensconced under the forts of Talcahuano, a town which with Valdivia and Chiloé remained in the hands of the Spanish. In the spirited action which followed the _Maria Isabella_ was run aground, but was seized and got off safely by the Chileans, while the seven Spanish transports were all taken, in the bay or later at sea.

Returning in triumph in November, the fleet was almost at once taken in hand by Cochrane, just arrived from England, and plans made for attacking Callao, where a Spanish squadron had its base. Neither the Chilean nor the Argentine patriots had any quarrel with Peru, but here was the stronghold of Spain on the West Coast; the Pacific could only be rendered safe for enfranchised Chile by its reduction.

In January, 1819, Cochrane sailed north in command of the fleet, consisting then of his flagship, the _O’Higgins_ (formerly the Spanish _Maria Isabella_), the _Lautaro_, _San Martin_ and _Chacabuco_. He took a provision ship and a gunboat of Spain, blockaded Callao successfully from early February till the beginning of May, although Callao was defended by fourteen ships of war and powerful batteries; he found time also to take several small ports up and down the Peruvian coast, as well as prizes carrying loads of cocoa, useful stores, and 200,000 pesos in money. Most of the coast towns were quite ready to embrace independence, but were alternately punished by royalists and patriots for compliance with demands for supplies.

When Admiral Blanco and Cochrane returned to Chile another vessel had just been added to the little navy, the _Independencia_, purchased in the United States. Two vessels had in fact been bought, but when they arrived in Buenos Aires the agents of Chile had not sufficient specie to complete the payments for both, and had to see the second sail away to Rio, where she was sold to the Brazilian government, although Chile had paid half her price. The relations between the United States and Chile were peculiar at this juncture; the bulk of the population were certainly not unsympathetic, and a number of American individuals were doing a brisk commerce with the young country, but a certain small jealousy seems to have been shown towards Cochrane, and comparatively little help was given to the patriotic cause. But the United States Government quickly recognised the new Chilean government and had appointed a consul during the days of Carrera’s régime.

Before Cochrane refitted his ships for new expeditions, the patriot armies had gained ground in the south, and the outlook had considerably improved. In September, 1819, the Chilean navy returned to Callao with seven ships, chased the Spanish frigate _Prueba_ into the Guayas River, sailed up 40 miles to Guayaquil and seized two armed prizes, the _Aguila_ and the _Bigoña_. At Puna island, where Spain built most of the vessels used in the Pacific between West Coast ports, Cochrane loaded his prizes with the famous hardwoods of the Guayaquil region, sailed out and took the _Potrillo_, a provision ship, and sent her to Valparaiso with news while he turned towards Talcahuano with the object of aiding in the obstinate southern struggle.

General Freire, in command of the Chilean army, lent him 250 men, and Cochrane proceeded in a small schooner to reconnoitre the entrance to Valdivia. Here he landed, at sunset on February 2, 1820, led his force of about 350 to the fort “del Inglez,” attacked and took it, went on and stormed Corral fortress, and before the night was over the Chileans had taken possession of the four other main batteries of the south side. With the dawn came the _O’Higgins_, and realizing the uselessness of further fighting, the Spanish troops abandoned the northern forts and fled up river to Valdivia. The defenders numbered 2000, and the forts were provided with plenty of excellent guns: success was due to the daring of this stroke of Cochrane, a resourceful sea-fighter who well knew the value of a surprise.

