Conversation, which, owing to the limited information of the ladies, usually turns in South American drawing-rooms upon the most common-place subjects, is marked in Chile by all the interest and vivacity consequent on the important influence exercised by the fair sex over the politics of the country, which prefers debating important political events to idle chatter and ordinary talk.
Even more agreeable than the evenings we spent among the patrician circles of Santiago, were those which we passed with an Austrian gentleman, Dr. Herzl, settled here some ten years, and with some German-Spanish families. Here everlasting politics, or rather party squabbles, had not, as in the native _salons_, banished music and song, the latter being cherished as a means of rising out of the hurly-burly, and keeping the annoyances of public life, for the moment at least, at arm's length.
In Chilean salons nothing was talked but politics; here the bent of conversation was towards literature and art, and, climax of the evening, the beloved melodies of our native land. Madame Z----, a native of Madrid, a second time married to a German, is a downright musical prodigy. In her youth she had studied at the _Conservatoire_ in Paris in company with Madame Malibran, and although now 54, and the mother of 16 children, she still entrances by her clear ringing voice, and the charm of her exquisitely appreciative intonation.
The chief engineer and director of the southern railway (Ferro Carril del Sur), a North American gentleman named Evans, a graduate of West Point, had the kindness to invite some members of the Expedition to visit the Maipú Bridge, distant some 17 miles from Santiago, and accompanied them in person on their excursion to this the most interesting engineering work of the line. We set off at 1 P.M. by one of the ordinary trains. The road is intended to unite Santiago with the very productive district of Talca, a distance of 180 miles, and is destined to exercise a most beneficial influence in improving the position of the peasantry.
The drive through the valley of Santiago is exceedingly interesting, as the line keeps close beneath the Cordillera through nearly its entire length, thus revealing to the gaze of the astonished traveller a succession of Alpine landscapes, such as one might behold in crossing the Semmering Alp. The ordinary rate of travelling in Chile is 25 miles an hour, but the expresses occasionally run at the rate of 60 miles per hour. As the splendid pastures on either side are grazed by innumerable herds, some of which were constantly straying upon the line, the item for injury done to cattle used to assume serious proportions, owing to the negligence of the drivers, till the directors, under the advice of Mr. Evans, offered a premium of 30 dollars a quarter to any engine driver who should during that space avoid killing any of the cattle: a singular regulation, but which put a stop to the evil. The line is solidly constructed, but very simply equipped, the waiting-rooms at the different stations being entirely deficient in that luxury which the traveller is accustomed to on first-rate European lines. But it tells in favour of the dividend.[113]