(Ebook) Software Error Detection through Testing

and Analysis by J. C. Huang ISBN 9780470404447,

0470404442 download

https://ebooknice.com/product/software-error-detection-through-
testing-and-analysis-4407868

Explore and download more ebooks at ebooknice.com

SOFTWARE ERROR
DETECTION THROUGH
TESTING AND ANALYSIS
SOFTWARE ERROR
DETECTION THROUGH
TESTING AND ANALYSIS

J. C. Huang
University of Houston

A JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., PUBLICATION

Copyright 
C 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as
permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior
written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to
the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400,
fax (978) 750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission
should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken,
NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in
preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or
completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales
representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable
for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor
author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to
special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our
Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at
(317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may
not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at
www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Huang, J. C., 1935–

Software error detection through testing and analysis / J. C. Huang.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-40444-7 (cloth)
1. Computer software–Testing. 2. Computer software–Reliability. 3. Debugging in
computer science. I. Title.
QA76.76.T48H72 2009
005.1 4–dc22
2008045493

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents
CONTENTS

Preface ix

1 Concepts, Notation, and Principles 1

1.1 Concepts, Terminology, and Notation 4
1.2 Two Principles of Test-Case Selection 8
1.3 Classification of Faults 10
1.4 Classification of Test-Case Selection Methods 11
1.5 The Cost of Program Testing 12

2 Code-Based Test-Case Selection Methods 14

2.1 Path Testing 16
2.2 Statement Testing 17
2.3 Branch Testing 21
2.4 Howden’s and McCabe’s Methods 23
2.5 Data-Flow Testing 26
2.6 Domain-Strategy Testing 36
2.7 Program Mutation and Fault Seeding 39
2.8 Discussion 46
Exercises 51

3 Specification-Based Test-Case Selection Methods 53

3.1 Subfunction Testing 55
3.2 Predicate Testing 68
3.3 Boundary-Value Analysis 70
3.4 Error Guessing 71
3.5 Discussion 72
Exercises 73

4 Software Testing Roundup 76

4.1 Ideal Test Sets 77
4.2 Operational Testing 80
4.3 Integration Testing 82
4.4 Testing Object-Oriented Programs 84
4.5 Regression Testing 88

vii
viii CONTENTS

4.6 Criteria for Stopping a Test 88

4.7 Choosing a Test-Case Selection Criterion 90
Exercises 93

5 Analysis of Symbolic Traces 94

5.1 Symbolic Trace and Program Graph 94
5.2 The Concept of a State Constraint 96
5.3 Rules for Moving and Simplifying Constraints 99
5.4 Rules for Moving and Simplifying Statements 110
5.5 Discussion 114
5.6 Supporting Software Tool 126
Exercises 131

6 Static Analysis 132

6.1 Data-Flow Anomaly Detection 134
6.2 Symbolic Evaluation (Execution) 137
6.3 Program Slicing 141
6.4 Code Inspection 146
6.5 Proving Programs Correct 152
Exercises 161

7 Program Instrumentation 163

7.1 Test-Coverage Measurement 164
7.2 Test-Case Effectiveness Assessment 165
7.3 Instrumenting Programs for Assertion Checking 166
7.4 Instrumenting Programs for Data-Flow-Anomaly Detection 169
7.5 Instrumenting Programs for Trace-Subprogram Generation 181
Exercises 192

Appendix A: Logico-Mathematical Background 194

Appendix B: Glossary 213

Appendix C: Questions for Self-Assessment 220

Bibliography 237

Index 253
PREFACE

The ability to detect latent errors in a program is essential to improving program

reliability. This book provides an in-depth review and discussion of the methods of
software error detection using three different techniqus: testing, static analysis, and
program instrumentation. In the discussion of each method, I describe the basic idea
of the method, how it works, its strengths and weaknesses, and how it compares to
related methods.
I have writtent this book to serve both as a textbook for students and as a technical
handbook for practitioners leading quality assurance efforts. If used as a text, the book
is suitable for a one-semester graduate-level course on software testing and analysis
or software quality assurance, or as a supplementary text for an advanced graduate
course on software engineering. Some familiarity with the process of software quality
assurance is assumed. This book provides no recipe for testing and no discussion of
how a quality assurance process is to be set up and managed.
In the first part of the book, I discuss test-case selection, which is the crux of
problems in debug testing. Chapter 1 introduces the terms and notational conventions
used in the book and establishes two principles which together provide a unified
conceptual framework for the existing methods of test-case selection. These principles
can also be used to guide the selection of test cases when no existing method is deemed
applicable. In Chapters 2 and 3 I describe existing methods of test-case selection in
two categories: Test cases can be selected based on the information extracted form
the source code of the program as described in Chapter 2 or from the program
specifications, as described in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4 I tidy up a few loose ends and
suggest how to choose a method of test-case selection.
I then proceed to discuss the techniques of static analysis and program instru-
mentation in turn. Chapter 5 covers how the symbolic trace of an execution path can
be analyzed to extract additional information about a test execution. In Chapter 6 I
address static analysis, in which source code is examined systematically, manually
or automatically, to find possible symptoms of programming errors. Finally, Chapter
7 covers program instrumentation, in which software instruments (i.e., additional
program statements) are inserted into a program to extract information that may be
used to detect errors or to facilitate the testing process.
Because precision is necessary, I have made use throughout the book of concepts
and notations developed in symbolic logic and mathematics. A review is included as
Appendix A for those who may not be conversant with the subject.
I note that many of the software error detection methods discussed in this book are
not in common use. The reason for that is mainly economic. With few exceptions,

ix
x PREFACE

these methods cannot be put into practice without proper tool support. The cost of the
tools required for complete automation is so high that it often rivals that of a major
programming language compiler. Software vendors with products on the mass market
can afford to build these tools, but there is no incentive for them to do so because
under current law, vendors are not legally liable for the errors in their products. As a
result, vendors, in effect, delegate the task of error detection to their customers, who
provide that service free of charge (although vendors may incur costs in the form of
customer dissatisfaction). Critical software systems being built for the military and
industry would benefit from the use of these methods, but the high cost of necessary
supporting tools often render them impractical, unless and until the cost of supporting
tools somehow becomes justifiable. Neverthless, I believe that knowledge about these
existing methods is useful and important to those who specialize in software quality
assurance.
I would like to take opportunity to thank anonymous reviewers for their comments;
William E. Howden for his inspiration; Raymond T. Yeh, José Muñoz, and Hal Watt
for giving me professional opportunities to gain practical experience in this field;
and John L. Bear and Marc Garbey for giving me the time needed to complete the
first draft of this book. Finally, my heartfelt thanks go to my daughter, Joyce, for
her active and affectionate interest in my writing, and to my wife, Shih-wen, for her
support and for allowing me to neglect her while getting this work done.

J. C. Huang
Houston
1 Concepts, Notation, and Principles

Given a computer program, how can we determine whether or not it will do exactly
what it is intended to do? This question is not only intellectually challenging, but
also of primary importance in practice. An ideal solution to this problem would
be to develop certain techniques that can be used to construct a formal proof (or
disproof) of the correctness of a program systematically. There has been considerable
effort to develop such techniques, and many different techniques for proving program
correctness have been reported. However, none of them has been developed to the
point where it can be used readily in practice.
There are several technical hurdles that prevent formal proof of correctness from
becoming practical; chief among them is the need for a mechanical theorem prover.
The basic approach taken in the development of these techniques is to translate the
problem of proving program correctness into that of proving a certain statement to
be a theorem (i.e., always true) in a formal system. The difficulty is that all known
automatic theorem-proving techniques require an inordinate amount of computation
to construct a proof. Furthermore, theorem proving is a computationally unsolvable
problem. Therefore, like any other program written to solve such a problem, a theorem
prover may halt if a solution is found. It may also continue to run without giving any
clue as to whether it will take one more moment to find the solution, or whether it
will take forever. The lack of a definitive upper bound of time required to complete a
job severely limits its usefulness in practice.
Until there is a major breakthrough in the field of mechanical theorem proving,
which is not foreseen by the experts any time soon, verification of program correctness
through formal proof will remain impractical. The technique is too costly to deploy,
and the size of programs to which it is applicable is too small (relative to that of
programs in common use). At present, a practical and more intuitive solution would
be to test-execute the program with a number of test cases (input data) to see if it will
do what it is intended to do.
How do we go about testing a computer program for correctness? Perhaps the
most direct and intuitive answer to this question is to perform an exhaustive test:
that is, to test-execute the program for all possible input data (for which the program
is expected to work correctly). If the program produces a correct result for every
possible input, it obviously constitutes a direct proof that the program is correct.
Unfortunately, it is in general impractical to do the exhaustive test for any nontrivial
program simply because the number of possible inputs is prohibitively large.

Software Error Detection through Testing and Analysis, By J. C. Huang

Copyright 
C 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

1
2 CONCEPTS, NOTATION, AND PRINCIPLES

To illustrate, consider the following C++ program.

Program 1.1
main ()
{
int i, j, k, match;

cin >> i >> j >> k;

cout << i << j << k;
if (i <= 0 || j <= 0 || k <= 0
|| i+j <= k || j+k <= i || k+i <= j)
match = 4;
else if !(i == j || j == k || k == i)
match = 3;
else if (i != j || j != k || k != i)
match = 2;
else match = 1;
cout << match << endl;
}
If, for an assignment of values to the input variables i, j, and k, the output variable
match will assume a correct value upon execution of the program, we can assert that
the program is correct for this particular test case. And if we can test the program for
all possible assignments to i, j, and k, we will be able to determine its correctness.
The difficulty here is that even for a small program like this, with only three input
variables, the number of possible assignments to the values of those variables is
prohibitively large. To see why this is so, recall that an ordinary integer variable in
C++ can assume a value in the range −32,768 to +32,767 (i.e., 216 different values).
Hence, there are 216 × 216 × 216 = 248 ≈ 256 × 1012 possible assignments to the
input triple (i, j, k). Now suppose that this program can be test-executed at the rate
of one test per microsecond on average, and suppose further that we do testing 24
hours a day, 7 days a week. It will take more than eight years for us to complete an
exhaustive test for this program. Spending eight years to test a program like this is
an unacceptably high expenditure under any circumstance!
This example clearly indicates that an exhaustive test (i.e., a test using all possible
input data) is impractical. It may be technically doable for some small programs, but
it would never be economically justifiable for a real-world program. That being the
case, we will have to settle for testing a program with a manageably small subset of
its input domain.
Given a program, then, how do we construct such a subset; that is, how do we
select test cases? The answer would be different depending on why we are doing the
test. For software developers, the primary reason for doing the test is to find errors
so that they can be removed to improve the reliability of the program. In that case
we say that the tester is doing debug testing. Since the main goal of debug testing
is to find programming errors, or faults in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
 CONCEPTS, NOTATION, AND PRINCIPLES 3

