The oddest thing to be seen in Valparaiso is the female street-car conductors. The street-car managers of Chili have added another occupation to the list of those in which women may engage. The experiment was first tried during the war with Peru, when all the able-bodied men were sent to the army, and proved so successful that their employment has become permanent, to the advantage, it is said, of the companies, the women, and the public. The first impression one forms of a woman with a bell-punch taking up fares is not favorable, but the stranger soon becomes accustomed to this as to all other novelties, and concludes that it is not such a bad idea after all. The street-cars are double-deckers, with seats upon the roof as well as within, and the driver occupies a perch on the rear platform, taking the fare as the passenger enters. The Chillano is a rough individual; he is haughty, arrogant, impertinent, and abusive. There is more intemperance in Chili than in any other of the South American States, and consequently more quarrels and murders, but the female conductors are seldom disturbed in the discharge of their duties, and when they are, the rule is to call upon the policemen, [Illustration: VICTORIA STREET, VALPARAISO.] who stand at every corner, to eject the obstreperous passenger. Street-car riding is a popular amusement with the young men about town. Those who make a business of flirting with the conductors are called “mosquitoes” in local parlance, because they swarm so thickly around the cars, and are so great a nuisance. Not long ago a comic paper printed a cartoon in which some of the best-known faces of the swells of Valparaiso appeared on the bodies of mosquitoes swarming around the car of “Conductor 97,” who had the reputation of being the prettiest girl on the line. This put a stop to the practice for a while, and caused some of the fashionable young men to retire to the country, but it was soon resumed again. The conductors, or conductresses, are usually young, and sometimes quite pretty, being commonly of the mixed race--of Spanish and Indian blood. They wear a neat uniform of blue flannel, with a jaunty Panama hat, and a many-pocketed white pinafore, reaching from the breast to the ankles, and trimmed with dainty frills. In these pockets they carry small change and tickets, while hanging to a strap over their shoulders is a little shopping-bag, in which is a lunch, a pocket-handkerchief, and surplus money and tickets. Each passenger, when paying his fare, receives a yellow paper ticket, numbered, which he is expected to destroy. The girls are charged with so many tickets, and when they report at headquarters are expected to return money for all that are missing, any deficit being deducted from their wages, which are twenty-five dollars per month.