“At first it was my intention to have destroyed the fortifications and to have taken the artillery and stores on board,” wrote the Admiral to Zenteno, the Chilean Minister of War and Marine a few days later, “but I could not resolve to leave without defence the safest and most beautiful harbour I have seen in the Pacific, and whose fortifications must doubtless have cost more than a million dollars.” He left a small force, and sailed farther south to try to take the last Spanish stronghold in Chiloé, where the gallant Colonel Quintanilla maintained a plucky and hopeless stand—and was destined to maintain it for nearly five more years. Cochrane landed in the bay of San Carlos on February 17, took the outer forts, but lost the way in woods and boggy roads during a black night, and thus gave the Spaniards time to assemble a force too strong for the Chilean attackers. They withdrew, and a body of 100 men was sent to take Osorno; this town was taken without resistance on February 26, and thenceforth Spanish military work on the mainland was limited to guerilla disturbances in the forestal interior. Many Spaniards took refuge among the Indians, and the tragi-comedy was enacted, for several years, of both the new Chilean parties and the Spaniards flattering and bullying the Araucanians into taking sides. To political divergences the native must have been profoundly indifferent; despite the fact that his frontier still stood at the Bio-Bio River and his southerly lands were intact, his spirit had been warped by the steady pressure of three centuries, and perhaps most seriously changed by the civilised habits he had learnt from the white man. He had taken to cultivation, to the use of European foods and a few implements; as a result, he had needs hindering his ancient freedom and he could be cajoled by their satisfaction. “I have distributed to each cacique on taking leave,” wrote Beauchef to Cochrane after the taking of Osorno, “a little indigo, tobacco, ribbon and other trifles.” And also with ribbon, tobacco and “trifles” the Spanish survivors, or the recalcitrant Benavides (wavering first on one side and then the other and finally to outlawry in the woods), and the patriots of Chile, bought the Indian, giving him short shrift when territory or villages changed hands. Eventually, in 1822, a Chilean punitive force was sent to the south, the Indian country inland from Valdivia was reduced, and the Spaniards troubling that region gave up. The diary of Dr. Thomas Leighton, an English surgeon acting as medical officer of the expedition, as quoted by Miers, is extremely illuminating.

With Valdivia in their hands, the Chileans were able to contemplate a bold stroke. It was decided to clear Spain once and for all from the Pacific by bringing Peru into the camp of independence: the return of Cochrane from the south was the signal for completion of plans for a combined naval and military attack upon the last great stronghold of Spain. The “Ejercito Libertador” (liberating army) was prepared with immense enthusiasm, embarking from Valparaiso in August, 1820, preceded by proclamations from O’Higgins, who declared the wish of Chile to contribute to the freedom and happiness of the Peruvians, who would “frame your own government and be your own legislators.” “No influence,” he stated, “civil or military, direct or indirect, shall be exercised by these your brothers over your social institutions. You shall send away the armed force that comes to protect you whenever you wish; and no pretext of your danger or your security shall serve to maintain it against your consent. No military division shall occupy a free town except at the invitation of the legal authorities; and the Peninsular groups and ideas prevailing before the time of Independence shall not be punished by us or with our consent.” O’Higgins was undoubtedly sincere; Cochrane was free from any trace of selfish or ulterior motives; but San Martín’s objects were less simple. His position was peculiar; sent originally into Chile at the instance of Pueyrredon, he had practically disavowed his party in the Argentine, where no political laurels seemed likely to offer, and taken service with Chile. But here he had to share popular affection with the beloved O’Higgins and the applauded Cochrane; in Peru he might have the field to himself, and to this end he forthwith worked.

The Chilean fleet spent 50 days in Pisco, while the Chilean Colonel Arenales marched upon and took a number of other small Peruvian towns on or tributary to the coast, with Ica, Nasca and Arica among them; from the latter port he marched inland and seized Tacna. Meanwhile San Martín was negotiating with the Peruvian Viceroy, Pezuela, but the “truce of Miraflores” split upon two rocks—the Viceroy refused demands that he should acknowledge the independence of the South American colonies: San Martín could not sign acknowledgment of even nominal submission to the Spanish Crown. The Liberating Army eventually set sail again on September 28, and passed on to Callao, where on November 5 Cochrane, with 240 volunteers, performed the exploit, never forgotten in the annals of the Pacific, of cutting out the Spanish frigate _Esmeralda_. This fine ship had 40 guns and 350 men, lay inside a strong boom and a line of old vessels, was surrounded by 27 gunboats and protected by 300 guns of the forts on shore. But Cochrane boarded and took her, and with a couple of other Spanish gunboats sent her outside to an anchorage beyond the reach of the Peruvian cannon. Renamed the _Valdivia_, she afterwards served as a unit of the Chilean fleet.

