re not. This
black cloth is called a manto and all women, both rich and poor, wear
them. The business portion of the city of Valparaiso is built on a
narrow strip of land at the foot of a high hill.

All along there are elevators or lifts as they call them. For a couple
of pennies you can step into one of these lifts and be taken up a
hundred feet or more. While one lift goes up another comes down as they
are always built in pairs. There are winding ways where horses and
donkeys can walk up but no wheeled vehicle can be taken up or down for
it is too steep.

For this reason the dairymen and venders all have donkeys or small
horses. A dairyman will have a couple of large milk cans, one on either
side of the beast, or perhaps a small barrel on the top of a frame or
saddle. The man leads or drives the animal and they are so sure-footed
that they can go up a place so steep that one not used to climbing could
not make the ascent.

There are but few North Americans in Chile. I had breakfast (they call
the noon meal breakfast) with the American Club. There were but
twenty-five or thirty present, mostly business men. But few of these men
are satisfied to stay long in Chile.

The American Y. M. C. A. is doing some good work in Valparaiso, as in
all other South American cities. The rooms are well patronized and it
was homelike to see the leading magazines of the United States upon the
reading table. The Sunday afternoon program that I attended was well
gotten up and very interesting.

While in Chile you see more to remind you of the United States than in
any other South American country but I was not favorably impressed with
the people. They will not compare in looks or actions with the people
east of the Andes. Lack of education, culture and refinement are
noticeable everywhere. Religion and morality are conspicuous by their
absence and one cannot but pity those who live among them although one
sees some good traits in many of them.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SWITZERLAND OF SOUTH AMERICA--BOLIVIA

In the very heart of the South American continent there is a vast
table-land nearly as large as the great Mississippi valley, that some
titanic convulsion has boosted up nearly three miles in the air. This
great plateau is hemmed in by mountains, the coast range on the west and
the main range on the east.

These mountain peaks rise as high as twenty-two thousand feet. In these
heights, two and one-half miles above sea level