Northern Chile by A. R. Ogden

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 12, 1903

Northern Chile

By A. R. Ogden

Living in northern Chile is very different from living in the southern part. In the south everything grows, and consequently living is very cheap. But here in the north, where it is simply a great, barren desert, it never rains, and consequently nothing grows, and living is much more expensive. Everything that is eaten is brought from other parts; even the water is brought from the interior mountains, a distance of forty or fifty miles. Water carts deliver this water, so it can be bought by the pail or by the barrel, as one likes. There are probably one hundred of these water carts in Iquique, a city of thirty thousand people. These water carriers are

always on the street, anxious for the opportunity of selling a bucketful, or a barrelful. When one buys water in this way, he soon learns to be very economical of the water he uses.

Perhaps you wonder why people live in such parts of the country. It is because of the great amount of saltpeter. There are hundreds of mines, which employ thousands of men, the saltpeter really constituting the wealth of the country. A. R. OGDEN.