lent. Any vegetable or fruit of the Middle States of our own country will grow there. There seems to be no reason why Castro may not again become a city of importance, and the island a residence for a large population, should the Chilinean Government offer requisite inducements for immigration. A plank road connects Castro with Ancud at the northern end of the island, sixty miles distant, where the English mail steamers come twice each month from Valparaiso a road laid down more than two hundred years ago, and since renewed from time to time. A railway over this road, and southward up the island, would develop the resources of the country as an agricultural region, and in time pay well for itself. Immigration is the one thing needed. Thrifty and successful as the farmers of Chiloe are, they have but a faint idea of their own possibilities in any project of improvement. Castro is in a state of decay. An old churchhow old no one about it knew-stands on one side of the plaza. Faithful and painstaking hands in some past age adorned its interior with rude carvings in wood that still bear the marks of laborious cutting with knives, as a boy whittles a stick. It has long been tenantless. A new building, with residences for the priests attached, occupies another side of the public square, and is the only church of the town. The Governor's house takes up nearly all of a third side, and the fourth has a row of houses where the better class of the town's-people live. Wheeled vehicles are almost unknown. The inevitable donkey, with his omniferous panniers, seemed to do here, as in all the sea-coast towns of South America, the internal carrying trade of the place. Two or three little shops, where hoop-skirts and cigarritos were sold, were the only symptoms of visible business. We wanted coal, but the Castrians had none. Wood was our only obtainable fuel. After waiting at Castro a week, and taking in a few cords only of this, the ever-present American, who would appear wherever a ship might go if she waited for him, came to us by water from an island in the bay ten miles below the town. His name was Smith, and his trade blacksmith at Port Famine, or rather at Sandy Point; it would have been Smiley and his trade wrecker, if any disaster had befallen us in Magalhaen Strait. It was Avery in the general brokerage business here. Avery had been in Chiloe and Patagonia for thirty years. Sealing, sea-going, and potatowhisky had left their marks upon him. This last article is a native production of the island, and is, I think, the most horrible distillation ever made. Its flavor is indescribably nauseous. Its purity and great intoxicating powers are its sole recommendations. Avery told us of a hundred cords of wood that might be had at a low price at the place he came from that morning. We took him on board, weighed anchor, and went there. Wooding again, but this time with greater ease and rapidity than in the Chonos Archipel ago. A week at Quehuy Island, during which we celebrated the Fourth of July as well as we could in such a locality, and we left the magnificent harbor or river of Castro, heading up the Corcovado Gulf for Ancud, a hundred miles distant by water. The lonely mountains of Patagonia came into view again as we left the river. The people of Chiloe labored under a strange delusion about our vessel. News of the seizure of the Chinchas had just arrived in the island; and from the Governor to his valet every one believed us to be Spanish. No argument could undeceive them. They believed we were sent to spy out the weakness of the land, and that our want of wood was a fiction. A peculiar style of paint that disfigured our hull, unlike that of any man-of-war ever seen any where, and our visit to such an out-of-the-world place as Castro, confirmed them in their opinion. There were one or two more anchorages on the island side of Corcovado Gulf, but Ancud was reached at last. The town is in the extreme north of Chiloe, and is, with Port Montt, a German city on the opposite shore, the terminus of the southern Pacific mail-route. Ancud, or San Carlos-it has both names-was once a place of some importance; but the flourishing immigrant settlers at Port Montt, on the main land, have every thing their own way now, and the island town is drooping. We staid there nearly a week. Rain fell steadily night and day through the whole time. An abundance of wood, and all the coal that the courteous captain of the English mail-steamer Callao could possibly part with, gave us fuel enough to attempt to make Valdivia, a hundred miles further north. . We steamed out into the open Pacific for the second time with some misgivings. There was a possibility of finding coal at Valdivia. Nothing more. Beyond that point two hundred miles intervened between it and the great coalmines of Lota and Lotilla. A distance almost impossible to pass with wood alone. It was our only course, however, and was fortunately successful. We ran into the harbor of Valdivia on the day after leaving Ancud, were boarded by the usual officials, and