Engineers (IEEE) terminology, the desired test cases would be those that have a high
probability of revealing faults.
Other than software developers, expert users of a software system may also have
the need to do testing. For a user, the main purpose is to assess the reliability so that
the responsible party can decide, among other things, whether or not to accept the
software system and pay the vendor, or whether or not there is enough confidence in
the correctness of the software system to start using it for a production run. In that
case the test cases have to be selected based on what is available to the user, which
often does not include the source code or program specification. Test-case selection
therefore has to be done based on something else.
Information available to the user for test-case selection includes the probability
distribution of inputs being used in production runs (known as the operational profile)
and the identity of inputs that may incur a high cost or result in a catastrophe if the
program fails. Because it provides an important alternative to debug testing, possible
use of an operational profile in test-case selection is explained further in Section 4.2.
We discuss debug testing in Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 4 is devoted to other aspects
of testing that deserve our attention. Other than testing as discussed in Chapters 2
and 3, software faults can also be detected by means of analysis, as discussed in
Chapters 5 through 7.
When we test-execute a program with an input, the test result will be either correct
or incorrect. If it is incorrect, we can unequivocally conclude that there is a fault in
the program. If the result is correct, however, all that we can say with certainty is that
the program will execute correctly for that particular input, which is not especially
significant in that the program has so many possible inputs. The significance of
a correct test result can be enhanced by analyzing the execution path traversed to
determine the condition under which that path will be traversed and the exact nature
of computation performed in the process. This is discussed in Chapter 5.
We can also detect faults in a program by examining the source code systematically
as discussed in Chapter 6. The analysis methods described therein are said to be static,
in that no execution of the program is involved. Analysis can also be done dynamically,
while the program is being executed, to facilitate detection of faults that become more
obvious during execution time. In Chapter 7 we show how dynamic analysis can be
done through the use of software instruments.
For the benefit of those who are not theoretically oriented, some helpful logico-
mathematical background material is presented in Appendix A. Like many others
used in software engineering, many technical terms used in this book have more
than one possible interpretation. To avoid possible misunderstanding, a glossary is
included as Appendix B. For those who are serious about the material presented
in this book, you may wish to work on the self-assessment questions posed in
Appendix C.
There are many known test-case selection methods. Understanding and compar-
ison of those methods can be facilitated significantly by presenting all methods in
a unified conceptual framework so that each method can be viewed as a particular
instantiation of a generalized method. We develop such a conceptual framework in
the remainder of the chapter.
4 CONCEPTS, NOTATION, AND PRINCIPLES

1.1 CONCEPTS, TERMINOLOGY, AND NOTATION

The input domain of a program is the set of all possible inputs for which the program
is expected to work correctly. It is constrained by the hardware on which the program
is to be executed, the operating system that controls the hardware, the programming
environment in which the program is developed, and the intent of the creator of the
program. If none of these constraints are given, the default will be assumed.
For example, consider Program 1.1. The only constraint that we can derive from
what is given is the fact that all variables in the program are of the type “short
integer” in C++. The prevailing standard is to use 16 bits to represent such data in
2’s-complement notation, resulting in the permissible range −32,768 to 32,767 in
decimal. The input domain therefore consists of all triples of 16-bit integers; that is,

D = {< x, y, z > |x, y, and z are 16-bit integers}

Input (data) are elements of the input domain, and a test case is an input used
to perform a test execution. Thus, every test case is an input, but an input is not
necessarily a test case in a particular test. The set of all test cases used in testing is
called a test set. For example, <3, 5, 2> is a possible input (or test case) in Program
1.1, and in a particular test we might choose {<1, 2, 3>, <4, 5, 6>, <0, 0, 5>, <5,
0, 1>, <3, 3, 3>} as the test set.
This notational convention for representing program inputs remains valid even
if the program accepts an input repeatedly when run in an interactive mode (i.e.,
sequence of inputs instead of a single input). All we need to do is to say that the input
domain is a product set instead of a simple set. For example, consider a program
that reads the value of input variable x, which can assume a value from set X . If
the function performed by the program is not influenced by the previous value of
x, we can simply say that X is the input domain of the program. If the function
performed by the program is dependent on the immediately preceding input, we can
make the product set X · X = {< x1 , x2 > |x1 ∈ X and x2 ∈ X } the input domain. In
general, if the function performed by the program is dependent on n immediately
preceding inputs, we can make the product set X n+1 = {< x1 , x2 , . . . , xn , xn+1 >
|xi ∈ X for all 1 ≤ i ≤ n + 1} the input domain. This is the property of a program
with memory, often resulting from implementing the program with a finite-state
machine model. The value of n is usually small and is related to the number of states
in the finite-state machine.
Do not confuse a program with memory with an interactive program (i.e., a
program that has to be executed interactively). Readers should have no difficulty
convincing themselves that an interactive program could be memoryless and that
a program with memory does not have to be executed interactively. We shall now
proceed to define some terms in program testing that might, at times, have a different
meaning for different people.
The composition of a test set is usually prescribed using a test-case selection
criterion. Given such a criterion, any subset of the input domain that satisfies the
criterion is a candidate. We say “any subset” because more than one subset in the input
 CONCEPTS, TERMINOLOGY, AND NOTATION 5

domain may satisfy the same criterion. Examples of a test-case selection criterion
include T = {0, 1, 2, 3}, T = {< i, j, k > |i = j = k and k > 1 and k < 10}, and
“T is a set of inputs that cause 60% of the statements in the program to be exercised
at least once during the test.”
Let D be the input domain of a given program P, and let OK(P, d), where d ∈ D,
be a predicate that assumes the value of TRUE if an execution of program P with
input d terminates and produces a correct result, and FALSE otherwise. Predicate
OK(P, d) can be shortened to OK(d) if the omission of P would not lead to confusion.
After we test-execute the program with input d, how can we tell if OK(d) is true?
Two assumptions can be made in this regard. One is that the program specification
is available to the tester. OK(d) is true if the program produced a result that satisfies
the specification. Another is the existence of an oracle, a device that can be used to
determine if the test result is correct. The target-practice equipment used in testing
the software that controls a computerized gunsight is a good example of an oracle. A
“hit” indicates that the test is successful, and a “miss” indicates otherwise. The main
difference between a specification and an oracle is that a specification can be studied
to see how to arrive at a correct result, or the reason why the test failed. An oracle
gives no clue whatsoever.
Let T be a test set: a subset of D used to test-execute a program. A test using T is
said to be successful if the program terminates and produces a correct result for every
test case in T . A successful test is to be denoted by the predicate SUCCESSFUL(T ).
To be more precise,

SUCCESSFUL (T ) ≡ (∀t)T (OK(t))

The reader should not confuse a successful test execution with a successful pro-
gram test using test set T . The test using T fails if there exists a test case in T
that causes the program to produce an incorrect result [i.e., ¬SUCCESSFUL(T ) ≡
¬(∀t)T (OK(t)) ≡ (∃t)T (¬OK(t))]. The test using T is successful if and only if the
program executes correctly for all test cases in T .
Observe that not every component in a program is involved in program execution.
For instance, if Program 1.1 is executed with input i = j = k = 0, the assign-
ment statement match = 1 will not be involved. Therefore, if this statement is
faulty, it will not be reflected in the test result. This is one reason that a program can
be fortuitously correct, and therefore it is insufficient to test a program with just one
test case.
According to the IEEE glossary, a part of a program that causes it to produce an
incorrect result is called a fault in that program. A fault causes the program to fail
(i.e., to produce incorrect results) for certain inputs. We refer to an aggregate of such
inputs as a failure set, usually a small subset of the input domain.
In debug testing, the goal is to find faults and remove them to improve the reliability
of the program. Therefore, the test set should be constructed such that it maximizes
the probability and minimizes the cost of finding at least one fault during the test.
To be more precise, let us assume that we wish to test the program with a set of n
test cases: T = {t1 , t2 , . . . , tn }. What is the reason for using multiple test cases? It
6 CONCEPTS, NOTATION, AND PRINCIPLES

is because for all practical programs, a single test case will not cause all program
components to become involved in the test execution, and if there is a fault in a
component, it will not be reflected in the test result unless that component is involved
in the test execution.
Of course, one may argue that a single test case would suffice if the entire program
were considered as a component. How we choose to define a component for test-case
selection purposes, however, will affect our effectiveness in revealing faults. If the
granularity of component is too coarse, part of a component may not be involved in
test execution, and therefore a fault contained therein may not be reflected in the test
result even if that component is involved in the test execution. On the other hand, if
the granularity of the component is too fine, the number of test cases required and the
effort required to find them will become excessive. For all known unit-testing meth-
ods, the granularities of the component range from a statement (finest) to an execution
path (coarsest) in the source code, with one exception that we discuss in Section 7.2,
where the components to be scrutinized are operands and expressions in a statement.
For debug testing, we would like to reveal at least one fault in the test. To be more
precise, we would like to maximize the probability that at least one test case causes
the program to produce an incorrect result. Formally, we would like to maximize

p(¬OK(t1 ) ∨ ¬OK(t2 ) ∨ · · · ∨ ¬OK(tn )) = p((∃t)T (¬OK(t)))

= p(¬(∀t)T (OK(t)))
= 1 − p((∀t)T (OK(t)))

The question now is: What information can be used to construct such a test set?
It is well known that programmers tend to forget writing code to make sure that the
program does not do division by zero, does not delete an element from an empty queue,
does not traverse a linked list without checking for the end node, and so on. It may also
be known that the author of the program has a tendency to commit certain types of error
or the program is designed to perform certain functions that are particularly difficult
to implement. Such information can be used to find test cases for which the program is
particularly error-prone [i.e., the probability p(¬OK(t1 ) ∨ ¬OK(t2 ) · · · ∨ ¬OK(tn ))
is high]. The common term for making use of such information is error guessing.
The essence of that technique is described in Section 3.4.
Other than the nature or whereabouts of possible latent faults, which are unknown
in general, the most important information that we can derive from the program and
use to construct a test set is the degree of similarity to which two inputs are processed
by the program. It can be exploited to enhance the effectiveness of a test set. To see
why that is so, suppose that we choose some test case, t1 , to test the program first, and
we wish to select another test case, t2 , to test the program further. What relationship
must hold between t1 and t2 so that the joint fault discovery probability is arguably
enhanced?
Formally, what we wish to optimize is p(¬OK(t1 ) ∨ ¬OK(t2 )), the probability of
fault discovery by test-executing the program with t1 and t2 . It turns out that this prob-
ability can be expressed in terms of the conditional probability p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )):
 CONCEPTS, TERMINOLOGY, AND NOTATION 7

the probability that the program will execute correctly with input t2 given the fact
that the program executed correctly with t1 . To be exact,

p(¬OK(t1 ) ∨ ¬OK(t2 )) = p(¬(OK(t1 ) ∧ OK(t2 )))

