Image unavailable: THE GREAT RIVER PILCOMAYOTHE GREAT RIVER PILCOMAYO
Image unavailable: OUR HOTEL IN SUCREOUR HOTEL IN SUCRE
through which we had to pass to reach the back yard. It differed from others only in the large number of guinea-pigs that swarmed everywhere. They helped to make the bill-of-fare more interesting.
Sucre owes its importance to its comparatively pleasant climate. The average temperature is 56° F. Bolivianos, accustomed as they are to one of the worst climates in the world, say that Sucre has “the finest climate in existence,” which means, being translated, that it is fairly tolerable. Nevertheless, we found it very agreeable to be down at this lower elevation, and we could scarcely sympathize with Castelnau, who, coming up from the eastern plains in 1845, thought Sucre very “triste.” He and his associates had been for many months in the warm regions of Brazil and found it difficult “to resist the cold and the effects of the altitude.” Most of them suffered severely fromsorochealthough few people now-a-days think of being troubled at an altitude of anything less than twelve thousand feet and Sucre is only a little over nine thousand.
If the miners had felt as Castelnau did, the old Indian city of Chuquisaca would never have become the social and literary capital of upper Peru. Its name was changed to La Plata in recognition of the stream of silver that flowed to it from Potosí. Here resided an important bishop who looked after the souls of countless thousands of Indians scattered up and down the Bolivian plateau and in the tangled jungles east of the Andes. The citizens of Chuquisaca, or La Plata, acquired before long a reputation for wealth and intelligence which spread far andwide. They called their city the “Athens of Peru” and they established here a university where students still come to study law and medicine.
After the great battle of Ayacucho in December, 1824, when General Sucre won the memorable victory that defeated the last Spanish army in South America, Upper Peru was erected into an independent Republic, taking its name from the great General Bolivar and giving to its capital city the name of its first president.
President Sucre was living at the capital when Edmond Temple came here in 1826. That entertaining writer describes him as tall and thin with mild, prepossessing manners and diffident address. Temple had lived in Bolivia for nearly a year and was moved to say that General Sucre was the best choice that could have been made to fill “the arduous, troublesome, and thankless office of Supreme Chief of the new republic of Bolivia.” Temple attended a session of Congress where he was unfavorably impressed by the custom of remaining seated during the whole debate and by the constant practice of spitting, “which is a breach of decorum which no Englishman can patiently witness!” The innkeeper must have been a descendant of a Congressman.
As long as Congress sat here the representatives came mostly from this region and were naturally influenced by the aristocratic society of the capital. The wealthy politicians of Sucre succeeded in diverting a large part of the national revenues to beautifying their city, building extravagant public works,and neglecting the just claims of La Paz. La Paz, far more populous, and enjoying a much more important situation commercially, was overlooked. Little of the public revenue found its way thither. The result was a revolution in which La Paz emphatically proclaimed its desire to share in the distribution of the public moneys and public offices. The then President gathered the Government forces together in Sucre and proceeded to march on the rebellious metropolis. He was defeated not far from La Paz with great losses, and the war-like Aymarás of La Paz followed up the victory with orgies of a disgusting and barbaric if not cannibalistic character. The result was that while Sucre retained the Supreme Court and the title of Capital, La Paz became the actual seat of government, and few foreign diplomats have ever undertaken the five days of hard travel which separates Sucre from Challapata, the nearest railway station.
Nevertheless the wealthiest people in Bolivia live in Sucre. They are very aristocratic and extremely exclusive, and they feel very superior to the citizens of La Paz although that place is really much more important than Sucre. The great land-owners have established here the headquarters of the most important banks in the country.
At the largest of all, the Banco Nacional de Bolivia, I drew some money on my letter of credit. Among the coins which I trustfully accepted were seven or eight that proved to be bad. The Indians always ring a coin before accepting it. The result was I found myself the victim of a clever bank cashier.The coins were probably not counterfeit. The Bolivian government has not been above issuing “silver” coins, particularly “halfpesos,” that contain so much “alloy” as to be valueless.
These debased half dollars have long been a subject of annoyance not only to travellers but to the neighboring Peruvians. Sir Clements Markham says that at the time of his visit to Peru in 1859, when he was on that famous mission that secured Chincona plants from eastern Peru for transportation to India, war was imminent between Peru and Bolivia and onecasus belliwas that the Bolivian government persisted in coining and deluging Peru with debased half dollars. These ill-omened chickens have certainly come back to roost, for one never sees them now in Peru and they are all too frequent here. Perhaps that is one reason why the local banks are so unusually well built.
