Page:A history of Chile.djvu/300

 PART IV— THE WAR WITH PERU AND BOLIVIA CHAPTER I THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR Man}' of the cases reported in the law books have to do with the boundaries between estates, so likewise most of the wars of history have to do with the terri- torial boundaries between tribes and nations. Maps, as well as politics, have been made on battlefields. To make a map Chile, Peru and Bolivia exhausted their resources in a devastating war, and that, too, the map of a desert. Still, it was an important and rich desert. Sooner or later the question was bound to arise ; sooner or later supremacy must be fought for and established among the Pacific coast republics. Pizarro and Alma- gro had once fought over this boundary; then it was the riches of Cuzco which was the direct cause of the strife ; now it was the riches of what was then a forbid- ding desert which led to war. With the exception of some silver mines near Iquique there was a three hundred miles strip of territory long considered worth- less, hence the boundary in which three states were mutually interested was never very definitely fixed. True, when the South American republics started upon 27a