San Martín, now at Ancon with his forces, delayed the projected attack upon Lima, sent out sheaves of grandiloquent proclamations, and watched with anxiety affairs farther north, where the now triumphant Bolívar was occupying Quito and might push forward to Guayaquil—a rich province also coveted by San Martín and to which he now sent envoys with suggestions that Bolívar should be kept out. For the next seven months San Martín’s forces remained idle, although a part of the force under the British Colonel Miller and the able General Arenales continued to range the coast; Cochrane maintained a close blockade of Callao, and at last, unable to get supplies and alarmed by the insecurity of their position in Lima, the Spanish authorities evacuated the city and went to Cuzco. This was on July 6, 1821, and for about a week order was kept in Lima by Captain Basil Hall of H. M. S. _Conway_ with a handful of marines. San Martín then sailed to Callao and took possession of Lima, where Independence was proclaimed on July 28.

On August 4, San Martín declared himself Protector of Peru, proclaiming his absolute authority and naming three associates as the cabinet ministers. Requested by Cochrane to pay the wages and bounty promised to the fleet on the fall of Lima, San Martín answered that he could not, as Protector of Peru, pay Chile’s debts, said that he could only find the money if the squadron were sold to Peru for his use, and presently had the effrontery to invite Cochrane to leave the service of Chile and become Admiral of Peru.

Cochrane’s indignant replies are historical; he sailed away after repeated attempts to obtain the sailors’ wages, and, learning that San Martín had shipped a considerable treasure to Ancon (upon the advance on Callao of the still undefeated Spaniards), went there and took possession of the gold and silver. One can imagine the grim smile of the experienced old sailor as he made this haul.

San Martín assented with reluctance eventually to its use as part payment of the sums due, but there was no possibility of further friendly intercourse. Cochrane sailed north, on October 6, with the Chilean fleet in a wretched state, ill equipped and almost unseaworthy. He went up the Guayas to Guayaquil, received with rejoicing by the now emancipated town, refitted, and put to sea again in the first week of December. Fonseca Bay was visited on December 28, Tehuantepec on January 6, Acapulco three weeks later, in the hunt for two Spanish ships, the _Prueba_ and the _Venganza_; the latter was chased and followed into Guayaquil, the former into Callao, where Cochrane himself reappeared in April. Here San Martín sent his ministers to wait upon the sailor, making new propositions, including the post of admiral of the joint squadrons of Chile and Peru. Cochrane answered bluntly that he would have no dealings with a government founded upon a breach of faith toward the Peruvians, supported by tyranny and the violation of all laws; that no flag but that of Chile would be hoisted upon his ships; and he refused to set foot ashore. He brought the fleet back to Valparaiso on June 2, 1822, after two and a half years of ceaseless effort in the service of Chile. The Pacific no longer showed a Spanish flag upon ship or fortress: his work was done. When Cochrane left Chile in January, 1823, the independence of the country was definitely assured.

Spanish rule in the Americas had endured for three hundred years, but at the end of that period it cannot be said that the profit of her conquest and colonisation was on the side of Spain. The amazing courage of the conquistadores forms a record without parallel, not upon the part of such great figures as Cortes and Pizarro only, but scores of less known pioneers. “In a period of seventy years,” Cieza de Leon has written, “they have overcome and opened up another world than that of which we had knowledge, without bringing with them waggons of provision, nor great store of baggage, nor tents in which to rest, nor anything but a sword and a shield and a small bag in which they carried their food.”