found that seventy tons of coal could be purchased. It was all there was in the harbor, and its owner seemed as glad to sell as we were to buy. It had been on his hands for a great many years, how many I have forgotten, and he had long ago lost all hope of ever selling it. The people of the smaller South American towns use only charcoal for heating and cooking purposes. Valdivia harbor is another of the many landlocked bays on the Pacific coast that have been strangely overlooked; while open roadsteads, like the so-called harbor of Valparaiso, mark the sites of large and important cities. Its natural defenses are almost perfect. Two decaying forts, with a few rusted guns, are the only artificial ones. passed an interesting morning in visiting the mines and their machinery. One of the superintendents went about with me, giving me many details in regard to the works. The hills back of Lota are seamed with veins of coal. The richest deposits are known to be under the bay; but at such little depth that any mining there by shafts on shore and horizontal tunneling is impossible. Two sorts of mines have been excavated. Shafts from thirty to a hundred yards deep are sunk at different points, and from them the veins are followed in some instances for nearly a mile by horizontal digging. At one point a shaft with a dip of about one foot in fifty enters a hill-side from the surface. At another a railway connects a pit with a delivery-shed a half mile distant, on which the loaded cars are drawn up a steep slope by an endless rope of wire and a stationary engine. Every thing works smoothly. Laborers are easily found among the Chilinean peons. From six to ten thousand tons per month are taken out at the Lota mines alone. The hill-sides and cuttings of the coal region show in brilliant colors from the bay. A turf of most vivid green, its grass dense, velvety, and heavy as that of England, has a subsoil of bright red. The many excavations of pits, railways, and roads give a contrast in color to the surface that has an effect of artificiality beyond any thing of the sort that I ever met before. A house here and there among the hills, of white stone or wood, with yellow or red roof, scape. Wherever a hill-side is scarped by the action of the sea, as those are skirting the beach, the sectional strata of clay, loam, gravel, and rock show even more contrasting colors than the surface of the country. A pleasant effect of fresh cleanliness results. Coal came rapidly on board. Valparaiso was fast assuming shape in our minds as a goal that might be reached by a few more efforts. Letters from home, news of the war, the relief of anxiety about our ship, that we knew must have been caused by our many delays, were all objects almost within our grasp. The mail-aids the kaleidoscopic appearance of the landsteamer Callao had taken the report of our arrival at Ancud, but she left us almost destitute of fuel, with several hundred miles of open ocean to traverse before any supply was possible. With our seventy tons on board we bombarded one of the two old forts to please a company of Chilinean officers which came from shore, The old and new cities of Concepcion were showed them what heavy rifled cannon could both near by. The mining people offered us and could not do, and left Valdivia for the coal- horses and guides to take us to them across the regions of Coronel. Two hundred miles were country; but time pressed, our coal was on rapidly passed over. Standing in toward the board, and we were forced to decline their servland the curious double mountain of Bio-Bio, içes. The constant rain of Ancud had given and the low coast south of it, marked the en- place to bright sunshine and dry air. July is trance to the bays of Lota, Lotilla, and Coro- the midwinter month of the southern heminel, three villages among the coal-mines. We sphere; but the days at Lota were like those of anchored off the iron pier of Lota at sunset. October in the north. The line of equal cold In this portion of Chili coal is found in abund- runs far toward the pole in Chili and Western Vessels are constantly loading for ports Patagonia. I think that even in the Strait of along the coast, as far north even as Panama. Magalhaen the thermometer never goes below The mines are in the southwestern corner of 20 Fahrenheit in the coldest weather. Araucania. Though the government holds We left Lota with an ample supply of coal. nominal sway over this entire province, its This Chilinean coal is ultra-bituminous. It actual jurisdiction is limited to the sea-shore. | burns rapidly, with great evolution of heat and The unsubdued Araucanian Indians are as in-smoke, becoming any thing but economical for dependent now as in the old days when they stood alone, the only tribe unconquered by the invading Spaniards. ance. The coal district is owned in great part by a Chilinean proprietor resident in Santiago. Its managers are mostly English, as are also the principal subordinate officials. Men trained to mining business in the English coal-fields. I ship's