Ayres bring back beef and flour and merchandise for the consumption of her people. Although Lota is only a mining town, as dirty and smoky as any of its counterparts in Pennsylvania, it is the widow’s favorite place of residence, and she is now building a mansion that will cost at least a million dollars. The architect and the chief builder are Frenchmen, whom she imported from Paris, and much of the material is also imported. Not long ago she shipped a cargo of hides and wool in one of her own steamers to Bordeaux, and it is to return laden with building supplies for this mansion. She herself has no time to go across the sea, but the captain of her ship will bring with him decorators and designers and upholstery men, who will finish the interior of her mansion regardless of expense. The structure stands in the centre of what is undoubtedly the finest private park in the world--an area of two hundred and fifty acres of land laid out in the most elaborate manner, containing statuary, fountains, caves, cascades, and no end of beautiful trees and plants. The improvement of the natural beauty of the place is said to have cost Señora Cousino nearly a million dollars, and she has a force of thirty gardeners constantly at work. The superintendent is a Scotchman, and he informed me that his orders were to make the place a paradise, without regard to cost. In this park there are many wild animals and domesticated pets, some of which are natives of the country, others imported; and the flowers are something wonderful. Señora Cousino has another park and palace an hour’s drive from Santiago, the finest estancia in Chili, perhaps in all South America; nor do I know of one in North America or Europe that will equal it. This is “Macul,” and the estate stretches from the boundaries of the city of Santiago far into the Cordilleras, whose glittering caps of everlasting snow mark the limit of her lands. In the valleys are her fields of grain, her orchards, and her vineyards, while in the foot-hills of the mountains her flocks of sheep and herds of cattle feed. Here she gives employment to three or four hundred men, all organized under the direction of superintendents, most of whom are Scotchmen. She has in her employ at “Macul” one American, whose business is that of a general farmer; but his time is mostly occupied in teaching the natives how to operate labor-saving agricultural machinery.