Between 1519 and 1811 the Spaniards smashed three established and at least one embryo civilization in the Americas; but on the other side of the ledger they gave the contact with West European speech, thought, crafts and aims that brought immense American regions into line with the rest of the modern world. It is true that vast stores of precious metals were taken away: but in return were given two things more valuable, ideas and blood.

Spain herself materially suffered in the long run. Her best youth was drained overseas, or lost in the wars in Europe to which her gold tempted her. In 1800 the commerce, agriculture, wealth and industry of Spain were “almost nothing, compared to what they were when she conquered America,” says Torrijos. The population had been cut in half. Spain has been correctly charged with narrowness of policy in regard to her colonies; it is frequently forgotten that all rules of commerce and colonization were narrow during the same period—examples are still to be found of nations surrounding themselves with a sky-high tariff wall; and if Spain forbade the American colonies to cultivate Spanish products, in turn Spaniards were not permitted to grow the crops peculiarly American. As a matter of fact this rule was much more rigidly insisted upon within the small compass of Spain, since in the Americas it was to the interest and convenience of officials to shut their eyes to breaches of the rule. Spain’s decree forbidding cultivation of the vine in Chile, for example, was practically a dead letter, a show being only occasionally made of attempts to carry out the law.

Chile, free and young, faced many problems, but was able to look upon the future with confidence, secure at least in the active sympathy of the greater part of the world. Spain, her power broken and her armies destroyed, stood alone. Her wounds were long in healing.

_Republican Chile_

Accounts of the naval or military affairs of one particular nation often read as if those events had occurred in a heavily screened vacuum. But the march of affairs in the Pacific during the struggle for independence were not only watched breathlessly by other American nations—particularly Mexico, Central America, Colombia and the United States—but also by Europe, immensely affected by the success or failure of Spain to reassert her possession of the colonies. Vessels of war of the United States and Britain ranged up and down the coast, their position as neutrals complicated by the fact that many of their own nationals were interested, either openly and quite un-neutrally, in promoting the success of the revolting South Americans, or in commercial transactions which were frequently perfectly legitimate and straightforward, but which were sometimes kaleidoscopic. Fluid and irregular trade conditions had prevailed upon the coast for a century: Spain had been forced during her long wars to give an increased number of trading licences, and much commerce was performed under cover of Spanish names by foreign merchants. During Cochrane’s efforts to stop the smuggling and underhand traffic that went on, particularly in the series of small ports (headed by Pisco and Arica) in South Peru, he found himself more than once at loggerheads with the merchants, and with the British and other foreign squadrons watching affairs. Duties ran high, sometimes up to 60 per cent ad valorem, and in consequence along this “Entremedios” region a tremendous amount of smuggling flourished; many of these little villages formed on occasion markets for the interior of such size that the coast was glutted with European goods and merchandise among the sand-hills was as cheap as at a bargain sale.

Banks did not exist, and there was no adequate exchange of South American products; cash was paid and had to be shipped overseas. A custom grew up among the British traders of sending such payments home by naval vessels, and as a percentage was paid upon these sums for safe-carriage to the captains of men-of-war, a direct interest was created in commercial prosperity. When Cochrane, on behalf of the Chilean government, suggested a new customs rate of 18 per cent, taking on board and guarding a quantity of disputed goods, there were international and loud objections to his “floating customhouse.” With the establishment of the young countries was closely entangled a number of commercial interests with wide ramifications.

While the movement of affairs in Lower and Upper Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, filled public attention, the new Chile struggled to secure stability as a self-governed country. The steps towards this end were not all easy. The country had never been wealthy—in fact, scarcely self-supporting, for the shipments of agricultural and mineral products to Peru and Spain did not pay the costs of government and defence against the Indians—and she was now nearly bankrupt. A terrible burden of expense had been incurred for the military and naval campaigns in her own south and in Peru, and the confiscated property of “old Spaniards” and the religious orders was not an inexhaustible treasure. A loan raised in London in 1822 gave no more than temporary relief, and heavier taxes were imposed than in the days of Spanish control. The exhilaration of new hopes, the realization of the inner strength of the Chilean nation, did not suffice to save the country from a period of dissatisfaction and unrest.

