Notes of a naturalist in South America

A veil of morning haze or mist, not uncommon at this season, hung over the city and marred the completeness of the grand view from the summit of the Cerro. Though easily explained, the seeming opacity of a thin stratum of vapour seen from above, as I have often noticed in the Alps, is remarkable. Before we started, and after our return, the haze over the city was scarcely perceptible. Not only did the sun shine brightly in the town, but the outlines of the neighbouring peaks were perfectly distinct. Looking down from the upper station, the slight differences in the intensity of the comparatively feeble light proceeding from the various objects on the surface, by which alone they are made visible, were concealed by the haze which reflected a portion of the comparatively strong light received from the sky, just as when looking from the outside at a window which reflects the light from the sky, we cannot distinguish objects within.

In the afternoon Mr. Swinburne was good enough to accompany me in a visit to Don Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna, one of the most conspicuous and remarkable of the contemporary public men of Chili. His career has been in many ways singular. In early life he took part in two attempts of a revolutionary nature. Fortunately for themselves, the Chilians have gained from their own and their neighbours’ experience a fixed aversion to revolution, and, while acknowledging the existence of abuses, have felt that violent change is certain to entail worse evils. Both attempts failed, and the leaders were condemned to death, the sentences being judiciously commuted to temporary exile.

Since his return, Mr. Mackenna has done good service as head of the municipality of Santiago, has been a prominent member of the legislature, and was, in 1881, the unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the republic. But it is chiefly by his fertility as a writer that Mr. Mackenna has secured for himself an enduring reputation. Gifted with keen intelligence and a marvellously retentive memory, his readiness to discuss in turn the most varied topics, whether by speech or pen, is quite phenomenal. Besides being a constant contributor to newspapers and periodicals, he has published over a hundred volumes, most of them devoted either to illustrate the history or to promote the progress of his native country. I was most kindly received, and my only regret, on this and subsequent occasions, was that the shortness of my stay prevented me from enjoying more fully the society of this interesting man. From the room – in itself a library – reserved for the spare copies of his own works, I selected four volumes out of the many which he was kind enough to place at my disposal.

DON BENJAMIN V. MACKENNA.

On the following day Mr. Vicuña Mackenna was kind enough to devote several hours to taking me to various objects of interest in the city, beginning with the natural history museum at the Quinta Normal. Rightly supposing that they would be of interest, my guide afterwards took me to see the most remarkable trees of the city, each of which possesses some historic interest. In an old and rather neglected garden attached to the palace of the archbishop is the finest known specimen of the peumo, the most important indigenous tree of Central Chili. Popular tradition affirms that under this tree, in 1640, Pedro de Valdivia, the founder of Santiago, held a conference with the native Indian chiefs, in which they agreed to allow the strangers a certain territory for settlement. It is undoubtedly very ancient, and is divided nearly from the ground into a number of massive branches spreading in all directions, so as to form a hemisphere of dark green foliage rather more than sixty feet in diameter. The tree belongs to the laurel family (Cryptocarya Peumus of botanists), and is densely covered with thick evergreen leaves impenetrable to the sun. The red oval fruits are much appreciated by the country people, but they have a resinous taste unpalatable to strangers.

In the garden of the Franciscan convent we saw a very fine old Lombardy poplar, from which it is said that all those cultivated in Chili are descended. The story runs that a prior of the convent, who visited his brethren at Mendoza, some time in the seventeenth century, found there poplar trees introduced from Europe, and which in that denuded region were the sole representatives of arboreal vegetation. The sapling which he carried back on his return across the Andes grew to be the tree which still flourishes in the convent at Santiago. To judge from its appearance, the story is no way improbable.

In the patio of a fine house in the city are two remarkably fine specimens of the Eucalyptus globulus, a tree now familiar to visitors at Nice and many other places in the Mediterranean region. It has been of late extensively planted throughout the drier parts of temperate South America, and promises to be of much economic value. The pair which I saw here had been planted seventeen years before, and, like twins, had kept pace in their growth. The height was about sixty feet, and the girth at five feet from the ground about seven feet.