There is also a pretentious “legislative palace,” and at the time of my visit a large theatre was in the course of construction. It was hoped to have this completed in time for the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the War of Independence.
The market-place is neither so interesting nor so picturesque as that of Potosí. A few of the men wore curious helmet-like hats with small visors turned up in front and back. It would be interesting to know whether this were the original hat of the vicinity or whether it had been copied from the head-gear of the armored Spaniardconquistadoresof the sixteenth century. The corresponding women’s hatswere twice as large as the men’s but the brim was turned up in the front and back in the same fashion.
Most of the women wore felt hats of native manufacture, picturesque coats of white cotton decorated with many little pieces of colored calico, and as many heavy woollen petticoats as they could afford. The majority wore rough rawhide sandals without socks but a few had elaborately patterned knitted stockings.
A considerable quantity of chocolate is manufactured here and, as in the mountains of Colombia, no meal is considered complete without it. They appreciate better than we do the advantage of having the drink as light and airy as possible, and consequently never serve any without beating it to a light froth by means of a wooden spindle that is inserted in the pot and rapidly revolved between the palms of the hands.
There are several Indian silversmiths here, as well as in Potosí, where filigree-work, spoons, and simple silver dishes are hammered out. The director of the mint in Potosí told me he was frequently offered pure silver family heirlooms that have come down from the extravagant days of the seventeenth century when in a well-to-do house every imaginable utensil was made of silver.
Another specialty of Sucre is the manufacture of tiny dolls out of pieces of fine wire, lace, and tinsel. They range in size from four inches down to half an inch. Sometimes an effort is made to copy a native costume, but more generally the dressing is entirely fantastic or suited only to high carnival. Similar dolls are made in south central Mexico.
Wewere not sorry when the time came to leave Sucre. It not infrequently happens that interior provincial cities of considerable local political importance are not very lenient toward strangers, particularly if the latter are dressed in breeches that seem at all outlandish to the provincial mind. I understand that Chinese have found this to be true in the capitals of our Western States. The thing had happened to me before in Tunja, the capital of the province of Boyacá, Colombia. And it happened here in Sucre. Whenever we walked the streets examining the public buildings or visiting the market-place, we were considerably annoyed by loafers, both men and boys, who, recognizing us as strangers and foreigners, regarded us as the proper target for all manner of witticisms.
An hour after leaving the city, we turned to look back, and found the view from the west quite attractive. In the foreground, dry gulches, stony hillsides, and an occasional thatched mud hut. In the distance, hills sloping down so abruptly that one could not see the bottom of the gulch that lay between us and the city. Immediately beyond, the white walls of Sucre overshadowed by a mountain whose twin peaks rise beyond the eastern suburbs. There wasjust a suggestion of green, reminding us that this is the last fertile spot on the outskirts of the great arid plateau, towards which we now turned.
As the road between Sucre and the railway is one of the most important thoroughfares in Bolivia, it was to be expected that there would bepostesevery four or five leagues. The first one we came to was that of Punilla, four leagues from Sucre. All we needed was a guide, but the onlypostillonwe could secure had a very sore foot, scarcely protected at all from the stony road by the primitive rawhide sandal that he wore. Yet he came along quite cheerfully.
Thepostesbetween Sucre and Challapata are larger than those in southern Bolivia. They are modelled on the Incatambosthat used to exist on all the more frequented trails in the highlands of Peru and Bolivia; a range of low, windowless buildings, either of stone or adobe, sometimes completely surrounding a courtyard, at other times only on three sides, containing a few rooms of which one is furnished with a rough and very shaky table and three or four adobe platforms intended for bunks; mud floors that have accumulated dirt and filth of every description ever since the building was constructed; poorly thatched roofs from which bits of straw and pieces of dirt occasionally dislodge themselves to fall on the table where we spread our canned repast, or to alight on our faces just as we were trying to get to sleep.
The trains of pack animals that we met on the road, whether llamas, burros, or mules, were all engaged in bringing freight from the railway. This consisted mostly of boxes of soap and canned goods,cases of wine and beer and condensed milk, and small packages of general merchandise.