Bernardo O’Higgins never lost his personal popularity, but murmurs against his minister of finance, Rodriguez, imperilled his position. The national congress called in July, 1822, sat until October to frame a new tariff (commercial regulations) and a new constitution to supersede the tentative proclamation of 1818. But illiberal restrictions created by the new decrees closed all the minor ports to foreign vessels, and every Andean pass but one; prohibitory duties were placed on many articles of foreign manufacture.

[Illustration: San Juan Bautista, Village of Cumberland Bay, Más a Tierra Island (Juan Fernández Group), 400 Miles West of Valparaiso.]

[Illustration: The Plain of Calavera, Chilean Andes.]

The composition of Senate and Chamber of Deputies was outlined, the Senate’s and Director’s term of office fixed at six years, while the deputies, from whom a property qualification was required, were to be elected annually, one for every 15,000 people. The Director was made head of the army and navy, with powers to create foreign treaties and to make peace and war. The treasury and all ecclesiastical appointments were in his hands, as well as the naming of ambassadors, judges, ministers and secretaries of state. In the middle of October, 1822, General San Martín suddenly reappeared in Valparaiso, in the character of a private citizen whose health required a sojourn at the medicinal baths of Cauquenes. He told a tale of voluntary renunciation of Peruvian dignities that received little credence; as a matter of fact, the luck that for a period had made him appear a master of men had failed him at last.

From the time when he made himself Protector in Lima (August, 1821) the Peruvians had taken exception to his arrogance, his oppressive treatment of leading citizens, the extortions of his ministers, and complained of the want of stability in the country. In the interior Spanish forces still maintained themselves, while San Martín kept idle an army of 8000 men, a burden upon the populace. Early in April, 1822, the royalist General Canterac marched quickly upon the coast and inflicted a severe defeat upon the forces of the Protector, near Ica. San Martín, alarmed, decided to ask aid from Bolívar, fresh from victories in the Ecuadorian interior, and sailed to Guayaquil. He was received by Bolívar on July 26, but with such hostility that, fearing for his personal safety, he left hurriedly on July 28, and sailed back to Callao. He found that Peru had undergone a _coup d’état_. Upon his departure leading citizens held a meeting, insisted upon the resignation of his unpopular minister, Monteagudo, and deported him. San Martín accepted the warning and waited only until the convocation of congress to offer his resignation and to leave the country. If he had any dream of returning to take a part in public affairs in Chile or Argentina, it was speedily dissipated, and presently he retired to an estate at Mendoza, now a part of his native Argentina. His arrival and the fears of Chile that he contemplated some disturbing stroke probably hastened the irruption of feeling against the heads of the Chilean Government, by whom San Martín was received with extreme friendliness. No hostility was expressed against O’Higgins, whose memory agreeably survives in Chile, but the detested Rodriguez was increasingly blamed for the blighting commercial decrees and the general depression of the country.

In November, 1822, Chile experienced one of the most disastrous earthquakes of the century: a month later another upheaval occurred, with armed insurrections both in the north and south. The division of the “Penquistos” from Santiago was newly emphasized by violent dissatisfaction with laws against grain exports, and the cause of the south was championed by General Ramon Freire, military governor of Concepción, and echoed by Coquimbo, also angered by the heavy export dues placed upon copper, collected in the north but spent in Santiago.

