The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1879-07-24
The South American War.

For the last month or two fragmen-
tary reports have come to us, chiefly
by way of England, of warlike pro-
ceedings between the South American
States of Chilli on the one side and
Peru and Bolivia on the other; but il
has not been easy to keep the run of
events there so as to know precisely
what it was all about. Excepting the
trade in Peruvian bark, from which
we manufacture our quinine, there is
comparatively slight Intercourse be-
tween those countries and the United
States, as nearly all their trade is with
European nations, chiefly England and
Germany, which are at once their GUS
toners for the enormous expectations
of guano and inter and their creditors
for national bonds held by them
amounting in the aggregate to over
sixty million pounds sterling. It is but
natural that England and Germany
should keep q watchful eye on those
little volcanic Republics, and it is easy
to understand why Germany few days
ago dispatched q war vessel to watch
the belligerents and keep them on their
good behavior.
The ancient Peru of the Incas, of
whose wealth of gold and silver the
young cacique told Balboa at Darien in
1911, stretched along the Pacific shore
from the 1sthmus to Patagonia, and
covered, with much other, the territory
now occupied by the three States at
war. The strife is not about vessels of
gold and vessels of silver, but about the
enormous deposits of Endorsement
and inter that for unknown ages have
been ACCOMPLISHING on the shore and
upon the adjacent islands, the export
of which is the chief source of revenue
in all that region. The barren tongue
of Bolivian territory which separates
the southern end of Peru from the
northern end of Chill is rich in these
deposits of guano and nitrate of soda.
The border line on the Gillian side
was settled by treaty in 1866,
with agreement that the district
should be administered by Bolivia
and the revenue divided. The claim
to share in this was surrendered by
Chill in 1874, upon a pledge that Chilli
an capitalists working mines there
should not be subject to any increase of
export duties. But Peru had similar
rich deposits of her own, and was jeal-
Gus of the competition of the Chilians
and Bolivians on this patch of Bolivian
territory, and so, it is charged, having
obtained a monopoly of its own mines
and raised the price of guano and inter
to enormous figures, induced Bolivia to
follow the same course and, in defiance
of treaty obligations, impose crush
ing export duty upon the Chilians
working the Bolivian mines. The pro-
test of Chill was not respected, and
the property of her mines was declared
to be confscated. Chilli thereupon
took the law in her own hands,
and declared war against Bolivia
first and afterward against Peru, and
occupied the districts in which the
trouble arose with considerable armed
force, while her feet watched the coast.
The Gillian squadron threatened the
Peruvian port of Iquique with blockade
and captured Peruvian transport at
sea, whereupon the Peruvian iron-clads
Iuascar and Independence steamed to
lquique. The Huascar sunk the wooden
Gillian corvette Esmeralda, with $50
men on board. The Independence
chased Gillian vessel, the C0vadonga,
and striking q rock, was wrecked.
This took place on the 22d of May.
The European governments whose
citizens buy guano from these South
Americans and lend money to them
cannot afford to let this war go on, and
it is not unlikely that the German
corvette Hansa, when it reaches VAL
paraiso, will have soothing effect
Chic0g0 Inter- Ocean.