A HOUSE IN SANTIAGO.

As a specimen of one of the better houses in Santiago, Mr. V. Mackenna took me to that of one of his cousins, who with his family was at the time absent in the country. The building included three small courts, or patios, each laid out with ornamental plants well watered. The reception-rooms, very richly furnished in satin and velvet, as well as the apartments of the family, were all on the ground floor, most of them opening into a patio. Over a part of the building were small rooms constructed of slight materials for the use of servants, so that the risk of fatal injuries even in a severe earthquake seemed to be but slight.

I was told the history of the owner of this fine house, which, from what I afterwards heard, was no more than a fair sample of the economic condition of Chilian society. Many of the older Spanish families are large landowners, and, in spite of vicissitudes due to droughts and occasional inundations, derive settled incomes from property of this kind. But the prodigious wealth that has flowed from the rich mining districts has proved a temptation too strong to be resisted, and there are comparatively few of the wealthier class who have not engaged in mining speculations. It is needless to say that along with some great prizes there have been many blanks in the lottery, and the result has been that the fortunes of families have undergone the most extraordinary vicissitudes. People get used to a condition of society where the same man may be rich to-day, reduced nearly to pauperism a year later, and then again, after another short interval, rolling in wealth. It is to be feared that the effect, if continued for a generation or two, will not be favourable to progress in the higher sense.

The existence of a class not forced to expend its energies on acquiring wealth, and having some adequate objects of ambition, is still the most important condition for the advancement of the human race. We may look forward to other conditions of society when, having found out the extremely small value of most of the luxuries that now stimulate exertion, men will be able peacefully to develop a healthier and happier social state, in which labour and leisure will be more equally distributed; but this is yet in the distant future, and perhaps the greatest difficulty in its attainment will arise from premature attempts to impose new conditions which, if they are to live, must be of spontaneous growth.

One of the marked features of Santiago is the steep rock of Santa Lucia rising abruptly near the eastern end of the Alameda. It has been well laid out with winding footpaths, and has a frequented restaurant. The view of the snowy range on one side and the city on the other can scarcely be matched elsewhere in the world.

On reaching Santiago, I was mainly preoccupied with the question of how to use my short stay with the best advantage so as to see as much as possible of the scenery and vegetation of the great range, consistently with the promise I had given before leaving home to avoid all risks to health. From the abundance of fresh snow along the range, it was obvious that the precipitation on the higher flanks of the Cordillera must be considerably greater than it is in the low country, where only one or two slight showers had fallen; and we were in the season when rain is annually expected, which, of course, would take the form of snow in the higher region. I had already obtained a letter to the manager of the mines at Las Condes, a place about fifteen miles from Santiago, and some eight thousand feet above the sea. But, after taking counsel with those best informed, I decided on giving a few days to a visit to the Baths of Cauquenes, in the valley of the Cachapoal, a little above the point where that stream issues from the mountains into the plain of Central Chili. There remained a possibility of making an excursion from Cauquenes into one of the interior valleys, especially that of Cypres, famed for the variety of high mountain plants that find a home near the glacier which descends into it, and there was the advantage that even in case of bad weather no serious inconvenience would arise.

WINTER SEASON APPROACHING.

I started next morning, May 14, by the railway, which is carried nearly due south from the capital to Talca, and thence to Concepcion. I found myself in the same carriage with Mr. Hess, the lessee and manager of the Baths, an energetic, practical man, fully impressed with a sense of his own importance as head of an establishment which annually attracts the best society of Chili. The railway journey, which carries one for about fifty miles parallel to the great range of the Cordillera, is very interesting, even at this season, when much of the country shows a parched surface. The finest views are those gained where the line passes opposite the opening through which the Maipo issues from the mountains into the plain. This river, which even in the dry season shows a respectable volume of water, is formed by the union of the torrents from four valleys that penetrate nearly to the axis of the Cordillera. Of Tupungato, the highest summit hereabouts, 20,270 feet above sea-level, I saw nothing, as it is masked by a very lofty range that divides two of the tributary valleys. A slender wreath of vapour marked the volcano of San José, just twenty thousand feet in height, at the head of the southern branch of the river. It is only at one point visible from the railway.