The nextposte, Pisculco, four leagues beyond Punilla over a good road that wound through semi-arid hills, was an extremely primitive affair. The master of theposteand all thepostillonswere “absent,” but we secured the services of a small boy who bravely girded his belt, slung a horn over his shoulder, received his pay and started out as our guide and escort. He soon fell behind, however, and before we knew it, disappeared among the brown bushes. Both his scanty raiment and his skin were so nearly the color of the ground that it was a hopeless task to look for him, and we went on, trusting we should be able to follow such a well-travelled highway without the necessity of a guide. Unfortunately, the road forked, and in choosing the more travelled branch, we followed a short cut in the steps of llama pack trains. As they camp in the open at night, we missed the road for Moromoro, took the wrong turn, and after a perilous descent down a mile of treacherous, slippery rocks, found ourselves at the abandonedtamboof Challoma, whose only inhabitants were an old woman and her pigs. She was greatly alarmed at our arrival and told us in shrill tones that we were three leagues off the road. Nevertheless, as it was rapidly getting dark and we had had a hard ride of forty miles, we decided to take shelter under the leaky roof of the ancientposte.
Beyond Challoma the trail crossed a cañon and a shallow stream and finally came out on a series of flat lands where we saw a few burros and llamas
Image unavailable: AN ABANDONED TAMBOAN ABANDONED TAMBO
Image unavailable: OUR FIRST VIEW OF THE GREAT TABLE-LAND OF BOLIVIAOUR FIRST VIEW OF THE GREAT TABLE-LAND OF BOLIVIA
grazing on the dry grass which had been left over from the last rainy season.
In the middle of one such plain stood the nextposte, Caracara, built like a fortress in the desert. There are only three openings in the great square inclosure: a barred window high up in a gable end near one corner; a little door leading to acantinawhere one could purchase a few drinks, matches, candles, and cigarettes; and a small arched entrance through which loaded animals and travellers pass to the courtyard. Although on one of the most important highways in Bolivia it did not afford any food for the animals or ourselves.
After leaving Caracara, we passed a few pink roses blooming under the shelter of some rocks. They looked strangely out of place in this Thibetan wilderness but they gave signs of the coming spring and the rainy season. In the afternoon we had several thunder-showers. The result of the showers of the past few days had been to stimulate also the growth of an occasional geranium, or modest little fern. In general there was little to relieve the monotonous brown wilderness.
For league after league we continued our march westward through a confused mountainous region. In southern Bolivia we had followed a long valley running in a north and south direction, but here our route lay across the valleys. Sometimes we followed the coach road for several leagues and then took a short cut down a steep hillside. At times we did not see a single hut in the twelve or fourteen miles separating thepostes. While not quite so sandy anddesolate as the region farther south, still it impresses one as being extremely inhospitable and unlikely ever to support a larger population.
In the evening of the second day we reached Ocurí, eighty miles from Sucre. Just outside the town we crossed a very swampy plain where cattle, horses, and pigs were feeding in treacherous bogs.
Ocurí is a brown little Indian town of perhaps two thousand inhabitants, with houses of sunburned brick and thatched roofs, lying high up on the side of a mountain whose peak shelters it somewhat from the easterly winds. It is higher than Potosí and has much the same cold, dismal climate. It likewise owes its existence to the presence of mines of silver and tin. There are several small smelters just outside the town. We could get nothing to eat in theposte, but a pleasant-faced mestiza woman who kept a sort of boarding-house near by, gave us a supper of beefsteak and fried eggs, a welcome change from the canned food which was our mainstay.
The principal street in the town was lined with small shops where a considerable variety of domestic and foreign merchandise was offered for sale. This does not mean that there were any attractive window displays but that when Mr. Smith felt brave enough to venture to step over the little Aymará brats and the fierce Bolivian dogs who were playing around the prostrate forms of drunkenarrieros, he found hidden away in the dark recesses of dusty shops, quite a variety of articles. Cigarettes, onions, eggs, bread, canned salmon, sardines, home-made woollen ponchos, imported cotton cloth, candles,cheap domestic pottery, straw hats, shoes, belts, gloves, and condensed milk. It is a very poor place indeed in Bolivia where one cannot buy a small can of Swiss condensed milk, the one thing that is generally good.
