was inaugurated to people the southern lands of the republic some time ago, but, in general terms, this has been a failure.

Chile has been magnificently endowed by Nature with mineral wealth-apart from the nitrate-and her copper mines have yielded a large part of the world's stock. Coal also exists, and coal-mining is among the important industries of the country. Chief among the coal-fields are those of Lota on the coast. But the import of coal from Britain and from Australia far exceed the home production. As to agriculture in the temperate regions of the zone of Santiago, rich crops of wheat, maize and flourishing vineyards are the basis of industry; the wine of Chile being famous upon the coast, and its manufacture and sale having produced several Chilean millionaires. Alfalfa also is freely grown, but all these products are cultivated under irrigation, as is the case in the Central Valley. In the Concepcion region, however, south of Valparaiso, irrigation is little required, and this strong and vigorous centre supports a good agricultural class. Cattlebreeding is an important branch of its industry. Great lumbering and farming possibilities exist in this southern region, whose latitude, it is to be recollected, is more or less equivalent to the northern latitude of San Francisco in California.

Of railways we have already noticed the northern systems -an existing and a projected trans-Cordilleran line; the nitrate railways, and various shorter systems from coast ports. The Great Central Valley is traversed in part by a railway uniting the capital and the various towns and seaports of Chile's fertile and prosperous regions. From Santiago the Great Trans-Andine Railway takes its way, the interoceanic line to Argentine and Buenos Ayres, whose completion is expected to be brought about in 1910.

This line, whose route over the Great Cumbre, or summit, is of historical interest, is 888 miles long from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Ascending from the Pacific Coast at Valparaiso the line perforates below the pass, whose considerable elevation is 12,600 feet above sea-level, and exceedingly heavy engineering work has been involved, culminating in extensive tunnelling; the elevation of the tunnel being 10,460 feet. Nature displays her Cordilleran handiwork in stupendous

form in these high, inclement regions-mountain scenery grand and imposing. Outlined against the azure of the Cordilleran sky is Aconcagua, a black basaltic mass, capped with a mantle of gleaming snow and ice. The austral winter of this region is one of terrific snowstorms, which fill the passes with intransitable drifts. In the open season, from November to April, which constitutes the spring and summer of the south temperate zone, traffic is maintained, pending the completion of the line, and by stage coach and on muleback; but in mid-winter the traveller crosses at his peril, avalanche and snow-drift threatening him, or causing enforced isolation in mountain shelters. It is to be recollected that this railway route is one of the main lines of travel from Europe to the towns and seaports of the Pacific Coast of South America; the traveller taking between that route and the Straits of Magellan or the Isthmus of Panama.

It was over this high pass that San Martin and O'Higgins -liberators of Chile and Peru from the power of Spainmade their famous march in 1817. To-day it forms part of the dividing line between Chile and Argentina, which nations regard each other across it with the stony gaze of an armed peace, yet respecting the boundary awarded them by the arbitration of King Edward of Britain. Moreover, upon this high pass, thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, these nations erected and unveiled, in 1904, a remarkable monument; and the native or the traveller, as he scales the inclement heights, is reminded suddenly of the mandate of the Prince of Peace, for, arresting his gaze, fronting upon those eternal Andine snows, is the colossal bronze statue of "El Cristo de Los Andes."

XVI

TO SUM UP

WE have finished our survey of the Great Coast, and have only to consider it from the general aspect of "world-politics.” It has been a theme of some writers that the Pacific Ocean is destined to become the main centre of human activity in the future; that, just as this centre shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, so will it move from the Atlantic to the Pacific. To agree with this assumption involves the unpalatable supposition that the yellow race is to predominate in the future; and this we shall beg leave to reject. We believe that the leaders of civilization are to remain the European races and their American (and Australian) offshoots. It is true that these occupy the whole of the Great Pacific Coast of America (and Australia on the other side); but Japan dominates in the Western Pacific-Japan who has worthily forged to the front so recently-and behind her, geographically and ethnologically, is the slumbering giant of China, rubbing his eyes now, and awakening. We shall refuse to believe that the sceptre of civilization is to fall from the hands of the Christian nations; and in any case we have marked across the Great Pacific Ocean that splendid diagonal from British Columbia and California to Australia and New Zealand. Let the giant awake.

As to the "yellow peril" on America's shores, the Mongolian race is already excluded from settlement or immigration in Anglo-America. Not so, however, in Spanish America; and Peru, Ecuador and other countries of the littoral view with tolerance, and even encourage, Japanese immigration. Chinese have been freely brought in in the past—and were generally brutally treated and now shiploads of Japanese are arriving at Callao. British and other sugar-producing firms upon the Peruvian coast are employing numbers of them, and state that they prefer them