[Ill.u.s.tration: Silver-smelting works at Ca.s.sapalca, on the Oroya Railroad, Peru, 13,600 feet high]

m.u.f.fling the feet of the Peruvian Andes is a long narrow strip--drifting dunes of rock waste--known as the Atacama Desert. In comparison with this awful desert, the Sahara is said to be a botanical garden. Here during a part of the year a fierce, relentless sun pours down its burning rays on the shifting sands, keeping the air at a scorching heat both day and night. Formerly the region belonged to Bolivia, but it was annexed to Chile as a result of the war of 1881.

For miles and miles not a blade of gra.s.s, not a tree, not a shrub is to be seen. All around is a bleak, barren waste dest.i.tute of water. Yet underneath these sands lie concealed immense deposits of "nitrates" of untold wealth.

Although small quant.i.ties of the nitrates had been sent to Europe for chemical purposes--chiefly the manufacture of gunpowder--no considerable amount was exported until a fortuitous discovery was made by a Scotchman named George Smith. After wandering over the world for some time Smith settled down in a little village near Iquique, where he had a small garden containing fruit-trees and flowers. In one part of his garden he noticed that the plants grew best where the soil contained a white substance.

He then proceeded to gather a quant.i.ty of the material and to experiment with it. To his surprise he found that a mere handful of it greatly stimulated the growth of plants. He told a member of his family in Scotland who was engaged in fruit-growing about the wonderful effects of the material as a fertilizer. As a result several bags of nitrates were distributed among Scottish farmers and fruit-growers. So satisfactory did the fertilizer prove that an immediate call was made for more of it.

Thus began a business which now yields the owners of the beds one hundred million dollars yearly.

It was soon found out that the nitrate in its raw state contained properties that were injurious to plants and that these should be first eliminated. Forthwith reduction works were established to extract the deleterious substances. These substances were mainly iodine and bromine, two chemical elements that are of greater value than the nitrates themselves. Within a few years railroads were built to transport the nitrates from the beds to the various ports where the reduction factories were erected.

Many men who had large interests in the nitrate beds became immensely wealthy in a short time. The great value of the deposits caused towns and cities to spring up along the coast in the most inhospitable places, to some of which water was piped a distance of more than two hundred miles and at the cost of many millions of dollars.

The princ.i.p.al nitrate beds are in a shallow valley, four or five thousand feet above sea level, lying between a long range of hills and the base of the Andes. Just how these mineral deposits were formed it is difficult to explain, the most plausible theory being that this desert was once the bottom of an inland sea having vast quant.i.ties of seaweed covered with sand. In the gradual decay of this substance the nitrate of soda, or "Chile saltpetre," was formed.

To obtain the nitrates it is necessary first to remove the top layer of sand and then a layer of clay. Underneath this is found a layer of soft, whitish material called "nitrate." The crude nitrate is sent to the nitrate ports to be crushed and boiled in sea-water. After boiling, the solution is drawn off into shallow vessels and exposed to the heat of the sun to evaporate.

When nearly all has been evaporated and the remaining liquid drawn off, the bottom and sides of the vessels are found to be covered with sparkling white crystals. This is the saltpetre of commerce, the highest grade of which is used in the manufacture of gunpowder, the second grade for chemical purposes, and the third grade, the great bulk, for fertilizing the exhausted soils of Europe.

The liquid drawn off is crystallized by chemical treatment and further evaporation, and from it is obtained iodine, an ounce of which is worth as much as one hundred pounds of saltpetre. From eighty to one hundred million dollars" worth of these nitrates are dug out and sold each year.

Great Britain takes about one-third of the entire product and Germany one-fifth.

Iquique has the largest shipping trade. From this port about fifty million dollars" worth of nitrates and three million dollars" worth of iodine are exported yearly.

CHAPTER VII

THE CZAR"S GREATER DOMAIN

No other parts of the globe have been subject to so many kaleidoscopic changes by migrations during the past eight centuries as northern Asia and eastern Europe. In comparison both India and China have remained stable for many centuries.

Before the Christian era, Mongol tribes of northeastern Asia began their westward march, tarrying a few centuries along the way in the most fertile places and gathering force by multiplication until the thirteenth century. Then like a mighty flood they poured into eastern Europe, carrying everywhere in their pathway subjugation, devastation, and slaughter. During the early part of these migrations, the great Roman Empire trembled as she beheld the irresistible moving hosts, and her downfall was hastened by the ponderous blows dealt her by these barbarians.

In the early part of the thirteenth century, after the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan had overrun southern Russia, he turned northward and captured the cities of Moscow, Vladimir, and Ryazan, putting to death many of the inhabitants by the most fiendish methods of torture.

