Page:A history of Chile.djvu/249

Rh Cicarelli, was also invited to come to Chile at the time the academy of music was founded. Extensive buildings were erected for educational purposes, a naval school was started, a school of agriculture founded, and a department of education created in the government. A Frenchman, Pissis, was given in charge the work of preparing a topographical chart of Chile and making a geological survey. These commendable efforts were chiefly due to the zeal of Manuel Montt.

It was at this time that German colonists were first induced to settle in Valdivia.

The discovery of gold in California opened a market for Chilean wheat and flour and gave a new impetus to commerce and agriculture. Wheat began to be grown extensively for the Californian and Australian markets and brought exorbitantly high prices. The mines of Copiapo began to yield their inexhaustible wealth, the Chañarcillo mine having been discovered some years before by Juan Godoi. Prosperity brought a large increase in the public revenues and the future of Chile seemed bright. But California and Australia began to grow wheat, and the prices of minerals steadily declined. Seven or eight years later a financial panic ensued which brought Chile to the verge of bankruptcy.

A colony was established in 1843, on the Straits of Magellan, for the purpose of occupying the bleak and uninhabited countries of the south and promoting the interests of navigation. This colony, Punta Arenas, was some years later, 1851, the scene of Cambiaso's rebellion—a fierce fellow, an officer of the garrison, who perpetrated most horrible cruelties for which he paid the penalty on the gallows in Ancud.

The foreign debt was consolidated and found to be something over eight millions of dollars. Interest had not been promptly met; this was now capitalized, and