At Ocurí, we entered the country of the Aymarás for whom this is a kind of outpost town. Our first evidence of their being here was the fact that thepostillonsin thetambounloaded our mules very carelessly, allowing the bags to fall with a crash to the ground. They seemed to think it a great joke to treat us as ignominiously as possible. From here to Oruro, La Paz, and Lake Titicaca the Aymarás are in full sway. They seem to be inserted like a wedge between the Quichuas of Peru and those of southern Bolivia.
The Quichuas are a mild and inoffensive folk, but the Aymarás, heavier in build, coarser featured, and more vigorous in general appearance, are brutally insolent in their manner and unruly in their behavior. We were even regaled with stories of their cannibalism on certain occasions, but unfortunately had no opportunity of proving the truth of such statements. Neither Quichuas nor Aymarás are at all thrifty, and we were everywhere impressed with their great poverty. Their clothing is generally the merest rags and their food is as meagre as can possibly be imagined. Coca andchicha(i. e., cocaine and alcohol) seem to be beginning and end of life with them. We rarely ever saw one riding, although occasionally we met apostillonreturning to hispostewith a mule that had been placed in his charge.
A great majority of the population show little or no desire to vote or to have anything to do with politics. They are uneducated, but have very fixed ideas with regard to their absolute rights over land which they have occupied for any length of time. Their ideas of squatter sovereignty sometimes interfere with the desires of the government to develop the resources of the country.
It is unfortunate that no efforts are being made to establish a good system of public schools and enforce attendance. One of the greatest difficulties in the way of such an undertaking is the fact that the Indians not only have no interest in securing the education of their children, but also that they find it to their advantage to speak their own tongue rather than Spanish. Probably less than fifteen per cent of the population speak Spanish with fluency. They are lacking in ambition, seem to have no desire to raise produce, bear ill-will towards strangers, and prefer not to assist travellers to pass through their country. Even if a man has plenty of chickens and sheep, he will generally refuse to sell any although you offer him an excellent price. With coaxing and coca you may succeed. Sometimes he pretends not to understand Spanish and replies to all questions in guttural Quichua or Aymará.
So large a percentage of the population are Indians that nearly all the whites are actively interested in politics and would like to be office-holders. It is said that all elections are merely forms through which the party in power goes, in order to maintain its supremacy.
The majority of the inhabitants are in no sense fitted to be the citizens of a republic. However much the theoretical lover of liberty may bemoan the fact that Bolivia is in reality an oligarchy, one cannot help feeling that that is the only possible outcome of an attempt to simulate the forms of a republic in a country whose inhabitants are so deficient both mentally and morally. Mexico has given a splendid example of what can be accomplished in a region populated largely by Indians and descendants of Spanish monarchists. The benevolent despotism which President Diaz has exhibited now for more than a generation has done wonders. The great San Martin foresaw the advantages of oligarchy or monarchy and advocated something of the kind for the Spanish provinces of South America when they secured their independence. Unfortunately, his far-sighted statesmanship ran counter to the bombastic notions of “liberty” held by the uneducated creoles who had secured control of the reins of government and the result was the creation of republics. The extreme difficulty of communication throughout Bolivia has made the way of revolutions fairly easy. An entire province can rise against the government before sufficient troops can be sent to quell the disturbance.
Whenever we got an early start from aposte, we were pretty sure to come upon a llama camp before long; the drivers engaged in slowly rounding up their grazing beasts and inducing them to receive their loads for another day’s work. In the absence of rain, the loads are merely piled up on the ground so as to form a shelter from the wind during the night.If showers threaten, ponchos and tarpaulins are thrown over the heap of merchandise.
Many of the llama drivers carried primitive musical instruments. The most common form was a bamboo flute or flageolet with six holes. On these the Indians succeed in playing weird, monotonous airs in which a fantastic reiteration of simple strains is varied with occasional bursts of high, screechy notes. Some of the drivers had little guitars of a very primitive construction on which they thrummed rather monotonously. Some had their wives and children with them. The women were nearly always engaged in spinning yarn with a wooden spindle which they handled with the dexterity of a professional juggler. Two or three men, and a boy or so, generally accompanied a caravan of sixty or seventy llamas. Each driver carried a knitted sling made of llama wool and found no lack of ammunition by the roadside with which to urge forward his flock or to head off a stray animal. We were always amused when we met a drove. The leaders would approach gingerly, stretching their long necks and looking very much like timid, near-sighted dowagers. They scarcely knew whether to advance or to retreat. A few flying rocks from the slings of the drivers, followed up by encouraging shouts, generally decided the leaders to proceed, but some were so palpably “frightened to death” by everything they saw, we were surprised they had managed to live so long. Occasionally a herd coming from Sucre laden with chocolate or sugar and bound eastward, would meet one coming from the railroad with foreign merchandise.This nearly always resulted in great confusion and much shouting. The llamas looked so stupid we wondered how they ever succeeded in extricating themselves and proceeding in the right direction. At one point where the road almost disappeared among a wilderness of huge, scattered boulders, we met a large drove that had lost all sense of direction. Every attempt of the drivers to get their animals headed the same way met with failure. The beasts seemed to be infused with some centrifugal force which sent every one of them in a different direction from his neighbor. Owing to the huge rocks, it was impossible for the poor creatures to see one another or the drivers. They may be there yet.