Thousands were slaughtered merely to wreak vengeance for the strong resistance offered by the besieged before surrendering. Hundreds of thousands of the Russians both high and low were made slaves. Wives of the n.o.bles who had been richly clad and adorned with jewels became servants of their conquerors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fishing for sturgeon through the ice of the Ural River.

Catching the material for caviare]

In 1272 most of the Tartars became Muhammadans and henceforth became more intolerant of the Christians, thousands of whom they burned alive or tortured. This oppressive yoke was borne for nearly three hundred years. Then Ivan III succeeded in breaking the Tartar rule forever.

Mongol tribes, however, remained a disturbing element on the border for two hundred years thereafter.

In the early part of the fourteenth century Othman, a Mongol, founded the Ottoman empire, which then consisted of only the western part of Asia Minor. His son and successor conquered Gallipoli in 1354, thereby gaining a foothold in Europe, and during the next two centuries successive Turkish rulers made large additions to the empire until it embraced vast areas in Europe, Asia, and Africa. For a time, indeed, it threatened to absorb all Christendom. Adrianople was conquered in 1361 and made the capital of the Turkish Empire. Then, in 1453, after a memorable siege, Constantinople was captured by the Muhammadans, and made the capital of the empire.

Orkhan was the first to exact as tribute the strongest and healthiest male children of all Christian peoples whom he conquered. These youths, reared as Muhammadans and trained under strict military discipline, became that efficient body of troops called the Janizaries. For a long time they were the bulwark of the empire, but at length they became so dictatorial and powerful that the sultan began to fear them more than he feared his foreign enemies. In 1825, when the army was reorganized on the European plan, the Janizaries broke out in open revolt. Then the reigning sultan unfurled the flag of the Prophet and called upon the faithful to suppress the rebellious corps. In the contest that ensued it is estimated that twenty-five thousand of the rebels were put to death, twenty thousand were banished, and the others disbanded. This was the end of an epoch of blood-shedding and the beginning of an era of commerce.

The Russians have always been noted for their love of furs; as a result a small, fur-bearing animal, the sable, led to the conquest of that vast realm now known as Siberia.

About the middle of the sixteenth century a rich Russian merchant named Strogonoff, residing at Kazan, established salt works on the banks of the Kama, a tributary of the Volga River, and began trading with the natives. One day, having noticed some strangely dressed travellers and learning that they came from a country beyond the Ural Mountains, called Sibir, he despatched some of his agents into that land. On returning, the employees brought with them the finest sable skins that the merchant had ever seen. They had been secured for a trifling sum.

Strogonoff began at once to extend the area of his trafficking, and informed the government of the lucrative commerce that he had opened up.

Valuable concessions were then granted him. A few years afterward a Cossack officer named Yermak, who had been declared an outlaw by Ivan the Terrible, gathered together a force of less than one thousand men.

The band was composed of adventurers, freebooters, and criminals, and the expedition was armed and provisioned by Strogonoff, who expected to profit by opening up the new region. Permission having been obtained from the government, in 1579 Yermak set forth with his followers for the unknown country.

So great were the impediments which the pathless swamps and forest offered, together with the severity of the climate and hostility of the natives, that his force was reduced by death, sickness, and desertion to the number of five hundred when he lined up his men before the large army of the powerful Kutchum Khan. Like Cortez and Pizarro, Yermak had unbounded confidence in his ability to cope with his enemies, who were rudely armed with bows and arrows, regardless of their numbers; for his own men were supplied with matchlocks, and with these--in the language of the natives--they could manufacture thunder and lightning.

A terrible battle ensued, and for some time success seemed evenly balanced. At length the fierce attacks of the Cossacks forced the barbarous hordes to give way and the retreat became a stampede. Kutchum Khan"s camp and all its treasures fell into the hands of the conquerors.

Yermak at once sent part of his force to occupy the Tartar capital, which was found to be evacuated, so great was the terror inspired by the Russians.

The success achieved by the handful of Cossacks led several neighboring tribes to offer voluntarily an annual tribute of sable skins. When Yermak had collected several thousand of these skins, he sent a special envoy to Moscow to present them along with the conquered country to the czar. So greatly pleased was Ivan with the offerings that he forgave Yermak for his past ill deeds and made him governor and commander-in-chief of all the countries which he might conquer. Then, knowing that it would be difficult for the Cossacks to hold the conquered territory very long with their diminished numbers, the czar forthwith sent reinforcements.