On the way from Valparaiso to Santiago I had already been much struck by the prevalence over wide areas of plants not indigenous to the country, most of them introduced from Southern Europe. The most conspicuous are plants of the thistle tribe, all strangers to South America, and especially the cardoon, or wild state of the common artichoke. This is now far more common in temperate South America than it anywhere is in its native home in the Mediterranean region. In Chili it is regarded with some favour, as mules, and even horses, eat the large spiny leaves freely at a season when other forage is scarce. The same cannot be said of our common coarse spear-thistle (Cnicus lanceolatus), which, though of much more recent introduction, has now invaded large tracts of country, especially in the rather moister southern provinces. I was informed that, with the strange expectation that it would be useful as fodder, an Englishman had imported a sack of the seed, which he had spread broadcast somewhere in the neighbourhood of Concepcion. Many other European plants have been introduced, either intentionally or by accident, and have in some districts to a great extent supplanted the indigenous vegetation. As to many of these, it appears to me probable that their diffusion is due more to the aid of animals than the direct intervention of man. This is especially true of the little immigrant which has gone farthest in colonizing this part of the earth – the common stork’s-bill (Erodium cicutarium), which has made itself equally at home in the upper zone of the Peruvian Andes, in the low country of Central Chili, and in the plains of Northern Patagonia. Its extension seems to keep pace with the spread of domestic animals, and, as far as I have been able to ascertain, it is nowhere common except in districts now or formerly pastured by horned cattle. It is singular that the same plant should have failed to extend itself in North America, being apparently confined to a few localities. It is now common in the northern island of New Zealand, but has not extended to South Africa, where two other European species of the same genus are established.

IMMIGRANT PLANTS.

In considering the facts relating to the rapid extension of certain plants when introduced into new regions, and the extent to which they have supplanted the indigenous species, I confess that I have always been a little sceptical as to the primary importance attributed by Darwin24 to the fact that most of these invaders are northern continental species. In the course of a long existence extending over wide areas, he maintains that these have acquired an organization fitting them better to maintain the struggle for existence than the indigenous species of the regions over which they have spread. Of course, it is true in the case of territories very recently raised from the sea, and not in direct connection with a continental area inhabited by species well adapted to the conditions of soil and climate, that immigrant species well adapted to the conditions of their new home will spread very rapidly, and may easily supplant the less vigorous, because less well adapted, native species. The most remarkable case of this kind is perhaps presented by Northern Patagonia and a portion of the Argentine region, raised from the sea during the most recent geological period. The only quarters from which the flora could be recruited were the range of the Andes to the west, and the subtropical zone of South America to the north. Everything goes to prove that the forms of plants are far more slowly modified than those of animals – or, at least, of the higher vertebrate orders. The new settlers are unable quickly to adapt themselves to the new conditions of life, and as a result we find that the indigenous flora of the region in question is both numerically poor in species, and that these have been unable fully to occupy the ground. Among the species intentionally or accidentally introduced by the European conquerors, those well adapted to the new country have established a predominance over the native species; but I question whether, if the course of history had been different, and the conquerors of South America had come from South Africa or South Australia, bringing with them seeds of those regions, we should not have seen in Patagonia African or Australian plants in the place of the European thistles and other weeds now so widely spread.

CHECKS ON COLONIZATION.

