hills, is one of the most attractive places in Valparaiso, and provides one of the finest views of the bay and surrounding hills. “One of the great advantages of life in Valparaiso,” says Arthur Ruhl in “The Other Americans,” “is the absence of a professional fire department. The glorious privilege of fighting fires is appropriated by the _élite_, who organize themselves into clubs, with much the same social functions as the Seventh Regiment and Squadron A in New York, wear ponderous helmets and march in procession in great style whenever they get a chance. One comes upon these _bomberos_ practising in the evening, on the Avenida, for instance, in store clothes and absent-mindedly puffing cigarettes, getting a stream on an imaginary blaze. In any emergency they perform much the same duties as our militia. “It is the delightful privilege of the _bombero_ to drop his work whenever the alarm is given, dash from his office to the blaze, and there man hose-lines, smash windows, chop down partitions, and indulge to the fullest one of the keenest primordial emotions of man. Inasmuch as buildings are seldom more than two or three stories in height and built of masonry, there is comparatively little danger of a large conflagration, and the average of one fire in four days is ‘just about right,’ as one of my Valparaiso acquaintances explained, ‘to give a man exercise.’ Their only unhappiness, he said, was that there were about fifteen hundred firemen in town, and they were getting so expert that what one could call a really ‘good’ fire was almost unknown.” Like its commercial rival, San Francisco, Valparaiso suffered from a destructive earthquake in 1906. Slight quakes are quite common in this city, but the inhabitants do not seem to fear them, and go along the even tenor of their way as though such a thing as an earthquake was unknown. In one year as many as thirty-five shocks have been recorded, but the one mentioned above is the only one for a half century or more in which any lives were lost. In fact Valparaiso has had its full share of troubles and vicissitudes of all kinds. It was captured and sacked three times by buccaneers, twice by the British and once by a Dutch pirate. It has suffered severely from earthquake shocks on half a dozen different occasions, was destroyed by fire in 1858, bombarded by the Spanish fleet in 1866, and much property was destroyed in the Balmaceda revolution a little later. Few cities in the New World have had a career so troubled and diversified.