I Travel the Open Road

Classic Writings of Journeys Taken around the World

Various

• Publisher: Read & Co. Travel
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781528718240
• eBook ISBN: 9781528790543
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

"I Travel the Open Road" contains a fantastic collection of classic travel writings by a variety of notable authors, including Robert Louis Stevenson, G. K. Chesterton, and others. With pieces covering Europe, Africa, Asia, Russia, and the Americas, this collection offers the reader an insight not only into many different countries around the world, but also into history and the people and places of times past. Highly recommended for lovers of travel writing and discerning collectors of classic literature. Contents include: "Summer in Somerset, by Richard Jefferies", "Sunday in London, by George W. E. Russell", "Cambridge as Village and City, by John Fiske", "The Country-Side: Sussex, by Richard Jefferies", "Rotterdam, by E. V. Lucas", "Amsterdam, by E. V. Lucas", "Antwerp and Brussels, by Charles Bullard Fairbanks", "Paris, by Charles Bullard Fairbanks", "Nature in the Louvre, by Richard Jefferies", etc. Read & Co. Travel is proudly publishing this brand-new collection of classic travel writings for the enjoyment of a new generation.

ARICA TO
ILO OVERLAND,
VIA TACNA, TARATA,
AND MOQUEGUA

By Henry Stephens

Arica is seven hours north of Pisagua. Its population is 4886. It is the pleasantest port on the rainless coast for in its neighborhood is verdure due to irrigation from the Lluta River. It looks nice from the steamer's deck, which appearance is not belied by a visit to the lower town. The upper town, which extends to the desert, is a compactly built place of low buildings, but is far superior to the other coast towns of its size. In the lower town are the banks, shipping offices, and government buildings. Its streets are bordered with pepper trees and it has two cool and pleasant plazas in one of which the Italian residents have erected a bust to Columbus. Arica is the port of the provincial capital, Tacna, but its present importance is due to the opening in 1913 of a railroad to La Paz, Bolivia, of which city it is also a port. A traveler is carried to the Bolivian metropolis in twenty-four hours over a pass thirteen thousand feet high.

One of the first things that I did when I arrived in Arica was to go to the steamship office to find out about the sailings of the ships on the Chilean Line and of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. The agent for both these lines was the American consul, a man whose name I believe was Smith. As I was waiting for information, Smith himself appeared and he was in an ugly mood. He was a thin blonde man about fifty years old, bespectacled, and had red blotches on his face which showed that he was a heavy drinker. In fact he stunk of liquor. He was an Englishman and was acting as representative for the United States.

"Can't you read the schedule?" he inquired, indicating a time card which hung on the wall of the outer office.

"Yes, but owing to the ships being overcrowded, I want to make reservations."

"Wait until the ship arrives, then we will sell you a ticket," he answered hastily and then left the room. This was a nice fix because if I returned to Arica a few hours before sailing, it might happen that there would be so much loading and unloading of merchandise that it would be too late for me to buy my ticket after getting my passports viséd. There was no use of arguing with such self-important and gin-soaked individuals as Smith so I went away trusting to chance. It turned out that I did not return to Arica to catch the steamer because I traveled overland to Ilo, the port of Moquegua in Peru. A half hour after leaving the shipping office I saw Smith coming out of a cantina or saloon in the lower town and after walking for about a block he entered another one. Later on in the afternoon, happening to be in the barroom of the Hotel Francia, I arrived in time to see him gulp down a tumbler of gin and follow it up with a brandy chaser. I stepped up to him and offered to treat him, mainly to see what mood he would be in, and was surprised to hear him acquiesce by ordering a half pint of Guinness' stout. This performance he kept up all day and I was told by the brother of the hotel proprietress that it was a daily trick of his.

