pesos, and the
revenues were estimated to produce 149,100,000 pesos, which included
62,200,000 pesos gold from nitrate taxes, 39,800,000 pesos gold and
200,000 pesos paper from import duties, 23,500,000 pesos paper from
the state railways, 2,500,000 pesos paper from postal and telegraph
receipts, and 15,000,000 pesos gold from loans. How the revenues are
expended is shown in the estimates for 1907, in which the total
expenditures were estimated at 134,830,532 pesos paper and 58,796,780
pesos gold, the principal appropriations being 16,192,780 pesos paper
and 99,733 gold for the war department, 10,460.781 paper and 6,315,731
gold for the marine department, 40,934,273 paper and 16,984,671 gold
for railways, and 6,324,817 paper for public works. In addition to
these the budget of 1906 provided for gold expenditures in 1907 of
7,000,000 pesos on sanitary works and 8,000,000 pesos on the Arica-La
Paz railway. The custom of dividing receipts and expenditures into
ordinary and extraordinary, of treating the receipts from loans as
revenue, of adding six months to the fiscal year for closing up
accounts, and of dividing receipts and expenditures into separate gold
and currency accounts, leads to much confusion and complication in the
returns, and is the cause of unavoidable discrepancies and
contradictions.

In May 1906 the external debt of the republic aggregated L21,700,000,
including the loans of 1905 and 1906, amounting to L5,700.000, for
sanitary works and railway construction. At the same time the internal
debt was 107,000,000 pesos (L8,025,000), which increases the funded
indebtedness to L29,725,000. Like Brazil, Chile has been careful to
preserve her foreign credit, and though an average indebtedness of
about L10 per capita may seem large for a nation with so much absolute
poverty among its people, the government is finding no difficulty in
negotiating new loans, the mineral resources of the country and the
conservative instincts of the people being considered satisfactory
guarantees. According to official returns, the real-estate valuations
in 1903-1904 aggregated 1,777,217,704 pesos, of which 1,020,609,215
pesos were in urban and 754,608,489 pesos in rural property. Of the
total returned, 1,775,217,704 is described as taxable, and 262,626,576
pesos as non-taxable. The large and steadily increasing receipts from
import duties, amounting to 91,321,86