There is something extremely amusing in the soft tread, the awkward gait, the large innocent eyes, and the inquisitive ears of the llama. Many had the tips of their ears decorated with bits of colored worsted. I saw two that were decked out with very elaborate headdresses. They never seemed to be in a hurry, any more than their Indian drivers, and their disposition is much more gentle and inoffensive than I had been led to suppose.
About ten miles from Ocurí I saw several fat lizards each about six inches long. The altitude at the time was about fourteen thousand feet, the record height for lizards, so I am told.
Soon afterwards we got a glimpse to the northwards of the sharp peaks near Colquechaca, one of the highest towns in the world, which owes its existence, as do so many of the Bolivian towns, to the presence in its vicinity of rich silver mines.
We reached Macha at noon on the third day, after a hot ride of thirty miles from Ocurí.
Macha is another dusty-brown, Indian town lying on the slopes of a large valley. Near by we saw some evidences of cultivation. The fields were surrounded with walls of dried mud and had large adobe gates reminding me of the Sogamoso valley in Colombia. That region, however, was so much greener and more fertile than this that the resemblance ceased with the gates and fences. It should be remembered that the rainy season here had only just begun.
As we descended the east side of the valley, we met a six-mule coach on its way from Challapata to Sucre. The curtains were drawn down on all sides to protect the passengers from the dust and glare. Their outlook was rather limited. A quarter of a mile beyond we met a drove of relay coach mules, in charge of two mountedpostillons.
There is a moderately good coach-road two hundred and ten miles long from Sucre to Challapata. The coach runs fortnightly, in pleasant weather, and takes five days for the journey. Personally, I should prefer almost anything rather than to be shut up in a Bolivian coach and yanked over these rough, dusty roads, but I suppose some people would relish even that better than jogging along forty miles a day on a mule, as we chose to do.
We left Macha after a light lunch but had not gone a mile before we were pelted by a violent thunder-shower accompanied by hail, some of the stones being as large as marbles. To add to our discomfort the mules had made rapid marches since leavingSucre and were very tired. The road out of the valley was steep and slippery. When we reached the summit, the storm renewed its fury, and we all shivered with the cold, in contrast to the burning heat of the morning. At this height, whenever the sun shines, the glare is trying and the heat really uncomfortable. As soon as the sun passes behind a cloud, however, one experiences all the rigors of winter.
We arrived at the lonely isolatedposteof Aconcawa just at sunset. The Aymarápostillonswere as disobliging as possible. Four or five Bolivian travellers had reached theposteahead of us and taken possession of the only available sleeping room. The night was bitterly cold and wet. The altitude was something over thirteen thousand feet. After some difficulty, we succeeded in forcing our way into a room where thecebadaor barley straw was stored. South of Potosí the fodder for the mules is generallyalfaor alfalfa but hereabouts it iscebada. The Indians were so afraid of our damaging the straw by sleeping on it that they swept it up and piled it on one side of the room as high as possible, raising clouds of fine dust in the meantime. The dust did not settle for many hours and brought on asthma when we tried to sleep. Soon after leaving Aconcawa, Fermin’s sharp eyes detected three vicuñas, feeding, a mile away to the south of us. I could barely make them out with powerful field-glasses and should never have seen them at all but for the keen-eyed gaucho. It seemed strange that these should be the only vicuñas which we saw in a wild state in our entire journey in southern Bolivia.Travellers fifty years ago speak of meeting them constantly in the more desolate parts of the mountains. Before the great demand arose for vicuña rugs, those highly-prized trophies of the casual visitor, these graceful and beautiful creatures, with their fawn-colored coats, were one of the most interesting features of travel in the lonely upland pastures of the Bolivian and Peruvian mountains.
