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346 A HISTORY OF CHILE tain it is, that a large number of officers joined the fleet and went north to Iquique with the junta, where they fought on the opposition side. The congressionalists were from the start better officered. Colonel Canto was a strategist, with whom Robles was unfit and unable to cope. Then before the southern campaign began, the congressionalists had secured the services of Colo- nel Korner, a Prussian tactician, and there was no BaJ- macedist officer his equal in the science of war. Men may fight like demons, as was the case with Balmace- da's troops, but their blood may be shed to little pur- pose if they are led by inferior officers. The Chilean soldier is a fighter with the spirit of the Araucanian Indian, but somebody needs to plan for him ; valor will not take the place of strategy. Their successes in the north soon gave the opposi- tion the almost undisputed possession of four provinces ; and the provinces, too, having the wealth, containing the resources of the nation. Though a barren coun- try where rain falls but seldom, the nitrate desert of Tarapaca and the surrounding country, taken from Peru in the Chilean-Peruvian war, is a region of enormous wealth ; and the revenue derived from it by the state is greater than all the import duties. The royalty of Ji.6o( Chilean) levied on each hundred pounds, produced a revenue in 1890, of $20,900,000. The desert region of Tarapaca, Antofagasta and Atacama, extending nearly four hundred miles from north to south, is a vast chem- ical laboratory whose nitrate of soda deposits (caliches) furnish the best known fertilizer in the world. Here enormous fortunes have been made, and are still being made, largely by English capitalists. Here an army of men is employed, the TarapacA caliches alone in 1890 employing 13,000 workmen. The northern ports of Iquique, Pisagua, Coleta, Buena, Junin, Tocopilla,