If I am not much mistaken as to the history of the introduction of foreign plants into new regions, it very commonly happens that a species which spreads very widely at first becomes gradually restricted in its area, and finally loses the predominance which it seemed to have established. Attention has not, I think, been sufficiently directed to the fact that the chief limit to the spread of each species is fixed by the prevalence of the enemies to which it is exposed, and that plants carried to a distant region will, as a general rule, enjoy advantages which in the course of time they are likely to lose. Whether it be large animals that eat down the stem – as goats prevent the extension of pines – or birds that devour the fruit, or insects that attack some vital organ, or vegetable parasites that disorganize the tissues, the chances are great that in a new region the species will not find the enemies that have been adapted to check its extension in its native home. Of the marvellous complexity of the agencies that interact in the life-history of each species we first formed some estimate through the teachings of Darwin; but to follow out the details in each case will be the work of successive generations of naturalists. We cannot doubt that in a new region new enemies will arise for each species that has become common, or, in other words, that other organisms, whether animals or plants, will acquire the means of maintaining their own existence at the expense of the new-comer. The wild artichoke is doubtless perfectly adapted to the climate of the warmer and drier parts of the Mediterranean region, and is there rather widely spread; but it is nowhere very common, even in places where the ground is not much occupied by other species. We do not know all the agencies that prevent it from spreading farther, but we do not doubt that it is held in check by its appropriate enemies. In South America it would appear that these, or some of them, are absent, and the plant has spread far and wide. If some common bird should take to devouring the seeds, or some other effectual check should arise, the area would very speedily be reduced.

The train stopped for breakfast at the Rancagua station, a few miles from the town of that name. Along with very fair food at the restaurant, cheaper delicacies were offered by itinerant hawkers, including various sweet cakes of suspicious appearance and baskets of red berries of the peumo tree. At the next station, called Gualtro, about fifty miles from Santiago, we left the train, and, after the usual long delay, continued our journey in a lumbering coach set upon very high wheels. This seems to be the general fashion for carriages in South America, arising from the fact that the smaller streams, which swell fast after rain, are usually unprovided with bridges.

Incautious travellers in South America may easily be misled by the frequent use of the same name for quite different places. One bound for the Baths of Cauquenes must be careful not to confound these with the town of Cauquenes, the chief place of a department of the same name, more than a hundred miles farther to the south.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF CHILI.

Before reaching Gualtro we had crossed the Cachapoal, a torrential stream which drains several valleys of the high Cordillera. Our course now lay eastward, towards the point where the river issues from the mountains into the plain, and where, as everywhere in Central Chili, its waters are largely used for irrigation. The road along the left bank lies on a slope at some height above the stream, and gives a wide view over the plain, backed by the great range of the Cordillera. Irrespective of the picturesque interest of the grand view, I added somewhat to the impressions respecting the physical geography of Central Chili which I had recently received from an examination of Petermann’s reduction from the large government map, and from the information given me at Santiago.

I had reached Chili with no other ideas respecting the configuration of the country than those derived from the twelfth chapter of Darwin’s “Journal of Researches,” which with little modification have been repeated by subsequent writers, even so lately as in the excellent article on “Chile,” in the American Cyclopædia.

Struck by the conformation of the range between Quillota and Santiago, and the somewhat similar range south of the Maipo, and writing at a time when there were no maps deserving of the name, and when the channels of Patagonia had been most imperfectly explored, Darwin was led to infer a much closer resemblance between the orographic features of the two regions than it is now possible to admit. He supposed the greater part, if not the whole of the Chilian coast, to be bordered by mountain ranges running parallel to the main chain of the Cordillera, thus forming a succession of nearly level basins lying between these outer mountains and the main range, each being drained through a transverse valley which cuts through the outer range. Such a conformation of the surface would undoubtedly resemble what we find on the western coast of South America, between the Gulf of Ancud and the Straits of Magellan. But the facts correspond with this view only to a limited extent.

