The government has spent a great deal of money in recent years in dredging the channels, placing buoys at the dangerous points and erecting lighthouses along the coast, until to-day there are more than fifty lighthouses which are regularly maintained by Chile. What will eventually prove to be the backbone of the Chilean railway system is termed the Longitudinal Railway, work upon which is being prosecuted actively by the government at various places. When completed it is planned to have a continuous railway from Tacna, in the north, to Puerto Montt, at the south, a distance of almost two thousand miles. It has been found that wherever the railroad has been extended, development has followed. This has been especially true of the great central valley through which rails have been laid as far as Osorno, only seventy-eight miles from Puerto Montt. This line has been constructed entirely by the government. It is built of standard gauge width, and also upon the same gauge for some distance north of Santiago. Through the north central part of Chile the government roads have all been built upon the narrow gauge plan, one metre in width, because the occasional transverse spurs of the Andes, which run toward the coast, have made construction more difficult, and it has been easier to make the necessary curves by using that gauge, so that the line could be built as inexpensive as possible. At the present time nearly all of the energies of the government are being applied to the completion of this great project, which has already cost it many millions of dollars. A little more than one-half of the railway mileage in Chile has been built and is owned by the government itself. It has not been a profitable enterprise, for it costs about ninety-five per cent. of the gross income for operating expenses and maintenance. One reason for this, of course, is that the government lines, many of them, have been built through thinly-settled territory, and where traffic up to the present time has been very light. Then, again, the charges upon these state railways are entirely too small, for nowhere can one travel so cheaply as upon the government railways of Chile. Then there is also the problem which a government must always face, in operating a public utility enterprise, that the officials, whose duty it is to look after the work, do not apply to it the same careful attention to detail, do not get as much work out of their employees as a private corporation, and are likely to take a chance at some form of graft when the opportunity affords. The question has been seriously considered by the government of placing the operation of the principal lines in the hands of a private company; in fact, one company has made a proposition to operate the road between Santiago and Valparaiso, and take for its profit simply what it can save in the cost of operation over the present cost.