as usual; and at once money began to flow into the depleted Chilean treasury.
Strategy of the War
It was a favorite saying of old Marshal Castilla that when Chile bought a battleship Peru should buy two, and the statement was completely vindicated by the events of the war with Chile. No longitudinal railways existed then which could in even small measure take the place of the ocean highway. The railways ran at right angles to the coast and were all short. Those in Tarapaca did not even run near towns capable of supplying food and water; they were built for nitrate exporta- tion, and it was more important to reach these fields directly than it was to touch at the insignificant sources of food supply in the desert.
The first contact with the raw and naked desert occurred after the seizure of Antofagasta (Feb. 14, 1879), when Colonel Sotomayor led an expedition of about 500 men against the oasis of Calama in the Loa valley at the southern end of the desert of Tarapaca and against the mining district of Caracoles about forty miles to the south. The detachment was obliged to transport water sufficient to last many days, to endure great heat by day and cold by night, to cross steep mountain spurs with an excessive amount of camp impedimenta, and to be in fighting trim when its objectives were reached.[1]
Control of the Sea
On April 5, the Chilean fleet sailed north to blockade Iqui- que and harass the coast from its base of operations at Anto- fagasta, where an army was stationed to follow up the successes of the navy. The Chilean admiral was instructed to destroy all facilities on the Peruvian coast for the shipment of guano and nitrate, thus suspending the chief source of Peruvian in- come. Pisagua was shelled, piers and wharves demolished, and lighters wrecked. Iquique was blockaded and became the
- ↑ Diego Barros Arana; Ilistoire de la guerre du Pacifique, 1879-18381, 2 vols., Paris, 1881-82; reference in Vol. 2, p. 52.