= p(¬(OK(t2 ) ∧ OK(t1 )))
= 1 − p(OK(t2 ) ∧ OK(t1 ))
= 1 − p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )) p(OK(t1 ))

This equation shows that if we can choose t2 to make the conditional probability
p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )) smaller, we will be able to increase p(¬OK(t1 ) ∨ ¬OK(t2 )), the
probability of fault discovery.
The value of p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )) depends on, among other factors, the degree
of similarity of operations performed in execution. If the sequences of operations
performed in test-executing the program using t1 and t2 are completely unrelated,
it should be intuitively clear that p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )) = p(OK(t2 )), that is, the fact
that the program test-executed correctly with t1 does not influence the probability
that the program will test-execute correctly with test case t2 . Therefore, p(OK(t2 ) ∧
OK(t1 )) = p(OK(t2 )) p(OK(t1 )). On the other hand, if the sequences of operations
performed are similar, then p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )) > p(OK(t2 )), that is, the probability
that the program will execute correctly will become greater given that the program
test-executes correctly with input t1 . The magnitude of the difference in these two
probabilities, denoted by

␦(t1 , t2 ) = p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )) − p(OK(t2 ))

depends on, among other factors, the degree of commonality or similarity between
the two sequences of operations performed by the program in response to inputs t1
and t2 .
For convenience we shall refer to ␦(t1 , t2 ) henceforth as the (computational) cou-
pling coefficient between test cases t1 and t2 , and simply write ␦ if the identities of
t1 and t2 are understood. The very basic problem of test-case selection can now be
stated in terms of this coefficient simply as follows. Given a test case, find another
that is as loosely coupled to the first as possible!
Obviously, the value of this coefficient is in the range 0 ≤ ␦(t1 , t2 ) ≤ 1 −
p(OK(t2 )), because if OK(t1 ) implies OK(t2 ), then p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )) = 1, and if the
events OK(t1 ) and OK(t2 ) are completely independent, then p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )) =
p(OK(t2 )). The greater the value of ␦(t1 , t2 ), the tighter the two inputs t1 and t2 are
coupled, and therefore the lower the joint probability of fault discovery (through the
use of test cases t1 and t2 ). Asymptotically, ␦(t1 , t2 ) becomes zero when the events of
successful tests with t1 and t2 are absolutely and completely independent, and ␦(t1 , t2 )
becomes 1 − p(OK(t2 )) = p(¬OK(t2 )) when a successful test with t1 surely entails
a successful test with t2 .
8 CONCEPTS, NOTATION, AND PRINCIPLES

Perhaps a more direct way to explain the significance of the coupling coefficient
␦(t1 , t2 ) is that

p(¬OK(t1 ) ∨ ¬OK(t2 )) = 1 − p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )) p(OK(t1 ))

= 1 − ( p(OK(t2 ) | OK(t1 )) − p(OK(t2 ))
+ p(OK(t2 ))) p(OK(t1 ))
= 1 − (␦(t1 , t2 ) + p(OK(t2 ))) p(OK(t1 ))
= 1 − ␦(t1 , t2 ) p(OK(t1 )) − p(OK(t2 )) p(OK(t1 ))

The values of p(OK(t1 )) and p(OK(t2 )) are intrinsic to the program to be tested;
their values are generally unknown and beyond the control of the tester. The tester,
however, can select t1 and t2 with a reduced value of the coupling coefficient ␦(t1 , t2 ),
thereby increasing the fault-discovery probability p(¬OK(t1 ) ∨ ¬OK(t2 )).
How can we reduce the coupling coefficient ␦(t1 , t2 )? There are a number of ways
to achieve that, as discussed in this book. One obvious way is to select t1 and t2 from
different input subdomains, as explained in more detail later.

1.2 TWO PRINCIPLES OF TEST-CASE SELECTION

Now we are in a position to state two principles. The first principle of test-case
selection is that in choosing a new element for a test set being constructed, preference
should be given to those candidates that are computationally as loosely coupled as
possible to all the existing elements in the set. A fundamental problem then is: Given
a program, how do we construct a test set according to this principle? An obvious
answer to this question is to select test cases such that the program will perform a
distinctly different sequence of operations for every element in the set.
If the test cases are to be selected based on the source code, the most obvious
candidates for the new element are those that will cause a different execution path
to be traversed. Since almost all practical programs have a large number of possible
execution paths, the next question is when to stop adding test cases to the test set.
Since the purpose of using multiple test cases is to cause every component, however
that is defined, to be exercised at least once during the test, the obvious answer is to
stop when there are enough elements in the test set to cause every component to be
exercised at least once during the test.
Thus, the second principle of test-case selection is to include in the test set as
many test cases as needed to cause every contributing component to be exercised at
least once during the test. (Remark: Contributing here refers to the component that
will make some difference to the computation performed by the program. For brevity
henceforth, we omit this word whenever the term component is used in this context.)
Note that the first principle guides us as to what to choose, and the second, as to
when to stop choosing. These two principles are easy to understand and easy to apply,
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
fashionable young men to retire to the country, but it was soon resumed
again. The conductors, or conductresses, are usually young, and sometimes
quite pretty, being commonly of the mixed race—of Spanish and Indian
blood. They wear a neat uniform of blue flannel, with a jaunty Panama hat,
and a many-pocketed white pinafore, reaching from the breast to the ankles,
and trimmed with dainty frills. In these pockets they carry small change and
tickets, while hanging to a strap over their shoulders is a little shopping-
bag, in which is a lunch, a pocket-handkerchief, and surplus money and
tickets. Each passenger, when paying his fare, receives a yellow paper
ticket, numbered, which he is expected to destroy. The girls are charged
with so many tickets, and when they report at headquarters are expected to
return money for all that are missing, any deficit being deducted from their
wages, which are twenty-five dollars per month.
The women of Chili are not so pretty as their sisters in Peru. They are
generally larger in feature and figure, have not the dainty feet and supple
grace of the Lima belles, and lack their voluptuous languor. In Valparaiso
half the ladies are of the Saxon type, and blonde hair looks grateful when
one has seen nothing but midnight tresses for months. Here, too, modern
costumes are worn more generally than in other South American countries,
and the shops are full of Paris bonnets. But the black manta, with its fringe
of lace, is still common enough to be considered the costume of the country,
and is always worn to mass in the morning. The manta is becoming to
almost everybody. It hides the defects of homely forms and figures, and
heightens grace and beauty. It makes an old woman look young, a stout
woman appears more slender under its graceful folds, and even a skeleton
would look coquettish when wrapped in the rich embroidery which some
bear.
In Chili mantas and skirts of white flannel are worn by penitentas—
women who have committed sin, and thus advertise their penitence, or
those who have taken some holy vow to get a measure nearer heaven, and
who go about the street with downcast eyes, looking at nothing and
recognizing no one. They hover around the churches, and sit for hours
crouched before some saint or crucifix. In the great cathedral at Santiago
and in the smaller churches everywhere these penitentas, in their snow-
white garments, are always to be seen on their knees, or posing in other
uncomfortable postures, looking like statues. They cluster in groups around
the confessionals, waiting to receive absolution from some fat and burly
father, that they may rid their bodies of the mark of penitence they carry,
and their souls of sin. Ladies of high social position and great wealth are
commonly found among the penitentas, as well as young girls of beauty and
winning grace. The women of Chili are as pious as the men are proud, and
this method of securing absolution is quite fashionable. Souls that cannot be
purged by this penitential dress retire to a convent in the outskirts of the
city, called the Convent of the Penitentes, where they scourge themselves
with whips, mortify the flesh with sackcloth, sleep in ashes and upon stone
floors, and feed themselves on mouldy crusts, until the priests by whose
advice they go give them absolution. They are usually women who have
been unfaithful to their marriage vows, or girls who have yielded to
temptation. After the society season and the carnivals, at the end of the
summer, when people return from the fashionable resorts, and at the
beginning of Lent, these places are full. For those whose sins have been too
great to be washed out by this process, whose shame has been published to
the world, and who are unfitted under social laws to associate with the pure,
other convents are open as a refuge. Young mothers without husbands are
here cared for, and their babes are taken to an orphan asylum in the
neighborhood, to be reared by the nuns for the priesthood and other
religious orders.
It was from one of these places that the famous Henry Meiggs got his
second wife, and the adventure is still related with great gusto by the
gossips of Chili. An American dentist named Robinson lived in the same
block on which the convent was situated, and from the roof of his house the
garden of the nuns was plainly visible. Boccaccio never told a more
romantic tale, for it involved notes tied to stones and thrown into the
garden, rope-ladders, excited nuns, infuriated parents, and an outraged
Church. But the adventure was followed by forgiveness and marriage, and
the widow now lives in Santiago, in the luxury which her legacy from the
great railroad contractor provides.
In the orphan asylum at Santiago there are said to be two thousand
children of unknown parentage, supported by the Church, and this in a city
of two hundred thousand people. There is a very convenient mode for the
disposition of foundlings. In the rear wall surrounding the place is an
aperture, with a wooden box or cradle which swings out and in. A mother
who has no use for her baby goes there at night, places the little one in the
cradle, swings it inside, and the nuns on guard hearing a bell that rings
automatically, take the infant to the nursery. The next morning the mother,
if she has no occupation to detain her, applies for employment as a
wetnurse. However this plan may be regarded by stern moralists, it is
certainly an improvement on infanticide, a crime almost unknown in Chili.
But one may hunt the country over to find a house of correction for men.
Sin, shame, and penitence appear to be the exclusive attributes of the
weaker sex. Men are never seen at the confessional; they never wear white
wrappings to advertise their guilt; and at mass in the morning the average
attendance is about one man to every hundred women.
Santiago is reached from Valparaiso by a railway which is run on the
English plan, and is similar in its equipment and system of management to
those of Europe. The scenery along the line is picturesque, the snow-caps of
the Andean peaks being constantly in view, and Aconcagua, the highest
mountain on this hemisphere, can be seen nearly the entire distance. A few
miles from Valparaiso, and the first station on the road, is Vin del Mar, the
Long Branch of Chili, where many of the wealthy residents of the country
have fine establishments, and usually spend the summer. It is by far the
most modern and elegant fashionable resort in South America, and reminds
one of the popular haunts along the Mediterranean. The journey to Santiago
is made in about five hours, and one is agreeably surprised when he arrives
to find in the capital of Chili one of the finest cities on the continent.
Although the climate of Santiago is similar to that of Washington or St.
Louis, the people have a notion that fires in their houses are unhealthful,
and, except in those built by English or American residents, there is nothing
like a grate or a stove to be found. Everybody wears the warmest sort of
underclothing, and heavy wraps in-doors and out. The people spend six
months of the year in a perpetual shiver, and the remainder in a perpetual
perspiration. It looks rather odd to see civilized people sitting in a parlor,
surrounded by every possible luxury that wealth can bring (except fire)
wrapped in furs and rugs, with blue noses and chattering teeth, when coal is
cheap, and the mountains are covered with timber. But nothing can
convince a Chillano that artificial heat is healthful, and during the winter,
which is the rainy season, he has not the wit to warm his chilled body. It is
odd, too, to see in the streets men wearing fur caps, and with their throats
wrapped in heavy mufflers, while the women who walk beside them have
nothing on their heads at all. During the morning, while on the way from
mass, or while shopping, the women wear the manta, as they do in Peru, but
in the afternoons, on the promenade, or when riding, they go bareheaded.
Although the prevailing diseases are pneumonia and other throat and lung
complaints, and during the winter the mortality from these causes is
immense, the Chillano persists in believing that artificial heat poisons the
atmosphere; and when he visits the home of a foreigner, and finds a fire, he
will ask that the door be left ajar, so that he may be as chilly as usual. At
fashionable gatherings, dinner-parties, and that sort of thing, I have seen
women in full evening-dress with bare arms and shoulders, with the
temperature of the room between forty and fifty Fahrenheit. They often
carry into the salon or dining-room their fur wraps, and wear them at the
table, while at every chair is a foot-warmer of thick llama wool, into which
they poke their dainty slippered toes. These foot-warmers are ornamental as
well as useful, have embroidered cases, and are manufactured at home, or
can be purchased of the nuns, who spend much of their time in needle-
work.
Every lady seen on the street in the morning carries a prayer-rug, often
handsomely embroidered, which she kneels upon at mass to protect her
limbs from the damp stone floors of the churches, in which there are never
any pews. It used to be the proper thing to have a servant follow my lady,
bearing her rug and prayer-book, but that fashion has now become obsolete.
The shops do not open until nine or ten o’clock in the morning, close
from five to seven to allow the proprietors and clerks to dine, and are then
open again until midnight, as between eight and eleven o’clock at night
most of the retail trading is done. The finest shops are in the arcades or
portales, like the Palais Royal in Paris, and are brilliantly lighted with
electricity. Here the ladies gather, swarming around the pretty goods like
bees around the flowers, and of course the haughty and impertinent dons
come also to stare at them. It seems to be considered a compliment, a mark
of admiration, to stare at a woman, for she never turns away. To these
nightly gatherings come all who have nothing serious to detain them, and
the flirtations begun at the portales are the curse of the women of Santiago.
It is not rude to address a lady who has returned your glance, and while she
may repulse her admirer, she will nevertheless boast of the attention as a
pronounced form of flattery.
The shops are full of the prettiest sorts of goods, the most expensive
diamonds, jewellery, and laces. The Santiagoans boast that everything that
can be found in Paris can be purchased there, and one easily believes it to
be true. There is plenty of money in Chili; the people have a refined taste
and luxurious habits. Many of the private houses are palatial, and the toilets
of the women are superb. The equipages to be seen in Santiago are equal to
those of New York or London, and the Alameda, on pleasant afternoons, is
crowded with handsome carriages, with liveried coachmen and footmen,
like Central Park or Rotten Row.
The Alameda is six hundred feet in width, broken by four rows of
poplar-trees, and stretches the full length of the city—four miles—from
“Santa Lucia” to the Exposition Park and Horticultural Gardens. In the
centre is a promenade, while on either side is a drive-way one hundred feet
wide. The promenade is dotted with a line of statues representing the
famous men or commemorating the famous events in the history of Chili, a
country which has assassinated or sent into exile some of her noblest sons,
but never fails to perpetuate their memory in bronze or marble. On the
Alameda, from three to five o’clock every afternoon during the season,
several military bands are placed at intervals of half a mile or so, and the
music calls out all the population to walk or drive. During the summer the
music is given in the evening instead of the afternoon, when the portales are
deserted for the out-door promenade.
Fronting the Alameda are the finest palaces in the city, magnificent
dwellings of carved sandstone often one or two hundred feet square, with
the invariable patio and its fountains and flowers in the centre. Houses
which cost half a million dollars to build and a quarter of a million to
furnish
 SANTA LUCIA.

