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CHILE OF TO-DAY 395 Tarapaca fields alone over thirteen thousand men find employment. Beside the nitrate works, there are in the north valuable silver mines, and south of the silver mines the copper regions, in the vicinity of Coquimbo. We have then, coal in the south, copper in the north, silver still farther north and then nitrate of soda and guano. The rich copper mines at Coquimbo, yielding from thirty to sixty per cent of pure metal from the ore, were not discovered until after the revolution, though Coqtiimbo (or rather La Serena) is one of the oldest cities in Chile. There for many years a most wasteful process was adopted, and it was not until 1840, that reverberatory furnaces were introduced and prim- itive methods of extracting the metal abandoned. The mountains about Coquimbo are filled with the ore ; at Ovalle the surface stones are green with copper. Though the importance of the copper industry is not now what it was in former years, still the product amounted in 1888, to 31,241 tons. There is scarcely a limit to the number of tons the output might be made to reach, as the deposits of copper throughout these regions are practically inexhaustible. The production of silver has been great, the mines being exceedingly rich. There has been a slight fall- ing off in the output recently, but still the industry is an important one. The first railway built in the coun- try was in 1852 from Copiapo to the rich silver district of Chaiiaral. Before the road gave better facilities for transportation, the poorer ores, just as with copper, were thrown aside. With an outlet by rail the inhab- itants set about working up the discarded ores, even pulling down houses and walls which had been con- structed of the refuse from the mines in order to sell it for export. With the building of railroads from the