On the little plain near the vicuñas were a few pools of water that seemed to be a feeding-ground for a few pigeons and some birds that looked like Titicaca gulls. An occasional earth-colored guineapig was practically the only other wild animal we could discover.
Soon after seeing the vicuñas we continued to climb by a zigzag road until we reached the highest point in this journey, the ridge of Livichuco, fifteen thousand feet above the sea. Neither mules or llamas seemed to mind this altitude but we found it very chilly and disagreeable and were glad enough to descend as quickly as possible without wasting much time in enjoying the extensive view over the rock-strewn hills about us. It may seem strange that we did not stop to rhapsodize on the fact that we were now leaving the basin of the Rio de la Plata, or on the extensive panorama. But the latter was so cold, desolate, and forbidding, the only effect was to make us urge forward the mules at as rapid a pace as possible.
The mountains were not snow-capped although, at times, we had had light storms of hail and snow. This was particularly true of the afternoons, the
Image unavailable: A FRIENDLY LLAMA BABYA FRIENDLY LLAMA BABY
Image unavailable: MY MULE ON THE LAST DAY’S RIDEMY MULE ON THE LAST DAY’S RIDE
mornings being generally fine and clear. As we went west, the valleys grew broader. We occasionally passed over level plains four or five miles wide. We had now crossed the watershed and left the basin of the Rio de la Plata and its affluents for that of Lake Poopo and the Bolivian tableland.
Descending, we came to valleys that offered sufficient grass to support a large number of llamas, alpacas, and sheep. This region seems to be a favorite breeding-place for the llamas and we saw a number of baby llamas. One of the latter, almost entirely black as to its body and legs, with black ears, resembling the horns of a carnival devil, and a white face that looked like a mask, was so interested in my efforts to take his picture that he walked up to within eight feet of my mule, much to his mother’s alarm.
A cold wind and a cloudy sky that kept the sun from offering any warmth made our arrival at theposteof Livichuco anything but pleasant. To add to our discomforts, Bolivian travellers had again arrived ahead of us and monopolized everything in sight, as the scanty accommodations of this wretchedtambowere insufficient to meet the demands of both parties. A few eggs was all thepostillonscould offer for our entertainment, and as these turned out to be rotten their willingness to sell food was not appreciated.
The morning had been cloudy, cold, and disagreeable but the afternoon was worse. Clouds of dust and peals of thunder ushered in the usual storm. Our road, however, was not as rocky and precipitous as on the preceding days. We crossed severalbroad plains, joined the Potosí-Challapata trail and passed near Vilcapujio, another of the battlefields of the War of Independence. In 1813 the soldiers of Buenos Aires had again invaded Bolivia to assist the patriots of Upper Peru. They reached Potosí in safety and were on their way north to Oruro when they were met here at the fork in the road and defeated by the Spaniards. A few days later came the battle of Ayoma, near Macha. The result was temporarily fatal to the cause of Bolivian independence.
We had another unpleasant experience on our arrival at Ancacato, on the evening of the fourth day. Bolivian travellers had, as before, taken possession of all the available rooms and we had a hard time persuading the master of theposteto allow us to remain.
At a distance of two or three miles from thetambois the old Indian town of Ancacato lying spread out on the level floor of the valley which was at present brown and desolate although it had signs of being cultivated in the rainy season. Like other Indian towns, the only conspicuous feature of Ancacato was the tower of its large church. The rest of the town consisted of brown huts as much as possible like the color of the hills.
The next morning we met an unusually large number of llamas on their way from Challapata to the interior carrying small boxes of European merchandise. The monotony of this morning’s ride was varied by the spectacle of a mounted Indian trying, like “Mac,” to drive a pack mule that was quite unaccustomed to such service and most unwillingto keep the road. There are no fences or walls to mark off the road from the surrounding country and an active pack animal can take to the hill as often as he pleases. Most of them are either too weary, too tame or too well acquainted with the punishment that follows, to attempt such amusements, but this one was new at the game and he led his driver a merry chase over frightful rocky slopes, up and down precipitous hillsides, and through the dry bed of a stream. “Anywhere and everywhere” seemed to be his motto.