are common; and there are some even more expensive. The former
residence of the late Henry Meiggs, surrounded by a forest of foliage and a
beautiful garden, stands in the centre of a park eight hundred feet square. It
is a conspicuous example of extravagance, having cost a mint of money,
every timber and brick and tile being imported at enormous expense. It is at
present unoccupied, and in a state of decay, there being no one, since the
death of Meiggs, with the courage or the means to sustain such grandeur.
But though the nabobs seek the boulevard of the city to display their wealth
and architectural taste, some of the side streets have residences quite as
grand, and even more aristocratic. These more retired quarters have an air
of gentility which the Alameda has not acquired—a sort of established
aristocratic repose—a riper, richer, and more honorable quiet, that suggests
something of social distinction and haughty exclusiveness, venerable
solitude and commercial solidity. Another monument to the extravagance of
men is known as “O’Brien’s Folly.” It is a magnificent structure, modelled
after a Turkish palace, and its cost was fabulous. The owner was an Irish
adventurer, who discovered one of the richest silver mines in Chili, and who
lived like a prince until his money was gone. His castle is now unoccupied,
and he is again in the mountains prospecting for another fortune.
“Santa Lucia” is the most beautiful place I have seen in South America.
It is a pile of rocks six hundred feet high, cast by some volcanic agency into
the centre of the great plain on which the city stands. It was here that the
United States Astronomical Expedition of 1852, under Lieutenant Gillis,
made observations. Before that time, and as far back as the Spanish
Invasion, it was a magnificent fortress, commanding the entire valley with
its guns. Tradition has it that the King of the Araucanians had a stronghold
here before the Spaniards came. After the departure of the United States
expedition Vicunæ McCenna, a public-spirited man of wealth in Santiago,
undertook the work of beautifying the place. By the aid of private
subscriptions, and much of his own means, he sought all the resources that
taste could suggest and money reach to improve on nature’s grandeur. His
success was complete. Winding walks and stairways, parapets and
balconies, grottoes and flower-beds, groves of trees and vine-hung arbors,
follow one another from the base to the summit; while upon the west, at the
edge of a precipice eight hundred feet high, are a miniature castle and a
lovely little chapel, in whose crypt Vicunæ McCenna has asked that his
bones be laid. Below the chapel, three or four hundred feet on the opposite
side of the hill, is a level place on which a restaurant and an out-door
theatre have been erected. Here, on summer nights, come the population of
the city to eat ices, drink beer, and laugh at the farces played upon the stage,
while bands of music and dancing make the people merry. This is the resort
of the aristocracy. The poor people go to Cousino Park, at the other end of
the Alameda, drink chicha, and dance the cuaca (pronounced quaker), the
Chillano national dance.
 THE ZAMA-CUACA.

The cuaca is a sort of can-can, except that it is decent, and the men
instead of the girls do the high kicking. But when the dancers are under the
influence of chicha—that liquor which tastes like hard cider, but is ninety
per cent. alcohol—skirts and modesty are no impediments to the success of
the dance. The couples pair off and face each other, while on benches near
by are women thrumming guitars and singing a wild barbaric air in polka
time. Each woman and man has a handkerchief which he or she waves in
the air, and they sway around in postures that are intended to show the grace
and suppleness of the performer, and often do. The dance usually ends with
a wild carousal, in which men and women mingle promiscuously, embrace
each other, and then go off to the chicha bars to get stimulants for the next.
It is common in fashionable society to end the tertulias with the cuaca, as in
the United States with the ancient “Virginia reel;” and if the young people
are unusually hilarious, scenes occur which watchful dowagers desire to
prevent. School-girls at the convents dance the cuaca when the nuns will
allow them; and although in its ordinary form it is not nearly so immodest
as some of our dances, license has been taken so often as to bring it into
disrepute. One evening at the opera a pretty married woman was pointed
out as the most graceful and agile cuaca dancer in Chili, and it was asserted
that she could throw her heels higher than her head.
At the other end of the Alameda are the Exposition grounds and
Horticultural gardens, laid out in good style, and improved to the highest
degree of landscape architecture. There is a fine stone and glass building, a
miniature copy of the Crystal Palace in London, used as the National
Museum of Chili, whose contents were mostly stolen from Peru during the
late war. A zoological garden has been added, to exhibit the animals brought
from Peru, like the curiosities of the museum, as contraband of war. The
elephant died from the severity of the climate, two of the lions are missing
from the same cause, and the rest of the menagerie are suffering from
exposure and cold to which they are unaccustomed.
The opera-house at Santiago is owned by the city, and is claimed to be
the finest structure of the sort in all America. It certainly surpasses in size,
arrangement, and gorgeousness any we have in the United States. It is built
upon the European plan, with four balconies, three of which are divided off
into boxes upholstered in the most luxurious manner. The balconies are
supported by brackets, so that there are no pillars to obstruct the view.
Under the direction of the mayor, each year, the boxes are sold at auction
for the season, and the receipts given, in whole or in part, as a subsidy to the
opera management.

EXPOSITION BUILDING, SANTIAGO.