use. Cardiff from Wales and anthracite from America are brought to various ports in the Pacific by sailing-vessels, but in small quantities only. We found anthracite at Saint Thomas, Cardiff at Bahia and Montevideo, an unworked mine of valuable bituminous at Port Famine, anthracite again at Valparaiso, Callao, Panama, and Acapulco. Twenty dollars per ton in gold is asked for anthracite coal in some of the Pacific ports. For a steamer, whose only dependence is upon what her engines can burn, the expenses of a voyage in this ocean are heavy. I speak of payments in gold. The republics of the South are more fortunate in currency than we have been. Through their unceasing, intestinal wars they have preserved a gold and silver circulating medium, or one of paper redeemable in coin. English and French gold is very common in the cities. American gold and silver are in use in a less degree. A new silver coinage in Brazil, Chili, and Peru, of most beautiful design and finished appearance, had been recently adopted as we visited each country. No coinage of our own can compare with it in workmanship. It is national and distinctive, of course, in each of the three countries, but of similar character in sharp and clear outline. Doubloons and their fractions in gold, as well as the half-worn halves, quarters, and eighths in silver, that were once diagnostic of Mexican or South American production, are growing less common as the new coinage is introduced. Chili has gold dollars, like those first issued in our own country. The Andes of Chili skirted the horizon as we went down the coast. "Down" the coast, from the southern pole; though "up" seemed from our northern habits the correct adverb to use. Their snow-line grew steadily higher. In the Strait of Magalhaen it came nearly to the sealevel. The Pacific Ocean had hardly deserved its title, so far as our experience went thus far. Either constant rain and wind, or fair weather with a heavy sea, had been the rule since we entered it. One needs to go to sea in a steamer of eight feet draught, without a keel, and with a powerful engine that forced her against head winds and waves, to understand how uneasily a vessel can move. We entered the open roadstead in front of Valparaiso on the morning of July 23, after one of the longest passages ever made from Montevideo by a steamer. Our anchor was scarcely aground before a boat came alongside with our mail-bag. The letters were the first that had reached us since we left America, four months and sixteen days before. They were intensely welcome. The mail steamer at Ancud had given us vague accounts of the progress of the war. The full details of the campaigns, battles, and victories of the spring and early summer came to us "in a single day, at this port in the distant Pacific," as I knew they would when we left Hampton Roads. spurs, the valleys between them, and the reclaimed sea-beach make the site of the city. The streets of the lower town are devoted to wholesale and retail business. There are blocks of warehouses differing in no way save height from those of Europe or America. The occurrence of an earthquake as often as once every fortnight precludes any very imposing architecture; necessitating broad and low buildings, with walls massive enough to sustain the shocks or else so yielding as not to be broken by them. Buildings in the city are usually of the former character. The huts of the peons in the country have bamboo or cane walls covered with clay. Internal plastering is little used even in the most expensive houses. Rooms are finished in paper or boards. The retail shops are as varied in character, as elegant in windows of large plateglass, as thoroughly stocked with choice goods of every sort, as they are in New York or Boston. I found no want of civilized purchasers uncared for. Shops where nothing but sheetmusic is sold, perfectly-supplied furnishing warehouses for both men and women, jewelry shops, confectionery saloons, fruit-shops, tailoring establishments, with fashions as late as our own, bar-rooms, well-arranged restaurants, all the different retail businesses that our own cities have, exist in as good condition in Valparaiso. Milliners alone make little display, from the fact that very few of the female portion of the population ever wear any thing on the head in the streets save a veil or a fold of mantilla. This peculiarity is common to all classes of society. The effect is more singular from the adoption of the latest styles of dress in every other particular, and the entire similarity of the male costume to our own, including the stove-pipe or nail-keg hat. Whether the beautiful and superabundant hair of the South American women is due to this constant exposure of the head I am unable to say. I am inclined to believe that it is so. The hotels in Valparaiso are not so good as they might be. They are kept in a mixed European and American manner. Their charges are three dollars per day for every thing-board, lodging, and attendance. Soup, as a first course for breakfast, is a novelty