The Valley of Paradise is in Chile—only it isn’t what you would think Paradise would be. It is the chief seaport of Chile, and it is not very lovely and not very healthful. In Spanish it is called Valparaiso.
The capital of Chile is up in the mountains where it is cool and healthy. It is called Santiago, which means St. James.
Columbus tried to go around the World, but didn’t. The first man whose ship went around the World was named Magellan. Magellan sailed across from the other side of the ocean, as Columbus had done, but he went on until he bumped into America. Then he went along down South America, trying to find a way to get through to the Pacific Ocean. He sailed up the Amazon, thinking he might get through there, but he couldn’t. Then he sailed up La Plata, thinking he might get through there, but he couldn’t. Then when he had nearly reached the tip of South America he at last found a way through to the Pacific. This way through was quite crooked, but we call it a strait and we have named it after him—the Strait of Magellan. He saw many fires on the land at his left, whether they were from volcanoes now no longer burning, or made by the Indians, no one knows. At any rate, he named it Fireland, which in Spanish is Tierra del Fuego. The Indians he saw on the right, which is now the southern part of Argentina, had such big feet he called them the big-feet people, which is “Patagonians.”
For hundreds of years other ships followed this same way through that Magellan had taken, for though some went entirely around the outmost island at the tip of South America—the tip called Cape Horn—it was so stormy that way and so rough and dangerous that most ships used the strait. On this strait a little town grew up—a sort of filling station—just to supply ships with provisions they needed to keep on with their voyage, for there were no other places anywhere near, and it was a long voyage down South America on the Atlantic side and up again on the Pacific side. This little town was called Sandy Point, which in Spanish was Punta Arenas. It is the farthest south city in the whole World. As most ships now go through the Panama Canal, Punta Arenas does less business as a filling station, but a new business is taking the place of filling. They raise sheep on Tierra del Fuego, and the wool is brought to Punta Arenas to be shipped to other parts of the World.