While the troops of Freire crossed the Maule, his northern supporters under Benevente marched south; by the end of January they had reached Aconcagua and had secured the adhesion of Quillota. On the 28th a group of leading citizens visited O’Higgins and induced him to resign his authority into the hands of a junta of three, until the national congress could be again summoned. But the arrival of Freire in Valparaiso Bay with three warships and 1500 men put a different complexion upon governmental plans. Freire camped his men outside Santiago, declared his lack of personal ambition, but presently accepted the offer of the Directorship from the Junta. A new constitution was evolved at the end of 1823, which does not concern history since it was abrogated a year later in the face of new danger from Spain, speedily dispelled, when Freire needed larger powers.

From this period Chile slowly fought her way to social solidarity, her true wealth in agriculture developing steadily as the population increased. It is true that from a political standpoint there were few outstanding figures during the last eighty years of the nineteenth century, but whether from the outside or the inside the men appeared who brought the country to economic strength and gave her all that she lacked as regards markets, means of communication and development of her almost unsuspected resources.

In 1830 internal disturbances took place, chiefly as the result of the reaction of the _pelucones_ (the Conservative-Church-aristocratic group) against the Government party of _pipiolas_ (Liberals). The victory of the Army of the South at Lircay (April 17, ’31) resulted in the election of the successful general, Prieto, as President, and during his term of office (1831–41) the brilliant minister, Diego Portales, advanced the country’s progress materially and framed the Constitution which is still in force. Portales was assassinated upon the eve of Chile’s expedition to free Peru from the domination of a foreign dictator, in 1837. The occasion of this war was the rise of the aggressive Bolivian general, Santa Cruz, and his invasion and reduction of Peru. Chile regarded this forced Confederation as a challenge, sent armies to the north, took Lima, and defeated Santa Cruz at the battle of Yungay (January, 1839), when the Confederation fell apart.

The victor of Yungay, General Bulnes, ruled Chile for another ten years (1841–51), a prosperous and quiet period marking a tremendous stride forward in the country’s advance. Manuel Montt, the next President, served for another ten-year period, but was troubled first with a rebellion under General de la Cruz, crushed at the battle of Loncomilla at the end of 1851; by a revolt of the Atacama miners, put down at Cerro Grande in April, 1859; and a serious affray at Valparaiso late in the same year. During the succeeding government of José Perez occurred Spain’s last hostile act against her former colonies, when in 1865 a naval squadron sailed into the Pacific, seized the Chincha islands off Peru and demanded the payment of the old Peruvian colonial debt. Chile made the cause hers, and mobilized her fleet, brought upon herself the bombardment of Valparaiso on March 31, 1866, but seized the Peruvian gunboat _Covadonga_ off Papudo port.

In 1879, during the administration of Anibal Pinto, war broke out between Chile and Bolivia, afterwards joined by Peru, with the result, after the cessation of hostilities in 1883, of the acquisition by Chile of practically all the nitrate fields of South America.

A little later, Chile’s internal peace was curiously disturbed by the recurrence of old trouble concerning church privileges. The Chilean government claimed the right of nomination of church dignitaries, and the question was brought to a head when the Pope refused to appoint a candidate to the Archbishopric of Santiago chosen by the administration of Santa Maria (1881–86). A governmental decree rendering civil marriages legal in the eye of Chile, and another insisting upon the right to bury non-Roman Catholics in city cemeteries, roused a great deal of popular passion and clerical objection.

Unrest culminated during the administration of Balmaceda, when quarrels broke out between the President and Congress, and his attempts to govern the country without that body ended in a mutiny of the fleet. Sailing to the north, the insurgents prepared their plans for eight months, training an army, until it was brought south in August, 1891, and Balmaceda was defeated at the battles of Concon and Placilla. When the president shot himself in September of the same year, the mantle fell upon one of the insurrecto leaders, Admiral Jorge Montt, son of Manuel. Another of the Montt family, Pedro, occupied the presidential chair from 1906 to 1910, a period marked by great energy in the construction of ports, highways and railroads.

Since the Balmaceda revolt Chile has enjoyed complete internal and external peace, the administration of the country remaining in civilian hands and following the normal course of electoral changes.