that I first met here. A visitor to the city can obtain his meals most satisfactorily at the Exchange Coffee House near the Mole, where the choicest dishes are served by the card. Horse cars traverse the lower town. They are more commodious than American cars, having as many seats on top-to which comfortable stairways lead-as there are inside. The imValparaiso was a series of pleasant surprises. provement is one that would be popular in From the sea its appearance is commonplace. America. The stairways curve outward from It has none of the picturesqueness of Bahia or each side of the platform, which has its entrance Charlotte Amalia, or even of Montevideo. Spurs step in the centre, instead of the side as with us. of the arid table-land, a thousand feet above The streets are thoroughly lighted by gas at the sea, run toward the shore in decreasing night, and amply supplied with a uniformed height, leaving a border of land or sea-beach police. between their scarped termini and the water, a few hundred yards in width. The ends of the In the valleys leading up to the inland plateau, and upon the summits of the projections of the table-land, are the residences of the mid- | left the harbor the tall peak of Aconcagua, ninedle and upper classes. One gentleman, the ty miles in the interior, stood out grandly against senior partner in as large and well-arranged the sky Its great height, twenty-three thouwholesale drug-house as I have often seen, while sand feet, dwarfed the many smaller mountains standing with me in front of his store, pointed nearer the coast, that rise from eight to fifteen out his house to me, three hundred feet above thousand feet above the sea. Our course was us, and not more than as many yards distant in northward. Lima and its sea-port, Callao, Tuman air-line. The queer effect of these rocky bez, Panama, Acapulco, Magdalena Bay, were precipices, crowned with dwellings, rising direct- our several prospective ports. They have all ly from the streets of the city, is, I think, pecul- been visited and left behind. San Francisco is iar to Valparaiso among the sea-coast towns of near. There the ship will recover energies the Pacific, Their summits are reached by zig-wasted by seventeen thousand miles of cruising. zag foot-paths in the faces of the cliffs, or by I trust my seventy sick men may do so too. winding roads from the intermediate valleys. In a late number of the Army and Navy Jour We left there after a fortnight's stay. San-nal there was the following item: tiago, the Chilinean capital, connected with Valparaiso by rail, where the horrible burning of the Compania Church occurred a year ago, was unvisited by any of us except our captain. He described it as a large and beautiful city of two hundred thousand inhabitants. Valparaiso has a population of seventy-five thousand. "NAVAL.-The missing steamer Waterce has at last been heard from. She was at Castro, a port in the Island of Chiloe." As we The statement was so brief and our cruise so novel, that I thought something more might be told of the reason why we were missing, and "WHERE THE WATEREE' WAS." LOVE AT SEA. FOAM-CRESTED waves, from morn to night, What time fair Hesperus, rising, gleamed That met all round the deep blue sky, With here and there a sail in sight, Our glittering wake shone white behind, Linked arm in arm, when skies were fair, Watched the far sails which went and came. Or, gazing down along the deep, We marked the long, dark indolent swells, And saw the bounding porpoise leap, And heard on board the half-hour bells. Oh, what to us was Time's swift flight- To whom all seasons were the same? For Love possessed our souls, and drew And, steeped in bliss, our souls looked through Left far behind the new world lay; VOL. XXX.-No. 179.-P P In crimson deeps where sank the breeze, And on the farthest verge of night Rose the full moon, like some pale nun, When the sweet vesper hymn is done. Or sailing on from high to higher, By skirts of silver shining clouds, That struggled in the tall dark shrouds. And sometimes, like a silent ghost, Dim outlined on the dark night sky, Oh! soft, still nights; oh! calm, rich days One morn I woke to scent the breeze That over English downs had swept; W STREET VIEW IN OIL CITY. HEN the treasures of California were discovered thousands rushed to its golden shores. The wilderness of the great West teemed with life, and the gulches were compelled to give up their treasures, long hidden from the eye of than silver or gold, the occurrence and profitable discovery of which geology alone is able to determine. That substance is coal. Yet when coal was discovered many predicted the almost immediate failure of the supply; but as civilization overspread the land, removing our forests of heavy timber, thus decreasing the supply of the only fuel we then had, Nature came to our assistance and disclosed to us the vast coal-fields hidden for so many ages beneath the earth. The coal "bubble" has never "burst." New fields are being discovered. Seemingly not satisfied with the present de |
