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Accordingly he proceeded to pick a quarrel by ordering the deposits in Tarapaca to be expropriated with scant respect for the concessions made to the Chilean miners. Realizing, however, the possible consequences of such an action, he entered into an alliance with Bolivia. This country thereupon proceeded to levy an increased duty on the exportation of nitrates from the Atacama region.
We all remember the story of his sailing off with bullion from Tarapaca worth half a million ducats; also of the chase and capture of the Cacafuego, which had aboard the whole of the produce of the Lima mines for the season, consisting of silver, gold, emeralds and rubies.
By the terms of treaties concluded in 1895 and 1905, the region tentatively transferred by the armistice of 1884 was ceded outright to Chile in return for a seaport and a narrow right of way to it through the former Peruvian province of Tarapaca. With Peru, Chile was not so fortunate.
The muleteers were left to their slumbers. The bars were lifted into the English boats. A train of mules or llamas came in at the moment with a second load as rich as the first. This, too, went into the Pelican's hold. The bullion taken at Tarapaca was worth near half a million ducats. Still there were no news of Winter.
In later years Captain Esmonde was employed by the Peruvian government to report on some proposed canals at Tarapaca. The vessel in which he embarked was never more heard of. Colonel Charles Carroll had served in Spain, but joined the Chilian army after independence was gained. He was one of the most popular officers in the army, and met with a sad fate.
He was torn to pieces by the Spaniards before the eyes of Drake's crew. Northling again sailed Drake, piloted inshore by the Greek to Tarapaca, where Spanish treasure was sent out over the hills to await the call of ship; and sure enough, sound asleep in the sunlight, fatigued from his trip lay a Spanish carrier, thirteen bars of silver piled beside him on the sand.
But in two years so utterly chaotic did the conditions in the hapless country become that Chile at length had to set up a government in order to conclude a peace. It was not until October 20, 1883, that the treaty was signed at Lima and ratified later at Ancon. Peru was forced to cede Tarapaca outright and to agree that Tacna and Arica should be held by Chile for ten years.
Then he goes on to describe a wonderful island that he discovered while hiding from pursuers under the shadows of the Andes in Tarapaca, Peru. Let me read: "'I had come out of a dense growth of corkwood to look on a big body of water hemmed in by the mountains, when I saw some way from the shore a small island.
For some years Chilean companies and speculators, aided by foreign capital mainly British in origin, had been working deposits of nitrate of soda in the province of Antofagasta, or "the desert of Atacama," a region along the coast to the northward belonging to Bolivia, and also in the provinces of Tacna, Arica, and Tarapaca, still farther to the northward, belonging to Peru.
After this the war was continued in a desultory and discouraged fashion by the allies until at the end of 1883 peace was signed, and, as has been explained in a previous chapter, Bolivia lost her coast-line, while the Chilians took over the definite ownership of the provinces of Antofagásta and Tarapacá.
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