The visitors also found a fine water supply brought from far back in the mountains, an excellent fire department and the streets sewered and clean. Electric lighting was the common mode of illumination in the shops and scores of dwellings. Most surprising among the little things to be observed was that practically every dwelling had an electric bell at the front door. Galvanized iron was the predominant material for dwellings and some stores. The reason was soon apparent. The fire regulations do not permit the erection of wooden buildings in the city--up to date, you see--and stone and good bricks have to be brought in. Rough bricks are made here, but those of a better quality have to be imported. They will be made here in time doubtless, but the town has been too busy making money in wool, exporting mutton and selling furs to start up manufactories for building material for home consumption strictly. Corrugated iron is the easiest and cheapest to get and the fashion of having a residence of that material has been so well established that even a rich man takes it as a matter of course that he must live in one. As one wandered further into the town he found a central plaza with a band stand in it, the western frontage occupied with the Governor's residence and the Catholic church; the northern side the site of a residence that made the visitor gape with astonishment to find so really handsome a building in such a place, the office and general wholesale store of Moritz Braun, the American Consular Agent here, and the shop of José Menendez of Buenos Ayres and Punta Arenas, the richest man in all this region. On the eastern side of the plaza were two banks, shops, clubs and a dwelling or two. The southern side bordered on a vacant square sold recently for $150,000. The plaza was quite impressive in its pretensions. As one wandered further he observed that the city was treeless, that there was a little railroad on one of the wide streets to the north which leads to the coal mine in the hills about seven miles from town, that there were few gardens and flowers. Occasionally one could see a patch of radishes or potatoes or lettuce growing in a yard, but most of the yards were bare, with a wood pile--wood is cheap here--as its chief ornament. A small white pink was about the only flower that was grown freely out of doors. In hundreds of windows, however, there were house plants, largely geraniums, in bloom.