Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1885 — The Wealth of Chili. [ARTICLE]

The Wealth of Chili.

The world’s supply of nitrate of soda and guano has been obtained from the arid, rainless west-coast regions of South America. Along the southern coast of. Peru are a series of rocky, desolate islands on which no rain ever falls and only the gentlest breezes sweep. Thejp are at present, as there have been for centuries, myriads of seabirds along the coast, and they, with thousands of t ea-lions, live, breed, and die upon these islands. Guano is a mixture of the excrement of these seals and birds, the decomposed bodies of both, and the bones of the fishes which have been their food. These deposits have been accumulating for centuries, and in many places are hundreds of feet deep, baked into a solid mass by the tropical sun. These masses of guano were worked by the Peruvian Government from 1846, when their value as fertilizers became understood, up to the war with Chili in 1880. The annual shipments to Europe and the United States amounted to millions of tons, valued at between $20,060,000 and $30,000,000, all above the expenses of working being clear profit. This should have enriched Peru, but it merely enriched her governing classes. During the war the Chilians seized the islands J and annexed them to Chili. There have been no exports of guano since, but the Chilian Government is making preparations to resume the shipments, and it will probably be in the market again next year.— Boston Commercial Bulletin.