Factors Affecting Investment in South American Mining - Chile

CHILEAN mining in the public mind is rightly associated with copper. Chuquicamata with its great hill of copper-bearing granodiorite as well as Sewell and Potrerillos with mineralized volcanic necks together can supply a good proportion of the world's normal necessities of that metal. Chile is an extremely long and narrow country, averaging only 109 miles wide. Its eastern frontier is the Andes and it is on the western slopes of these mountains that the great copper deposits have been discovered. West of the Andes a great longitudinal depres sion has permitted accumulation of nitrates and other soluble salts in the arid north; in the north center it is hidden by a series of cross ranges, but in the center a moderate rainfall makes it the country's most important agricultural region. In the south this depression is drowned and gives rise to a series of straits and fiords. This enormous cleft in the earth's crust is separated from the sea by a coast range of moderate elevation which in the south is represented by a series of islands and mushroom-shaped peninsulas