Everywhere one goes in Santiago and other cities in Chili are to be seen
the ornaments of which Peru was so mercilessly plundered—statuary and
fountains, ornamental street-lamps, benches of carved stone in the parks
and the Alameda, and almost everything that beautifies the streets.
Transports that were sent up to Callao with troops brought back cargoes of
pianos, pictures, furniture, books, and articles of household decoration
stolen from the homes of the Peruvians. Lampposts torn up from their
foundations, pretty iron fences and images from the cemeteries, altar
equipments of silver from the churches, statuary from the parks and streets,
and everything that the hands of thieves and vandals could reach, were
stolen. Clocks—one of which now gives time to the marketplace of
Santiago—were taken from the steeples of the churches, and even the
effigies of saints were lifted from the altars and stripped of the embroideries
and jewels they had received from their devotees. In the courtyard of the
post-office at Santiago are two statues of marble which cause the American
tourist to start in surprise, for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln
stand like unexpected ghosts before him. Their presence is not announced in
any of the guide-books, which is accounted for by the fact that they, like
most everything else of the kind in Chili, were brought from Peru.
The new hotel, in the eyes of foreigners who have been compelled to
stop at the old ones, is the finest ornament in Santiago. It is a magnificent
structure, with three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of furniture from
Paris, and a five thousand dollar cook from the same place. All the rooms
have grates for fires—which is an innovation—and are furnished as
handsomely as any of the hotels in New York, while the restaurant is as
good as Delmonico’s. Of course there must be some oddity about the place
—it would not be suited to the country if there were not—and here it is that
the bar is placed in the café where the ladies lunch. It is the only hotel bar in
South America; and the proprietor, who wanted to introduce all the modern
improvements, was rather bewildered in selecting the location of this one. It
is a gorgeous affair of silver and crystal, and the ladies admire it as much as
do the men. At first they were disposed to walk up and say, “The same for
me, if you please,” with their brothers and husbands, but have been
convinced that the proper form is to sit at the tables and take their drinks
there. To see a lady drinking a cocktail in the bar-room of the Grand Central
of Santiago may startle the prohibitionist who goes there, but it is quite as
much the fashion as is the sucking of mint-juleps through a straw on the
balconies of a Long Branch hotel.
The Chillano is the Yankee of South America—the most active,
enterprising, ingenious, and thrifty of the Spanish-American race—
aggressive, audacious, and arrogant, quick to perceive, quick to resent,
fierce in disposition, cold-blooded, and cruel as a cannibal. He dreams of
conquest. He has only a strip of country along the Pacific coast, so narrow
that there is scarcely room enough to write its name upon the map, hemmed
in on the one side by the eternal snows that crown the Cordilleras, and on
the other side by six thousand miles of sea. He has been stretching himself
northward until he has stolen all the sea-coast of Bolivia, with her valuable
nitrate deposits, all the guano that belonged to Peru, and contemplates soon
taking actual possession of both those republics. He has been reaching
southward by diplomacy as he did northward by war; and under a recent
treaty with the Argentine Republic he has divided Patagonia with that
nation, taking to himself the control of that valuable international highway,
the Strait of Magellan, and the unexplored country between the Andes and
the ocean, with thousands of islands along the Pacific coast whose
resources are unknown. By securing the strait, Chili acquired control of
steam navigation in the South Pacific, and has established a colony and
fortress at Punta Arenas by which all vessels must pass.
Reposing tranquilly now in the enjoyment of the newly acquired
territory along the Bolivian and Peruvian border, and deriving an enormous
revenue from the export tax upon nitrate, the Chillano contemplates the
internal dissensions of Peru, and waits anxiously for the time when he can
step in as arbitrator and, like the lawyer, take the estate that the heirs are
silly enough to quarrel over. It is but a question of years when not only Peru
but Bolivia will become a part of Chili; when the aggressive nation will
want to push her eastern boundary back of the Andes, and secure control of
the sources of the Amazon, as she has of the navigation of the strait.
On the beautiful Alameda of Santiago stands a marble monument erected
several years ago, after the partition of Patagonia, to commemorate the
generosity of the Argentine Republic. That statue will some day be pulled
down by a mob. The people are already regretting the impulsive cordiality
which suggested it, and are looking with jealous eyes at the progress and
prosperity of their eastern neighbor. But Chili will find in the Argentines a
more formidable foe than the nation has yet met, and her generals will have
some of the conceit taken out of them if the armies of the two ever come
into collision. Although the Argentine Republic is making more rapid
strides towards national greatness, there is no
 STATUE OF BERNARD O’HIGGINS,
SANTIAGO.

doubt that at present, in all the conditions of modern civilization, Chili leads
the Southern Continent, and is the most powerful of all the republics in
America except our own. Her statesmen are wise and able, her people are
industrious and progressive, and have that strength of mind and muscle
which is given only to the men of temperate zones. There is a strong
similarity between the Chillanos and the Irish. Both have the same wit and
reckless courage, the same love of country and patriotic pride; and
wherever a Chillano goes he carries his opinion that there never was and
never can be a better land than that in which he was born; and although he
may be a refugee or an exile, he will fight in defence of Chili at the drop of
the hat. There is something refreshing in his patriotism, even if it be the
most arrogant vanity. Our people are becoming ashamed of their Fourth of
July, and the Declaration of Independence is the butt of professional jokers.
The Chillano will cut the throat of a man who will not celebrate with him
the 18th of September, his Independence Day; and there is a law in the
country requiring every house to have a flag-staff, and every flag-staff to
bear the national colors—a banner by day and a lantern by night—on the
anniversaries of the republic. All the schools must use text-books by native
authors, all the bands play the compositions of native composers, and
visiting opera and concert singers are compelled to vary their performances
by introducing the songs of the country. It is said that a Frenchman can
never be denationalized. The same is true of the Chillano. There has not
been a successful revolution in Chili since 1839; and although there is
nowhere a more unruly and discordant people, nowhere so much murder
and other serious crimes, in their love of country the haughty don and the
patient peon, the hunted bandit and the cruel soldier, are one.
Many of the leading men of Chili are and have
been of Irish descent. Barney O’Higgins was the
liberator, the George Washington of the republic,
and Patrick Lynch was the foremost soldier of
Chili in the late war. The O’Learys and McGarrys
and other Chillano-Irish families are prominent in
politics and war and trade. There is a sympathetic
bond between the shamrock and the condor, and
nowhere in South America does the Irish emigrant
so prosperously thrive. Chillano wit is proverbial.
The jolly, care-for-nothing peasant is the same
there as upon the old sod, and the turgid,
grandiloquent style of literature which prevails in
PATRICK LYNCH.
other portions of Spanish-America in Chili finds a
substitute in the soul-stirring, fervid oratory which
is one of the gifts of the Irish race. A Chillano driver who was beating a
mule was remonstrated with. The man looked up and remarked that it was
the most obstinate animal he ever drove. “The beast thinks he ought to have
been a bishop,” he said.
The vanity of the Chillano passes all comprehension. The officers of the
army and navy actually offered their services, through the British minister,
to England when there was a rumor of war with Russia; and with the
slightest encouragement they would be willing to take the domestic as well
as the international complications off the hands of the British cabinet. One
day the English paper at Valparaiso published a satire, announcing that the
Lords of the Admiralty had selected three leading Chillano naval officers to
command the Bosporus, the Baltic, and the North Atlantic fleets. The
officers as well as the people would not accept the bogus cablegram as a
joke until the next issue of the paper, in which it was explained; and the
former were actually polishing up their swords and uniforms to take their
new commands.
 The Chillano is not only vain but cruel—as cruel as death. He carries a
long curved knife, called a curvo, as the Italian carries a stiletto and the
negro a razor, and uses it to cut throats. He never fights with his fists, and
knows not the use of the shillalah; he never carries a revolver, and is
nothing of a thug; but as a robber or bandit, in a private quarrel or a public
mob, he always uses this deadly knife, and springs at the throat of his
enemy like a blood-hound. There is scarcely an issue of a daily paper
without one or two throat-cutting incidents, and in the publications
succeeding feast-days or carnivals their bloody annals fill columns.

PEONS OF CHILI.

As a soldier the Chillano is brave to recklessness, and a sense of fear is

unknown to him. He will not endure a siege, nor can he be made to fight at
long range; but as soon as he sees the enemy he fires one volley, drops his
gun, and rushes in with his curvo. His endurance is as great as his courage,
and no North American Indian can travel so far without rest or go so long
without food and water as the Chillano peon, or roto, as the mixed race is
called. As the cholo in Peru is the descendant of the Spaniards and the
Incas, so is the roto in Chili the child of the Spaniards and the Araucanian
Indians, the race of giants with which the early explorers reported that
Patagonia was peopled—“Menne of that bigginess,” as Sir Francis Drake
reported, “that it seemed the trees of the forests were uprooted and were
moving away.” They have the Spanish tenacity of purpose, the Indian
endurance, and the cruelty of both. Each soldier, in the mountains or the
desert, carries on his breast two buckskin bags. In one are the leaves of the
coca-plant, in the other powdered lime made of the ashes of potato-skins.
The coca is the strongest sort of a tonic, and by chewing it the Chillano
soldier can abstain from food or drink for a week or ten days at a stretch. He
takes a bunch of leaves as big as a quid of tobacco in his mouth, and
occasionally mixes the potato-ashes with the saliva to give the juice a relish.
Canon Kingsley, in that remarkable novel, “Westward Ho!” describes two
of the band of Amyas Leigh as deserting their companions at the sources of
the Amazon, and takes them into a beautiful bower with two Dianas of the
Indian type. There they chew coca-leaves with the girls, sink into a
voluptuous stupor, and give themselves up to love, like the lotos-eaters,
until Amyas comes to remonstrate. The men recommend him to follow their
example with the Venus who has been found in an Indian queen and
admires the young commander; and the Puritan is on the point of yielding to
the fascination of the scene, when a reptile comes, strangles one of the girls,
and revives the moral instincts of the men. The reverend word-painter was
misinformed as to the peculiar influence of the drug, as it does not produce
a stupor in those who use it. It is not a narcotic, but a stimulant.
The Chillano soldier is not easily subjected to discipline, and outvandals
the Vandals in the destruction of property, as the present condition of Peru
will prove. He burns and destroys everything within his reach that has
sheltered an enemy. No authority can restrain his hand. The awful scenes of
devastation that took place have nothing to parallel them in the annals of
modern warfare. On the battle-fields nine-tenths of the dead were found
with their throats cut, and the Chillanos took no prisoners except when a
whole army capitulated. They ask no quarter and give none. The knowledge
of this characteristic, and the fear of the Chillano knife, were powerful
factors in the subjugation of the more humane Peruvians.
The Chillanos are cruel to beasts as well as to men. Horses are very
cheap in Chili. A good native broncho can be purchased for five dollars, and
his owner knows no mercy. The beasts are driven until they drop, and then
new ones are sought and subjected to the same treatment. No care is taken
to protect or make the animals comfortable. Although the weather is usually
cold, stables for horses or cattle are almost unknown. When their labor is
over they are turned into a corral, or a pasture, or the street, to seek their
own food.
The Chillanos are also careless of machinery. While they are quick to
learn, and have much native mechanical ingenuity, they cannot be trusted as
machinists. The magnificent cruiser Esmeralda, one of the finest ships-of-
war afloat, was built in England for the Chillian Government at a cost of
one and a half million dollars, but she had not been in the hands of native
engineers six weeks before her engines needed repairs and her boilers were
ruined. In 1885, during the troubles between England and Russia, she was
chartered by the British Government, but afterwards returned to Chili. The
Chillanos have a line of steamers running from Valparaiso up and down the
coast. They are the finest ships on the Pacific, built on the Clyde, with all
modern improvements, but the engineers and captains are Englishmen or
Scotchmen. The Government owns and manages the railroads in the
republic, but the locomotive drivers are foreigners. Every three or four
years—usually before a Presidential election—these men are discharged
and natives employed in their stead; but until election is over, and the old
engineers are restored to their places, there is a carnival of accidents, and
passenger travel is practically suspended. On all railroads are heavy grades
and dangerous curves, requiring the greatest care on the part of locomotive
drivers. The reckless Chillano thinks it great fun to run a train down a grade
at full speed, and a collision is his delight. He enjoys seeing things smashed
up, and knows nothing of the necessity of operating trains on schedule time.