The tints laid down on Petermann’s map to indicate successive zones of height above the sea are far from being completely accurate, but slight errors of detail do not affect the general conclusions to which we must arrive. If we carry the eye along from north to south, we find a succession of great buttresses or promontories of high land projecting westward from the main range, between which relatively deep valleys carry the drainage towards the Pacific coast. The effect of a continuous sinking of the land would be to produce a series of deep bays running far inland to the base of the Cordillera, and further depression might show here and there some scattered islets, but nothing to resemble the almost continuous range of mountainous islands that separate the channels of Patagonia from the ocean. As far as it is possible to judge of a region yet imperfectly surveyed, the case is quite different in Southern Chili, below the parallel of 40°. From near Valdivia a lofty coast range, cut through by only one deep and narrow valley, extends southward to the strait, only a few miles wide, that divides the island of Chiloe from the mainland, and is evidently prolonged to the southward in the high land that fringes the western flank of that large island. A moderate rise of the sea-level would submerge the country between Puerto Montt and the Rio de San Pedro, and produce another island very similar in form and dimensions to that of Chiloe.

A CHILIAN COUNTRY-GENTLEMAN.

Our lumbering carriage came to a halt at the place where the road crosses a stream – the Rio Claro – which drains some part of the outer range and soon falls into the Cachapoal. Close at hand was a plain building with numerous dependencies, which turned out to be the residence of Don Olegario Soto, the chief proprietor of this part of the country. I proceeded at once to deliver a letter to this gentleman, whose property extends along the valley for a distance of thirty or forty miles into the heart of the Cordillera. My object was to ascertain the possibility of making an excursion into the interior of the great range, and to obtain such assistance as the proprietor might afford. The house, so far as I saw, was rustic in character, and my first impression of its owner was that the same epithet might serve as his description. There was a complete absence of the conventional and perfectly hollow phrases which form the staple of Castilian courtesy. But first impressions are proverbially misleading. On my making some obviously superfluous remark as to my imperfect use of the Spanish tongue, Don Olegario changed the conversation to English, which he spoke with perfect ease and correctness. We discussed my project of a mountain excursion, and I found at once that he was ready to give practical assistance in every way. The doubt remained as to the season and the weather. If no rain or snow should fall, there was no other obstacle. He readily undertook to provide men and horses and everything needful for an excursion of three days in the Cordillera, and I was to let him know my resolve on the following day.

I afterwards heard in some detail the family history of this liberal-minded gentleman. His father commenced life as a common miner. With the aid of good fortune, natural intelligence, and activity, he became the owner of a valuable mine in Northern Chili, and amassed a large fortune, mainly invested in the purchase of land. Having several sons, he sent them all for education to England, and, to judge from the specimen I saw, with excellent results. Large proprietors who use intelligence and capital to develop the natural resources of the country supply, in some states of society, the most effectual means for progress in civilization; but, excepting in Chili, such examples are rare in South America.

The day was declining when we reached the Baths of Cauquenes, and I had time only for a short stroll through the establishment and its immediate surroundings. It stands on a level shelf of stony ground less than a hundred feet above the river Cachapoal, the main building consisting of a range of bedrooms, all on the ground floor, disposed round a very large quadrangle. The rooms are spacious and sufficiently furnished, and I was struck by the fact that there is no fastening whatever to the doors, which usually stand ajar. This speaks at once for the constant apprehension of earthquakes that seems to haunt the Chilian mind, and for the general honesty of the people, amongst whom theft is almost unknown. Besides some additional rooms in wings adjoining the great court, the baths are an annexe overhanging the river, to which you descend by broad flights of stairs. A large handsome hall, lighted from above, has the bath-rooms ranged on either side, all exquisitely clean and attractive. The adjoining ground, planted mainly with native trees, is limited in extent. A narrow and deep ravine, cut through the rocky slope of the adjoining hill, is traversed by one of those slight wire suspension bridges common in this country, that swing so far under the steps of the passenger as to disquiet the unaccustomed stranger. The views gained from below up the rugged and stern valley of the Cachapoal are naturally limited, but the rather steep hills rising above the baths promised a wider prospect towards the great range of the Cordillera, and did not disappoint expectation.