JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review. TWENTY years is a short span in the life of a community, but the last two decades have brought many changes to the north Chilean mining center of Chuquicamata and its surroundings, as I found upon my return in I948. The mlining company had greatly increased its output of refined copper, overcome grave technical problems, weathered a severe depression, and furnished important aid to the United States during the Second World War. More striking still was the advancement in living conditions in this conmmunity situated at 9200 feet in a most arid desert.Today Chuquicamata counts some 25,000 people, nearly half as many again as in I928. A few of the primitive old houses remain, but all about them are new, modern buildings. The increase in population has created a housing shortage, and this is being met by the erection of prefabricated concrete houses of four to six roonms, earthquake-proof, with full kitchen and sanitary conveniences. Disposal of garbage is ingenious: it is collected, dumped at the foot of the mine-tailings pile, and covered as the pile grows. As the streets are neater and cleaner, so are the people. No longer do flour sacks do duty as apparel; the workmen and their families are fully as well clothed as their counterparts in an industrial town in the United States. They enjoy sports baseball, basketball, football motion pictures, and other forms of recreation. Gardening, too, has been encouraged and adds greatly to the anmenities of life. More than 30 varieties of flowers are grown in the little gardens; despite winter winds and freezing ground temperatures, there are blooms throughout the year, and many a pepper tree as well. On the other hand, some picturesque features of the old days have disappeared. The horses of the twenties are gone, and the hitching posts, and the ramadas in whose shade staff members sheltered their mounts; the spacious corral at the east end of the plant has been turned to other uses. Mule pack trains no longer cross the pampa below the town. The burro and the llama, common on the Bolivian altiplano, are rarities; all kinds of cars, buses, and trucks have replaced them. I have always found the Chilean a good workman, especially if he has an incentive. Now a desire for education is evident. The grammar schools teach useful arts and sciences as well as the three R's, and there are plans for > MR. RUDOLPH, Corresponding Member of the American Geographical Society and a frequent contributor to the Geographical Review, is chief engineer at the Chuquicamata property. This content downloaded from 194.29.185.180 on Fri, 9 May 2014...
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review. N the northern part of Chile, between Arica and the mouth of the Rio Copiapo, there is a stretch of 6oo miles of coast line in which only one river reaches the ocean throughout the year. It would be difficult to imagine a place more desolate than this portion of the Atacama Desert-a wind-swept surface, sunburned and sterile, broken here and there by the grimy white of the salars. Through it twines the hidden green canyon of the Loa. Both in itself and in its bearings on man's occupation of the region the Loa is of exceptional interest. On the one hand are the oases of today and the numerous remains of a pre-Spanish civilization; on the other the fact that Chile's longest river in its 252-mile course traverses a country of greatly varied and in many parts unique physiography. SETTLEMENT IN THE LOA BASIN The Atacama Desert is indeed one of the most barren surfaces of the earth. Travelers report journeying for days over its pampas without seeing a sign of vegetation. Plant life, however, does exist. Occasionally, in even the most barren waste, one finds a green bush with a small yellow flower; at the most dismal point in an endless white salar appears a tuft of dried grass. A little water hole amid the waste is often marked by a considerable number of species. During a visit to the La Teca spring, on the cattle trail between San Pedro de Atacama and Calama, in the late autumn I found eleven varieties of tola bush and other plants and two varieties of cactus. There are only two types of surface in the entire basin at which I have failed to find some form of vegetation at some period of the year: one at certain salars whose chemical composition makes life impossible-a notable instance is found in parts of the white pampa surrounding the Ojos de San Pedro, where the surface salts contain 45 parts per million of free sulphuric acid-, the other far above the normal snow line.Many of the plants have a special interest to natives and explorers as denoting the presence of ground water, its depth, volume, and salinity. San Roman' mentions a number of these including the tolas; cuernecilla, or goat's-horn; jume (Lycium); brea; and cachiyuyos (Atriplex), which derives its name from the Quechua "cache," salt, because of the brackish water it indicates. The grass Chepica (Pasi F.
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