THE “ESMERALDA.”

In trade the Chillano is a Yankee. At market or in the native shops the

buyer is not expected to pay the price first asked. He is expected to enter
into a negotio, and the seller is disappointed if he loses an opportunity to
show his shrewdness in the barter. There is no regularly established price
for any article. A market-woman will ask two dollars for a basket of fruit for
which she expects to get fifty cents. She will haggle and chatter, plead and
remonstrate, and if you start towards another stall, will abandon half a
dozen other customers and follow you around, until she finally “splits the
difference,” and goes away smiling at her success. The traveller meets with
this experience everywhere, particularly at the posadas; and the only safe
way to avoid being mercilessly swindled is to make a bargain in writing
beforehand.
Most of the hotel-keepers are women, whose husbands are engaged in
other occupations; but all the servants, including the cooks and
chamber-“maids,” are men. There are better cooks and better classes of food
than in other South American countries, and one seldom fails to find a good
inn even in the country villages. The markets of Chili, too, are better. The
beef, mutton, and other meats have the flavor that is found only in
temperate climates; the fish are not so rank and coarse as those caught in
tropical waters; and while vegetation is not so prolific, the fruits of the earth
have a finer taste. There are oysters equal to those of New Orleans or
Mobile, clams and lobsters, and plenty of shrimps, called camarons.
Another oddity is the milk stations. At distances of a few blocks on all
but the principal business streets is a platform where a cow is tied, which is
milked to order by a dairy-maid whenever a customer calls. On a table near
by are found measures, cans, and glasses, and often a bottle of brandy, so
that a thirsty man can mix a glass of punch if he chooses. In the morning
these stands are surrounded by servants from the aristocratic houses,
women and children, with cups and buckets, awaiting their turn; and as fast
as one cow is exhausted another is driven upon the platform.
The scarcity of lumber has caused the poorer classes to use corrugated
sheet-iron as a building material, while the rich use stone for exterior walls,
and sun-dried brick or adobe for partitions. There are whole blocks in
Valparaiso in which nothing but corrugated-iron houses can be seen, both
roof and walls being of the same material. It is said to bear the effects of
earthquakes well. People expect an earthquake about once in ten days the
year round, and more frequently during the changes of season; but great
damage is seldom done. There are two kinds of earthquake, the terremoto
and the temblor. The latter is only a quivering or shaking of the ground, and
is quite common; the other describes the convulsions of the earth when it
cracks and rolls like the swell of the sea, overthrows cities, and buries
towns in their own ruins. Valparaiso and Santiago have never known any of
the latter sort, which are confined to the mountain districts and the
neighborhood of volcanoes.
There are more comforts among the people than elsewhere upon the
continent, and a higher degree of taste, as is shown by the articles offered
for sale in the shops as well as in the houses of the residents, which is
owing in a great degree to the example of the large foreign population. The
Rev. Dr. Trumbull, who has been in Chili forty-five years, says that he has
noticed a marked change in this respect within the last decade, and has seen
a gradual and permanent growth in refinement and honesty.
In Chili, as in all the Spanish-American countries, every man and
woman is named after the saint whose anniversary is nearest the day on
which he or she was born, and that saint is expected to look after the
welfare of those christened in his or her honor. These names sound well in
Spanish, but when they come to be translated into unpoetic English there is
an oddity, and often something comical, about them. For example, the name
of the recent President of Chili is Domingo Santa Maria—which, being
interpreted, means Sunday St. Mary. The name of the President of Ecuador
is Jesus Mary Caamaño (apple), and that of the Governor of the Province of
Valparaiso is Domingo Torres (Sunday Bull). A waiter at the hotel happened
to be a Christmas gift to his parents, whose family name was Vaca (cow),
and in honor of the day they called him Jesu Christo Vaca. Such blasphemy
would not be tolerated in any other country; but the use of the Saviour’s
name is very common, even upon the signs of stores and saloons in cities,
and in the nomenclature of the streets. I met a girl once whose name was
Dolores Digerier (sorrowful stomach).
In Chili women are employed not only as street-car conductors, but they
do all the street-cleaning, and gangs of them with willow brooms sweeping
the dirt into the ditches can be seen by any one who has curiosity enough to
get up at daylight. They occupy the markets, too, selling meats as well as
vegetables. On the streets they keep fruit-stands, and have canvas awnings
under which, if you choose, you can sit and eat watermelons, a fruit much
esteemed in Chili. Outside of the cities the women keep the shops and the
drinking-places, and do all the garden work. The laundry work is done at
public fountains, as in other of the Spanish-American countries; but the
washer-women of Chili do not go almost naked, as some of their neighbors
do.
The native Peruvian, the descendant of the ancient Incas, has learned
nothing since the Conquest, and has forgotten most of the arts his fathers
knew, among them being the process by which the ancient race rendered
copper as hard as steel. Thousands of dollars have been offered for that
secret by modern bidders, but it is lost forever, and the ingenuity and
knowledge of modern chemists cannot discover the process. The modern
Inca wears the same blanket, or poncho, made of vicuña hair, that his
fathers did, and the same shoes made of raw hide. He has rougher roads to
travel than has the native of Central America, hence his shoe is made to curl
over on the sides and behind, so as to protect the toes and the heel from
contact with the rocks. It is cut in a single piece from hide when green, and
is made to curl by stretching it over a primitive sort of last and keeping it in
position until dry. The shoe is attached to the foot by a thong, which passes
along the entire top of the shoe, laced through holes cut in the hide, and
ending at the heel in two strips, which are secured around the ankle. The
evolution of the native shoe is found in Chili; and although it lacks the
maturity and sanctity of age, which the Peruvian article enjoys, is a rather
more nobby
 INCA QUEEN AND PRINCESS.