Soon after the arrival of the additional troops, Yermak audaciously started out to make further conquests. One dark and rainy night he encamped with his force on a small island in the Irtish River. Relying on the terror which his name had inspired, and the stormy weather, he deemed it unnecessary to post sentinels. Wearied with their long march, soon all of the Russians were buried in slumber.

But Kutchum, smarting under his humiliating defeat, had spies constantly watching his foes, intending, if possible, to take them by surprise.

When the spies reported to him the lack of vigilance on the part of the enemy, he stealthily crossed to the island with his force and fell upon the sleeping camp. All the Russians but two were killed, and these, escaping, reported the disaster at Sibir. When Yermak saw the annihilation of his troops, he cut his way through the Tartars and attempted to swim the stream, but was dragged to the bottom by his heavy armor and drowned.

When news of the crushing disaster reached Sibir the Russians, losing heart at the death of their leader, evacuated the place and returned home. The czar, nevertheless, had no idea of permitting a land so promising to slip from his grasp. It was not long before he sent a larger army across the Ural Mountains, which not only reconquered the lost territory but also the rest of western Siberia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gathering salt at the mouth of the Ural River]

Gradually the Cossacks moved eastward, conquering tribe after tribe. As they advanced they built strong wooden forts by which to hold their vantage ground. Tomsk was founded in 1604; by 1630 the tide of conquest had reached the banks of the Lena; and within eighty years from their first conquest the Russians had reached the Pacific.

Years afterward a suitable monument was erected to Yermak in the city of Tobolsk, which was built on the battle-field where he gained his first decisive victory over the Tartar ruler. His real monument is all Siberia, whose conquest he inaugurated.

In 1847 the Amur River section was annexed by Russia regardless of the protests of the Chinese Government. Quarrels ensued over the boundaries and, finding resistance hopeless, the Chinese ceded to Russia all the land on the left bank of the Amur as far as the mouth of the Ussuri and on both its banks below that river.

The sable gradually led the Russian hunters to Kamtchatka, while the more valuable sea-otter beckoned them across the sea to the Aleutian Islands and that part of the American continent now Alaska Territory.

The chief incentive in all of these conquests was the securing of valuable furs. The sable is even yet found along the streams in both open and forested sections from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific; but so relentless has been the pursuit of this valuable fur-bearing animal that it is now nearly exterminated. Besides the sable and the sea-otter, there are found in Siberia the ermine, bear, arctic fox, common fox, deer, wolf, antelope, elk, hare, and squirrel.

To avoid entering into conflict with the more powerful people at the south, the Russians chose to advance eastward along higher lat.i.tudes toward the Pacific. But within a few years after the Muscovite empire had acquired central and northern Siberia, there were loud complaints that the tribes on the south were making raids on them, robbing them of their property and carrying their people into slavery. So, from time to time, Cossack forces were sent to chastise the offenders; and in many instances they were punished and their territories were annexed to Siberia.

In these raids the Turkomans were the most active. During the forty years previous to 1878 it is estimated that eighty thousand Russian subjects and two hundred thousand Persians were made captives and sold into slavery. In 1873 the Russians captured Khiva and liberated thirty thousand Persian slaves.

Notwithstanding these lessons, some of the Turkoman tribes still went on marauding expeditions, robbing, killing, and enslaving their neighbors.

So, in 1878, another strong force of the Cossacks was sent against the pillaging tribes, who were made to release all slaves and abolish slavery. Little by little all Turkistan became Russian territory.

Bokhara and Khiva alone keep their old forms of government, but they are practically Russian states and pay Russia annually a stipulated tribute.

It is thought that once upon a time Siberia had a much larger population than it has now and the peoples who lived there dwelt farther north. The first colonists lived in the stone age and were contemporaneous with the mammoth, whose remains are found scattered all over the northern part of Siberia and the adjacent islands.

In the interior these remains are found imbedded in thick strata of pure blue ice, which is covered by the river gravels of streams that do not now exist. So thick are these layers of ice that they may be likened to the rocks found in lower lat.i.tudes. Several of these animals have been found imbedded in the ice in an almost perfect state of preservation, and quant.i.ties of their tusks are obtained annually along the northern rivers where the spring freshets have worn away the banks of the streams.

Whenever the ivory-tusk hunter sees the end of a tusk sticking out of the river bank, he is soon able to remove it from its resting place with pick and shovel. Great quant.i.ties of this fossil ivory are also obtained from the islands to the north of the mainland.

As in arctic America, the ground of northern Siberia is frozen solid to the depth of many feet, and even during the hottest summer it thaws down only a few inches. The climate is continental in character, being marked by fierce winds and great extremes both in temperature and moisture. In midsummer the temperature may reach one hundred and ten degrees, while in midwinter it has been known to reach ninety degrees below zero.