When the Guatemala anchored at Arica a French Calvinist minister, Dr. Petit, came on board to visit one of the passengers, the Reverend McLaughlin, a Methodist Episcopal minister from Buenos Aires. McLaughlin introduced me to Petit and during the following days at both Arica and Tacna I became fairly well acquainted with him. Petit had a degree as a physician but changed his profession to that of minister of the gospel. He had done considerable missionary work in South America and had a church in Arica where he preached. He did not believe in war but was a strong advocate for divorce; in fact he was contemplating divorcing his wife whom he claimed was unfaithful. He was at the present prevented from doing so because there is no divorce law in South America excepting Uruguay, and he did not have enough money to go to Montevideo to start proceedings. He also informed me that if the husband of the proprietress of the Hotel Francia was onto his job he would divorce her because that woman had driven him to distraction by her amours and her extravagances, so that to avoid domestic scenes the poor fellow had returned to France, hoping to be killed in battle to relieve him of his mental anguish. The husband I understand is an officer. Petit was a truly conscientious man and was wrapped in his work as missionary; he did not practice religion as a cloak to cover his sins. In build he was an athlete.

None of Arica's hotels are highly recommendable although the Hotel de France, or Francia as the natives call it, is the best. It is run by an accommodating peroxide or lemon juice blonde Frenchwoman about forty years old who is heartily sick of Arica and is anxious to sell out. This is the woman whom Dr. Petit had no respect for. The real manager of the hotel is her brother, a good-for-nothing, powerfully built creature about her age whose chief pleasure is to emulate Smith's example by overindulgence in alcoholic refreshments and to argue and quarrel with the guests.

A landmark for miles around is the solitary rock named the Morro de Arica which towers above the town. It is a duplicate of Gibraltar, and was one of Peru's last strongholds during the Pacific War. It was defended in 1880 by a regiment of Bolognesi's troops under Colonel Uguarte. In the face of a violent storm of rifle bullets, the Chilenos took the Morro by landing a short distance down the coast and climbing it from behind. When Uguarte saw that he had lost he spurred his horse to the brink of the precipice and jumped to his death several hundred feet below. Many of his followers did likewise because the Chilenos had the reputation of taking no captives. The Morro is now strongly fortified. People are forbidden to make its ascent and the day before I arrived two men were thrown into jail for attempting it. In front of the Morro is a small, low guano island. It is used as a fort and is honeycombed so that it can hold a force of five hundred men.

The day after we arrived a northbound Chilean steamer put into the harbor of Arica. On it was Kermit Roosevelt returning to the United States after having spent some time in the employ of the National City Bank at Buenos Aires. We did not know he was on the ship until walking down one of the streets a man breathlessly hurried towards us and asked us if either one of us were Señor Roosevelt. Thinking that some wag had told the gentleman one of us was Teddy, Prat answered saying that he was Colonel Roosevelt. Now Prat is a slender, medium-sized man about thirty years old and clean shaven and I cannot understand what kind of an ass that Arica gentleman was when he accepted Prat's statement and believed him. He stated that there was a delegation already to meet him and that he himself would accompany him to the cabildo where a banquet was being arranged. A crowd gathered around Prat and would have carried him off by force if an Italian blacksmith had not appeared on the scene who had seen Colonel Roosevelt and told the natives that a joke was being played on them.

The province of Tacna, the most northern in Chile, formerly belonged to Peru. At the close of the Pacific War in 1880, Chile, the victor over Peru and Bolivia, annexed to her already long seacoast the Bolivian province Antofagasta and the Peruvian province Tarapaca; Tacna it was only supposed to annex temporarily. Chile was to occupy it for twenty years; a vote of the inhabitants was then to be taken to determine which country it should go to. Thirty-eight years have passed by and still no vote has been taken. The chances are that it will always remain Chilean. To keep it so, Chile has seven regiments in the province, five of which are stationed at Tacna, the capital city. The present government has tried to Chilenize the province by planting within its confines men from the south of the republic so that even in the event of a vote, which is doubtful, the majority will be in favor of the present ownership. It is another Alsace and Lorraine question because Peru is always thinking of the day when it will get it back and its inhabitants are Peruvian sympathizers. Peru even goes through the sham of having Tacna and Arica represented in its congress at Lima.

