Page:Isaiah Bowman - Desert Trails of Atacama (1924).pdf/20

 mountains or the desert reclaimed by scientific methods of in- vestigation or rubber gathered, as it was until recently, in enor- mous quantities in all the highways and byways of a once im- penetrable forest, still all these are done by such methods and at such an expense of human energy and of capital, even of life, as to make them examples not of sheer human conquest but of a conditional conquest. Because of the urgency of his need, man in the temperate zones penetrates the unfavorable envi- ronment of desert and tropical forest and meets difficulties by new means, chiefly through the expenditure of money. The railroads that cross the Andes have not overcome the moun- tains; they are paying toll to them. Every pound of coal, every mile of grade that must be overcome, costs man so much the more and reduces the profits of his enterprise or increases the tax upon the resources of all those who contribute to the com- merce which the railroad carries.

‘The historian Buckle was measurably right, therefore, when he entertained the view that the backwardness of South Americans was due to the fact that man was there overbur- dened by nature as upon no other continent. The tropical for- ests are too vast, in Buckle’s view, the mountains and plateaus too high, the deserts too arid for man’s successful conquest. Now the railroads have come, many great mines have been opened, the population has been vastly increased; but out be- yond the sphere of influence of these things, in the isolated villages of the desert oases, and in lonely mountain valleys are still living unaffected groups that follow the old callings and ways of life.

The border of any desert is a Jong-enduring frontier. Four centuries, and at the end of them a railway, have not altered the essential pioneer quality of the life of desert communities like Calama and Copiapé; and to an even greater degree this is true of San Pedro de Atacama, Pica, Matilla, and Quillagua. Water remains a primordial basis of life; the state of the pastures is a topic as keenly interesting today as in the time of Valdivia and Aguirre; the mountain trails and the best seasons of passage over them are known to boy and man alike; the year of the last river flood is still the principal date of