Some curious effects have followed, the most interesting of which is that Punta Arenas is one of the greatest centres of smuggling in the world. You will not get any of its merchants to admit it openly. For instance, it is said that there are more Havana cigars imported into Punta Arenas than into all the rest of Chile put together. They are not consumed here. They go somewhere. Punta Arenas does not begin to use all the millions of goods imported. A little figuring would show that. The outside population in the territory, amounting to about 5,000, could not take care of the rest after the wants of Punta Arenas are satisfied. Why, there are no less than twenty-two coasting steamers engaged in trade from here, to say nothing about scores of sloops and schooners darting in and out among the islands and channels that run far up the Pacific coast. One of the merchants gave an instance of the smuggling. He said: "Not long ago I had several hundred articles of limited sale consigned to me by mistake. I couldn't sell them here and didn't want to send them back. I sent some somewhere else. They sold like hot cakes. You see the price was so much lower than you could buy them before in that same city where they were sent. It is true that there is a great deal of quiet wealth here, but really you mustn't ask too many questions." An interesting sidelight was thrown on this subject when this same man was talking about the illumination of the city by the American fleet's searchlights on the night before the fleet sailed. Fully seventy-five beams were thrown from the ships. They swept the town fore and aft. Some of the ships concentrated their lights in one spot. Five beams from our ship were centered upon the church steeple in the plaza. It made the place so light that you could read a newspaper anywhere. The entire town was in a light almost like that of midday. "I wonder that it didn't make some of our people run into holes to hide," said a citizen who knew things when he was speaking of the brilliant illumination. As is well known, Punta Arenas started out in life as a penal colony. It will surprise most of those who know the place and probably some of the residents themselves that it is still a penal colony legally, because the penal laws were never repealed. Indeed, it is even now a place of exile. Every few months some man arrives from the upper part of Chile who has been banished to the place. Once here he is welcome to stay or go as he pleases. These men are usually embezzlers or undesirable citizens from some other cause in small places where the machinery of justice is inadequate to fit the crime. The culprit is ordered to Punta Arenas.