The town forthwith blossomed into a typical frontier settlement--banks and gambling dens, churches and saloons, schools and bullfights. Every race of people and almost every industry is represented there. The Spanish see to it that the Sunday bullfights are correct; the French insure the proper social functions; the Germans manage the banks; and the Americans take the profits of the railways, telegraph lines, and flour-mills. As to latitude, Punta Arenas is cold and inhospitable; but for business and social affairs, it is very, very warm, especially in the matter of social affairs. CHAPTER XVI RECLAIMABLE SWAMP REGIONS If only Dame Nature had distributed the rainfall of the United States a bit more evenly, land enough to feed about fifty millions of people would not have required an expenditure of half a century of time and several hundred millions of good, hard dollars. One must bear in mind, however, that if Dame Nature had done otherwise, it is just as likely that the same time and the same amount of money would have been required elsewhere for those same fifty millions of people. The reclaimable swamp lands of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains aggregate about one hundred and twenty thousand square miles in extent--an area nearly equal to that of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois combined. Of this, Louisiana has about fifteen thousand square miles, a tract about as large as Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined, and Florida has about half her entire area in swamp land. West of the Rocky Mountains, California takes the lead, with enough swamp land to make a state of respectable size. In the case of California, if the "forty-niners" could have waited about a thousand years they would have found the precious swamp lands all properly filled in for them and ready for use; for the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers long since have been working at the task of filling up the big hollow between the mountain ranges. But the rivers are a trifle slow, and Californians are always in a steaming hurry. So Uncle Sam's engineers are driving their reclamation schemes with railroad speed. A few years ago these lands were worth nothing; drain them and they are worth one hundred dollars per acre; improve them according to modern farming science and they are worth ten times as much. [Illustration: The Everglades of Florida]