affair. The sole is made of wood, rudely cut by hand with a knife, and over
the instep passes a piece of patent leather reaching from the toes to the
ankle, which is nailed to the sole by rows of brass-headed tacks. The toes
and heel are entirely without protection, and it requires a great deal of
experience to keep the shoe on. It is worn in the coldest weather, over a
very heavy and thick stocking knit of llama wool, and an uglier pair of feet
and legs than are shown by the short-skirted peasant women of Chili were
never seen. The men wear the same sort of shoe—not quite so fancy in
design nor of such fine materials, however; but as they spend most of their
time in the saddle it is not so bad.
The Crœsus of South America is a woman, Donna Isadora Cousino, of
Santiago, Chili, and there are few men or women in the world richer than
she. There is no end to her money and no limit to her extravagance, and the
people call her the Countess of Monte Cristo. She traces her ancestry back
to the days of the Conquest, and has the record of the first of her fathers
who landed early on the shores of the New World. His family was already
famous, for his sire fought under the ensign of the Arragons before the
alliance with Castile. But the branch of the family that remained in Spain
was lost in the world’s great shuffle two or three centuries ago, and none of
them distinguished themselves sufficiently to get their portraits into the
collection which Señora Cousino has made of the lineage she claims.
Like her own, the ancestors of her late husband came over in the early
days, and in the partition of the lands and spoils of the Conquest both got a
large share, which they kept and increased by adding the portions given to
their less thrifty and less enterprising associates, until the two estates
became the largest, most productive, and most valuable of all the haciendas
of Chili, and were finally united into one by the marriage, twenty-four years
ago, of the late Don and his surviving widow. While he lived he was
considered the richest man in Chili, and she the richest woman, for their
property was kept separate, the husband managing his estate and the wife
her own, and the people say that she was altogether the better
“administrator” of the two. This fact he acknowledged in his will when he
bequeathed all of his possessions to her, and piled his Pelion upon her Ossa;
so that she has millions of acres of land, millions of money; flocks and
herds that are numbered by the hundreds of thousands; coal, copper, and
silver mines; acres of real estate in the cities of Santiago and Valparaiso; a
fleet of iron steamships, smelting-works, a railroad, and various other trifles
in the way of productive property, which yield her an income of several
millions a year that she tries very hard to spend, and under the
circumstances succeeds as well as could be expected. From her coal-mines
alone Señora Cousino has an income of eighty thousand dollars a month;
and there is no reason why this should not be perpetual, as they are the only
source in all South America from which fuel can be obtained, and those
who do not buy of her have to import their coal from Great Britain. She has
a fleet of eight iron steamships, of capacities varying from two thousand to
three thousand six hundred tons, which were built in England, and are used
to carry the coal up the coast as far as Panama, and around the Strait of
Magellan to Buenos Ayres and Montevideo. At Lota she has copper and
silver smelting-works, besides coal-mines, and her coaling ships bring ore
down the coast as a return cargo from upper Chili, Peru, and Ecuador; while
those that go to Buenos Ayres bring back beef and flour and merchandise
for the consumption of her people.
Although Lota is only a mining town, as dirty and smoky as any of its
counterparts in Pennsylvania, it is the widow’s favorite place of residence,
and she is now building a mansion that will cost at least a million dollars.
The architect and the chief builder are Frenchmen, whom she imported
from Paris, and much of the material is also imported. Not long ago she
shipped a cargo of hides and wool in one of her own steamers to Bordeaux,
and it is to return laden with building supplies for this mansion. She herself
has no time to go across the sea, but the captain of her ship will bring with
him decorators and designers and upholstery men, who will finish the
interior of her mansion regardless of expense.
The structure stands in the centre of what is undoubtedly the finest
private park in the world—an area of two hundred and fifty acres of land
laid out in the most elaborate manner, containing statuary, fountains, caves,
cascades, and no end of beautiful trees and plants. The improvement of the
natural beauty of the place is said to have cost Señora Cousino nearly a
million dollars, and she has a force of thirty gardeners constantly at work.
The superintendent is a Scotchman, and he informed me that his orders
were to make the place a paradise, without regard to cost. In this park there
are many wild animals and domesticated pets, some of which are natives of
the country, others imported; and the flowers are something wonderful.
Señora Cousino has another park and palace an hour’s drive from
Santiago, the finest estancia in Chili, perhaps in all South America; nor do I
know of one in North America or Europe that will equal it. This is “Macul,”
and the estate stretches from the boundaries of the city of Santiago far into
the Cordilleras, whose glittering caps of everlasting snow mark the limit of
her lands. In the valleys are her fields of grain, her orchards, and her
vineyards, while in the foot-hills of the mountains her flocks of sheep and
herds of cattle feed. Here she gives employment to three or four hundred
men, all organized under the direction of superintendents, most of whom
are Scotchmen. She has in her employ at “Macul” one American, whose
business is that of a general farmer; but his time is mostly occupied in
teaching the natives how to operate labor-saving agricultural machinery.
Farming in Chili is conducted very much as it was in Europe in old
feudal times, each estate having its retainers, who are given houses or
tenements, and are paid for the amount of labor they perform. It is said that
Señora Cousino can marshal a thousand men from her two farms if she
needs them. The vineyard of “Macul” supplies nearly all the markets of
Chili with claret and sherry wines, and the cellar of the place, an enormous
building five hundred feet long by one hundred wide, is kept constantly full.
Señora Cousino makes her own bottles, but imports her labels from France.
On this farm she has some very valuable imported stock, both cattle and
horses, and her racing stable is the most extensive and successful in South
America. She takes great interest in the turf, attends every racing meeting in
Chili, and always bets very heavily on her own horses. At the last meeting
her winnings are reported to have been over one hundred thousand dollars
outside of the purses won by her horses, which are always divided among
the employés of the stables.
In addition to “Macul” Señora Cousino has another large estate about
thirty miles from Santiago; but she gives it very little attention, and has not
been there for a number of years. In the city she has two large and fine
houses, one of them being the former residence of Henry Meiggs—the
finest in Santiago at the time it was built. All the timber and other materials
used in its erection was brought from California. It is built mostly of red
cedar. The construction and architecture are after the American plan, and in
appearance and arrangement it resembles the villas of Newport.
The other city residence of Señora Cousino is a stone mansion erected
on the Spanish plan, with a court in the centre, and is ornamented with
some very elaborate carving. The interior was decorated and furnished
many years ago by Parisian artists at an enormous cost, and the house is
fitting for a king. There is no more elaborate or extensive residence in
America, and the money expended upon it would build as fine a house as
that of W. H. Vanderbilt in New York. The widow, however, spends but very
little time within its walls, as she prefers her home at Lota, where most of
her business is.
Her ability as a manager is remarkable, and she directs every detail,
receiving weekly reports from ten or twelve superintendents who have
immediate charge of affairs. While she is generous to profligacy, she
requires a strict account of every dollar earned or spent upon her vast
estates, and is very sharp at driving a bargain. One of her Scotch
superintendents told me that there was no use in trying to get ahead of the
señora. “You cannot move a stone or a stick but she knows it,” he said. In
addition to her landed property and her mines she owns much city real
estate, from which her rentals amount to several hundred thousand dollars a
year. She is also the principal stockholder in the largest bank in Santiago.
Not long ago she presented the people of that city with a park of one
hundred acres, and a race-course adjoining it.

SEÑORA COUSINO.

Fabulous stories of the señora’s extravagance are told. A million of

dollars is a trifle to a woman whose income is so enormous, and there is
nothing in the world that she will not buy if she happens to want it. She
does not care much for art, but has a collection of diamonds that is very
large and valuable, and she sometimes appears loaded down with them.
Usually she looks quite shabby, as she has no taste or ambition for dress,
and her party toilets, which are ordered from Paris, are seldom worn. Of
late she has been a sufferer from sciatica, which has not only destroyed the
señora’s own pleasure, but has seriously impaired the comfort of those who
have relations with her. Although a comparatively young woman, being
somewhere between forty-five and fifty years of age, she declares that she
will never marry again; and there is not a man in Chili who has the courage
to ask her. Not long since she took a fancy to a young German with a very
blond beard and hair, and insisted that he should give up his business and
make his home with her. The inducements she offered were sufficient, and
for several months the young man has been tied to her apron-strings, having
the ostensible employment of a private secretary. But the señora is very
fickle, and will probably throw him overboard, as she has many others,
when the whim seizes her.
Señora Cousino has two daughters and one son. Neither of the girls
inherits her mother’s business ability, or at least has not developed it; but
they are very popular in society. Señorita Isadora, the elder, has a great deal
of musical talent, and performs on the violin and piano. Both are bright and
pretty. One is about seventeen, and the other nineteen years of age. Their
brother, a young man of twenty-three or twenty-four, will share the property
with them. It is quite an unusual thing for a youth with so much money to
develop the business capacity and industry which he shows. He looks after
the estancia at “Macul,” and spends from six to eight hours a day in the
saddle, riding about the place. He seldom joins in the festivities that his
mother enjoys so much, and is quite pronounced in his disapproval of her
extravagance. He is to marry a young lady of rather humble station, and it is
expected that the Meiggs mansion, which has been previously described,
will be presented to the bride by his mother as a wedding-gift.
The struggle between the Catholic Church and the liberal progressive
element in Chili, which has been going on for a number of years, is now at
its height. In all of the nations of Central and South America a similar
struggle has occurred. In Mexico and all Central America, in Colombia,
Venezuela, Peru, Chili, the Argentine Republic, and Uruguay the Liberals
are uppermost, and have control of the State. Ecuador and Bolivia are still
in the hands of the priests, and are ruled at Rome. But even in these
republics there is a growing tendency towards liberalism, and the day will
soon arrive when the power of the Church in politics will be overcome, and
its authority over temporal affairs denied. The Clerical party is growing in
Peru. It has revived during the prostration of that republic, and although the
liberal element is still in power, the Government is so weak that it cannot
defy the Church as it once could. Therefore, the priests and monks and
Jesuits, who were driven out years ago, are returning in large numbers to
resume their authority over the common people and intrigue for an
administration favorable to them.
 In Chili there has been no confiscation of church property, as in some of
the other States, and at the capital there are still over two thousand monks
and as many nuns. The Jesuits have been expelled for engaging in
conspiracy against the Government, but the outer orders of friars are
permitted to remain. A dispute between the archbishop and the President
some years ago caused the former to retire from Chili, and the Pope sent
over a nuncio to try and arrange matters; but this legate criticised the
Government so severely from the pulpit that he was given a passport and an
escort of military, and now there are no relations whatever between the
Pope and Chili, although the Catholic faith is still recognized by the
Constitution as the established religion of the republic. The radical element
of the Liberal party favors extreme measures, but the Conservative faction,
of which Ex-President Santa Maria is the leader, wisely prefers to take steps
slowly, and avoid revolution.
The Liberal party has a majority in Congress, and has passed several
laws by which the authority and influence of the Church has been greatly
crippled. The Liberal majority in Congress has placed the appointment of
bishops in the hands of the President of the republic instead of the Pope; it
has declared civil marriage to be the only legal one; it has opened the
cemeteries to Jew and Gentile; taken the registers of births, marriages, and
deaths out of the hands of the Church, and given them to civil magistrates;
established non-sectarian schools, and passed a compulsory education law,
under which all citizens who send their children to the priests and nuns to
be taught have to pay a tax or fine to the State. These measures have all
been bitterly fought by the clergy, but they have been compelled to yield in
every instance. Just now the last act of Congress in this direction,
establishing civil marriage, and recognizing the legitimacy of only those
children born of parents wedded in this way, is the bone of contention, and
has caused the bitterest struggle which the State has seen.
It formerly cost twenty-five dollars to be married by the Church, and a
large part of its revenues came from that source. The peons, who scarcely
ever are able to accumulate so much money, therefore lived in a state of
concubinage, and more than half the children born in Chili were
illegitimate. Now a marriage certificate can be secured from a civil
magistrate for twenty-five cents, and persons cohabiting without it are
subject to fine and imprisonment. The archbishop has issued a decree
excommunicating from the Church all persons who are married by the civil
right, and the Catholics of the country, comprising ninety-nine per cent. of
the population, are in a serious dilemma. They are compelled to choose
between excommunication and imprisonment, and therefore in the upper
classes weddings are no longer fashionable. Some people go first to the
church and then to the magistrate, and run the risk of excommunication; but
the more conscientious prefer to remain single.
Just now in Santiago there is a young man of brilliant attainments, a
member of Congress and a leader of the Liberal party, who wants to marry
the daughter of a prominent merchant. The engagement has been existing
for several years, and both parties are willing to fulfil it according to a civil
law; but the girl’s mother is a devout Catholic, and will not consent to a
wedding without the blessing of a priest. The young man is willing to go to
the church as well as to the magistrate, but the archbishop has forbidden
any priest to marry him without a full retraction by him of his political
record. This he refuses to make, and the couple are preparing to go to the
United States or some European country to have the ceremony performed.
Not long ago there was a marriage in high life in one of the southern
provinces of Chili, which attracted wide attention from the fact that it was
the first defiance of the Church in that part of the country. On the Sunday
following the wedding the couple were denounced by the bishop from the
pulpit of the cathedral, and the Catholic newspaper published some brutal
comments to the effect that the young couple had placed themselves on the
level of beasts by cohabiting without the blessing of the Church. The bride’s
brother belabored the editor so that he will be a cripple for life, and would
have given the bishop a similar chastisement had not the latter kept out of
the way.
At the last Presidential election, which occurred in June, 1886, Señor
Balmaceda, the Liberal candidate, was elected to succeed President Santa
Maria, who had served his full term of four years. He was bitterly opposed
by the priests, who realized that his success would be their permanent
discomfiture, and there were several serious riots, in which many were
killed and wounded. But Balmaceda was peacefully inaugurated in
September, and the Congress which assembled at the same time has an
overwhelming majority in sympathy with the Administration. The issue at
the election was the enforcement of the civil marriage statute, and some
measures will be taken to reduce the Church to subjection. A law to expel
from the country priests who intimidate citizens from obeying the civil
marriage act has already been proposed. This will be open war; but priests
who threaten to excommunicate will be sent into exile, where they will
shortly be followed by the monks and nuns, and a general confiscation of
church property will be the next step. It is estimated that one-third of the
entire property in Chili is owned by the Church. Much of this property is
held in trust for certain saints, to whom it has been bequeathed by devout
persons, or purchased by the gifts of the people. Saint Dominic, for
example, is one of the largest property-holders in South America, and has
an income of more than a million dollars a year from his estates, which are
ably managed by the Dominican friars. It is proposed to assess a tax upon
these estates, which now pay nothing towards the support of the
Government; and if the monks refuse to pay, the property will be
confiscated.
Protestantism is making rapid progress in Chili. There are several
missions under the care of the Presbyterian Board of the United States, and
a number of self-supporting churches and schools. There is also a
Presbyterian College and Theological Seminary, and a Young Ladies’
Seminary with about one hundred and fifty boarding scholars; but the
common people still cling to the superstitions and practices of the past.
Crucifixes upon which the bodies of bleeding Christs are displayed, with all
the symbols of the Crucifixion—the sponge, hammer, nails, spear, and other
implements—are erected in the public streets. They are accompanied by an
announcement from the archbishop that whoever says a certain number of
prayers at these places will receive total absolution for all past sins.
A beautiful marble monument has been erected on the site of the church
which was burned about twenty years ago on the Feast of the Virgins. As
usual on that day, high mass was celebrated by the bishop, and at this
particular church, which was that of the patron saint of maidens, there was a
 A BELLE OF CHILI DRESSED
FOR MORNING MASS.

