In general style Santiago is not as modern as Valparaiso, though it is far more interesting and attractive, and is not behind in public utilities, educational facilities, and energy—or in the attractiveness of their street-car service, for here, too, the conductors are neatly uniformed women, lots of them young and good-looking. Many of the more pretentious residences are old family mansions of the Moorish, characteristically Spanish colonial type and, therefore, charming to a stranger from the north. Most of them are like those described in the chapter on Uruguay—built around a large square central court or _patio_, filled with flower-beds and palms and with galleries around the sides onto which the rooms of the upper stories open. These galleries serve the same purpose as our interior hallways. They are usually supported by substantial but graceful stone arches and piers, and are reached by handsome stairways, also of stone, leading up from the court. Very often there is a fountain and sometimes statuary, and through the big gateways when the ponderous iron-studded doors happen to be open, delicious glimpses may be caught in passing. The windows opening on the streets are usually heavily barred, and the outer walls are in many cases frescoed and tinted and ornamented with wreaths and vases of stucco. Some few of the great houses are massive stone affairs of modern construction that resemble the mansions on the fashionable residence streets of our principal northern cities. Like all the greater South American towns, Santiago has her museums, libraries, magnificent municipal theater and places of popular amusement; and she has her clubs and racecourse and public gatherings of the fashionables, who are as elegantly dressed and smart-looking as those of Buenos Aires—though she still has her religious processions too on the great feast days, and all the ladies still wear their black, shroudlike _mantos_ to church. Disfiguring and funereal as it is, this is an observance that is still insisted on by the priests. In short, though differing from our capitals in many respects, this greatest city in Chile is obviously a metropolis and offers opportunities for sightseeing and amusements of every description that few cities in the world can surpass. And, as in Lima, there is an aristocracy here, descended directly from the old Conquistadore stock, that has retained its wealth and power in the land through all the vicissitudes of both the colonial and republican régimes. III