Tacna is thirty-eight miles north of Arica. The connecting railroad is the oldest in South America having been completed in 1844. The railroad at first skirts a fertile fringe near the seashore and then crosses a sandy desert until within a few kilometers of Tacna when it enters an oasis caused by irrigation from the Caplina River, all of whose water is drawn off for the gardens so that none of it empties into the ocean.

Tacna lies at an altitude of 2820 feet above sea level but so imperceptible is the rise that one can imagine it to be on the same level plain as Arica. The population is 14,176, including five thousand soldiers. The city appears much larger. The ordinary transient would carry the impression that it is a town of twenty-five thousand people. It is a healthy place yet the death rate exceeds the birth rate, which state of affairs is true in many old settled towns all over the world.

Tacna is a beautiful place and is well worth a visit. It is the best built city in Chile and is the only one where the buildings are of stone. It is opulent,—a rarity in Chile,—its inhabitants are refined, educated, and wealthy. There are handsome public buildings, large stores, and spacious houses. In many respects Tacna has a European appearance. The most noticeable object that strikes one's vision in the city is a large stone shell of an incompleted cathedral with two massive stone towers. The square trimming stones are of a pinkish hue while the ordinary ones are the dun-colored ones of the country. This huge shell will never be completed. It was built from the plans of the French architect, Charles Pitaud, when Tacna was a Peruvian city. Then came the Pacific War and the money for its completion was turned into other channels. Monsieur Pitaud returned to France; Chile took Tacna, and used much of the iron for the framework of the cathedral for military purposes. When everything again became normal, the people wished again to complete the cathedral. Pitaud in the meantime had died and his drawings were never found so it was impossible to complete the building. In design it was to be much like the Duomo in Florence.

Another of Pitaud's works of art is the bronze fountain in the Plaza Colon. It was cast in 1868 and is the finest in the Western Hemisphere. There are more expensive ones, elaborate sculptures of marble, but none its equal artistically.

The streets of Tacna are paved, most of them with round polished stones, and many are bordered with trees planted along the curbs. There is much verdure and the city has several shad...

Table of contents

• TRAVEL
• EUROPE
• SUMMER IN SOMERSET
• SUNDAY IN LONDON
• CAMBRIDGE AS VILLAGE AND CITY
• THE COUNTRY-SIDE: SUSSEX
• ROTTERDAM
• AMSTERDAM
• ANTWERP AND BRUSSELS
• PARIS
• NATURE IN THE LOUVRE
• FONTAINEBLEAU: VILLAGE COMMUNITIES OF PAINTERS
• IN CORSICA
• A MOUNTAIN TOWN IN FRANCE: A FRAGMENT
• ON THE MATTERHORN
• EASTER ON LES AVANTS
• ROME
• OLD ITALIAN GARDENS
• GREECE
• GENERAL IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS AND ATTICA
• AFRICA
• A DAY IN CAPETOWN
• ALONG THE EAST COAST
• JOHANNESBURG AND PRETORIA IN 1896
• CAIRO
• ASIA
• THE CASPIAN— ASTARÁ—RÉSHT
• JOURNEYS TO BAGDAD
• MADRAS AND CALCUTTA
• LAHORE
• ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD
• RUSSIA
• EUROPEAN RUSSIA
• ST. PETERSBURG
• MOSCOW MEMORIES
• THE AMERICAS
• ARICA TO ILO OVERLAND, VIA TACNA, TARATA, AND MOQUEGUA
• EXCURSIONS IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF RIO JANEIRO
• THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL
• A WEEK IN MENDOCINO
• OLD STOCKBRIDGE IN MASSACHUSETTS
• INCONGRUOUS NEW YORK
• SOME AMERICAN CITIES