very large attendance of girls from all classes of society. The church was
handsomely draped, and cords to which candles were hung were stretched
between the pillars. Being insecurely placed, these burning candles fell into
the crowd below and set the clothing of the girls on fire. There was a panic,
and the entire crowd became jammed against the doors, which, folding
inward, could not be opened. The roof caught fire and, burning, fell with
crushing destruction upon the heads of those below. The priests took no
means to rescue the worshippers, but managed to get out unharmed
themselves, carrying with them all the plate and other valuable contents of
the altar. Their cowardice and neglect were universally condemned, and
they were compelled to leave the country.
It is not known how many lives were lost, and the inscription upon the
monument—which stands in the centre of a plaza occupying the site of the
church—gives no clew; but it is estimated that at least three thousand young
ladies perished, and there was mourning in almost every house in Santiago.
After the fire the bodies were found packed in a solid mass of flesh, the
heads and upper portions of the forms being destroyed, while the limbs and
lower portions of the bodies were uninjured. Since that calamity the Feast
of the Virgins has been celebrated with mourning in Chili.
It is one of the rules of the Church that no women shall participate in the
services except as silent worshippers. All the music and singing is given by
men, usually monks, who are well trained. Sometimes, as on Easter or
Christmas, when mass is celebrated with more than usual magnificence,
opera-singers of both sexes are introduced into the choir to assist in the
performance; but the women are compelled to dress in the clothes of men,
for fear of offending St. Paul or some other anti-woman’s rights potentate
by wearing petticoats.
At the beginning of the fishing season at Valparaiso it is customary to
take the image of St. Peter, the patron of fishermen, in a boat and row it
over the bay, in order to bless the fish; and those who expect to reap the
reward of this patronage are highly taxed to pay for this performance. Every
method by which money may be extorted from the people, every pretence
which their ingenuity can invent, is practised by the priests to enrich the
Church, and the funds are wasted by them in riotous living. Their looks are
sufficient to convict them of the gluttony and libertinism of which they are
accused, and it is a common thing to see them reeling through the streets in
a state of intoxication.
In the wall of one of the handsomest residences, by the side of the main
entrance, is a niche in which a statue of the Mother of Christ has been
placed—a gaudy, tinsel-covered figure, with a halo of gas-jets and a mantle
of gilt-embroidered satin. An iron grating protects the image from the street,
but through the bars have been thrust garlands of flowers and gifts of
various sorts—votive offerings from people in bodily distress or mental
disorder. The lady who lives in this house, the wife of a wealthy native
merchant, some years ago became very ill, and made a vow to the Virgin
that if her health was restored she would show her gratitude in this manner;
and there the statue stands to illustrate the woman’s piety. Almost daily
people who are ill, as its owner was, and others in distress of mind from
some cause or another, come to it with such offerings as their condition
permits them to make, and trustfully appeal to the Holy Mother for relief. It
is said that many miraculous cures have resulted from faith in the power of
this image, and people always lift their hats and reverently cross themselves
as they pass it by.
The 13th of May is the anniversary of the most destructive earthquake
Santiago has ever seen, which occurred about forty years ago. The
responsibility for the calamity lay with a woman who had a private saint, a
household idol, to whom she offered prayers. This image deemed fit to
withhold from her some favor she had asked, and she, angry, cast it
violently into the street. This caused the earthquake! and it did not cease
until the fear-stricken people took the image to the Church of St. Augustine,
near by, where it was placed in a niche of honor, and has since been
devoutly worshipped by them as the patron or preventer of earthquakes. For
the lack of a better name, and because the image bears no resemblance to
any saint that was ever known or told of, the people call him “Señor May.”
Originally he was “Señor Thirteenth of May,” but now plain “Señor May,”
for short. Each year, as the 13th of May comes round—the anniversary of
his “martyrdom,” as the people call it—the entire population assemble to
pay honor to the saint, and appeal for his intercession in preventing a
recurrence of the earthquake, and, as everybody knows, these appeals have
never been denied. “Señor May” protects the city at least one day in the
year. As the church is not large enough to accommodate the multitude, the
saint is taken out into the street and carried at the head of a procession, in
which the bishop, the municipal authorities, companies of military, religious
orders, and others march. The occasion is recognized by the Government
and the municipality, and by commercial circles. Business houses are
closed, and factories dismiss their workmen to take part in the ceremonies.
The day is celebrated as universally as Thanksgiving Day in the United
States, and the saint receives rich gifts from people who are grateful that
their houses have not been shaken to pieces.
I was present at the celebration in 1885. First in the procession came a
squad of policemen to clear the way, for the entire population was jammed
into the streets; and in the windows and upon the roofs of houses the
nobility and gentry of the city stood, watching the performance as eagerly
as the gamins of the streets, and throwing garlands and bunches of flowers
into the path over which “Señor May” was to pass. Men fought and cursed,
struck and stabbed each other in the struggle to do homage to the image,
and all the police in the city were present to preserve order and arrest
disturbers of the solemn scene. The Government offices were closed, and
the President himself, the leader of the anti-Church party, did not go to the
palace.
Following the policemen came a line of monks in cowls and frocks of all
colors. There were monks in white, monks in black, monks in gray, and
monks in brown—Carmelites, Capuchins, Franciscans, and every order
being represented. Then came a procession of priests in their vestments,
with novitiates, each bearing a lighted candle and chanting some
monotonous service. Behind them were a dozen altar-boys, some with
incense-lamps which perfumed the air, and others with trays of flowers,
which were scattered in the street for the bishop, who came next, to tread
upon. He walked under a crimson canopy, wearing his most resplendent
vestments, and bearing in his hands the Host—the Holy Sacrament—the
body and blood of the Redeemer. Behind him were other incense-burners,
and more boys with flowers. Then came, borne upon the shoulders of
twenty men, the image of “Señor May”—an ugly and repulsive-looking
effigy, draped with the most fantastic garments, rich embroideries, and
much gold lace. Upon the pedestal were packages and caskets containing
the offerings received that day; and as he passed along one and another
would be added, handed from the houses or the crowd to the priests of St.
Augustine’s Church, who surrounded the image to collect them.
The crowd fell upon their knees as this ghastly feature of fanaticism
passed by. Every head was uncovered, and every reverent tongue murmured
a prayer. Men pushed and struggled, women screamed, and the policemen
struck forward and backward with their swords to prevent the people from
surging into the streets. Then came more chanting priests, and another
battalion of monks, then more incense-bearers, and a spectacle of even
greater repulsiveness—an image of a bleeding Christ upon a crucifix,
naked, with the drapery of a ballet-dancer about his loins! More priests and
more monks, and then a band of music and a regiment of infantry in parade
uniforms, followed by a long line of bareheaded men, each with a lighted
candle in his hand. This part of the procession received large and continual
additions. People from the crowd fell into line at the rear, and were
furnished with candles by attendants, who carried boxes of them in a cart,
until the line reached out for a mile or more. After the parade the images
were returned to the Church of St. Augustine, where high mass was
celebrated by the bishop, to which admission was secured only by ticket.
 The next morning the newspapers contained long descriptions of the
procession. The contest then, as now, going on between the Liberal party
and the clerical element for political control gives the utterances of the
official organ of the Government (Liberal) peculiar significance. I quote the
brief paragraphs in which reference was made to the event of the month:
“The procession of ‘Señor May’ took place yesterday, accompanied by
many religious festivities in the temple of St. Augustine. The people and the
municipality joined with the church to give a transcendent recognition in a
most solemn and impressive manner of the historic ‘Señor May.’ From the
early hours of the day the surroundings of the temple of St. Augustine were
occupied by great throngs of the faithful, who awaited the inauguration of
the parade. A little before four o’clock there arrived the forces of the army,
with the national band at their head, and took position in front of the church
in accordance with the orders from the commander-in-chief of the army.
“Having been put in motion, the procession filed with difficulty through
the great number of people who crowded the streets and followed with
many prayers and significant rejoicing. The pedestals of the saints were
beautifully adorned and covered with many valuable and votive offerings,
the tender gifts of piety from the faithful. A committee from the municipal
authorities, appointed to contribute to the solemnity of the occasion,
participated in the ceremonies. The bands of music played various
sentimental airs during the march.
“To resume, the acts of recognition to the most potent ‘Señor May,’
made in compliance with the vows of the year 1847, after the terrible
catastrophe of the 13th of the present month, have been perfectly carried out
by the Catholic capital of Chili.”
Farming in Chili is conducted on the old feudal system, very much as it
is in Ireland. The country is divided into great estates owned by people who
live in the cities, and seldom visit the haciendas. There are only two classes
of people, the very rich and the very poor, the landlords and the tenants. On
each estate are a number of cottages with garden patches around them,
which are occupied by the tenants, and in payment for which the landlord is
entitled to so many days’ labor each year at his option. Should more labor
than is due be required of the tenant, he is paid for it, not in money, but in
orders upon the supply store or commissary of the estate, where he can get
clothing or food or rum—especially rum. Tenants are usually given small
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebooknice.com