A short hour’s ride brought us through the pass over the Cordillera de los Frailes and out onto the great tableland where the horizon on every side, except behind us, seemed to be as level as the ocean. Far away to the southwest we could just make out the dark lines and specks that denoted the whereabouts of Challapata and the railway station.
Challapata is an old Indian town, but there has grown up at some distance from it, near the railway, a little modern settlement where white-washed warehouses, hotels, stores, and a telegraph office offer a marked contrast to the brown mud-huts of the more ancient city. The population is said to be more than two thousand souls. Of these by far the larger part are Aymarás who speak little or no Spanish. The streets of the new town are wide and sandy, hot and glary like some of our western towns. We thought the hotel was most comfortable and even luxurious, after our experience of the past few weeks, but I dare say that the traveller coming the other way would turn up his nose at its primitive accommodations.
Notwithstandingits comfortable beds, wash-stands, and billiard-table, we were glad enough to leave the hotel at Challapata and take the train for Oruro. Our only regret was that we had to say good-by to old Fermin whose faithfulness in his care not only of the mules but of ourselves, had made us grow very fond of him. We gave him a little gratuity which he almost immediately offered to Mr. Smith in exchange for a cheap silver watch the latter had purchased in Jujuy!
On our way northward to Oruro we got distant glimpses of the saline waters of Lake Poopo that receives the overflow from Lake Titicaca by means of the Desaguadero River but has no outlet of its own. On our right were the low summits of the Cordillera de los Frailes and on the intervening plain was an occasional town with brown huts and a conspicuous church. Once in a while we sawchulpas, so-called “Inca tombs,” really Aymará, in which interesting remains are often found. The Ferrocarril Antofagasta-Bolivia, a very narrow-gauge road constructed and managed by Englishmen, was built to reach the important silver mines of Huanchaca which, in the early ’90’s, exported annually eight million ounces of silver. Once on the plateau, it was an easy matterto connect the railroad with Oruro whose output of silver at that time was about a million and a half ounces. Furthermore, Colquechaca, with an equal output, was only two days away and pack trains could bring the silver readily to the railway.
The road has proved to be a splendid investment, yet Great Britain has never favored Bolivia with much capital. Apart from this line and a small bit of railroad near La Paz, there are almost no British enterprises in the country. It is said that even Ecuador, backward as it is, has twenty times as much British capital as Bolivia, while Argentina has two hundred times as much.
The ride to Oruro was devoid of interest except for a conversation which I had with a distinguished Bolivian physician who had recently come from the eastern provinces where he assured me lay the real wealth of his country. He was most enthusiastic about the possibilities of the Gran Chaco as a region likely some day to be well populated. Although a native of this part of Bolivia, he told me that every time he came back to this altitude, he suffered fromsorocheor mountain sickness. I was told by several other Bolivianos that they too suffered fromsorochewhenever they came up from the lower elevation, notwithstanding the fact that the author of a recent book on South America says that the Bolivianos themselves never suffer from this infirmity.
We reached Oruro shortly after dark and were met by a pleasant-faced Austrian hotel proprietor who obligingly put us on board of a mule-drawn tram-car. A few minutes later we stopped in frontof the Grand Hotel de Francia y Inglaterra and were back in the civilized world again.
There are two comfortable hotels in Oruro and an excellent Union Club where all nationalities come to enjoy themselves. Besides this, a German club has recently been started. Another feature of Oruro, which we might not have noticed had we approached it from the civilized instead of the uncivilized side of the world, was a rather palatial public billiard-hall or casino where a dozen or fifteen good tables, and an elaborate bar, attracted every evening a crowd of foreign engineers, clerks, and bookkeepers.
The climate of Oruro is cold and forbidding, the thermometer in the shade usually being 50° F. The rainy season commences in November and lasts until March; January and February being the rainiest months. During our summer the weather here is intensely cold and snow-storms are not infrequent. To the west and south of the city are barren hills and the general lack of foliage makes the place rather melancholy,muy triste.
The next morning we crossed the plaza to the fine large government building where the Prefect lives and has his offices. The present incumbent, Dr. Moises Ascarrunz, was most kind and attentive. He received us in state, opened champagne, drank our health and then drove us out in the state carriage to a rifle range where, as it was a holiday, the local sporting club was holding a match.
The Prefect has taken great interest in the club and it has thriven under his patronage. The facilities for rifle practice are excellent, and we saw some
Image unavailable: THE PREFECTURA AND PLAZA OF ORUROTHE PREFECTURA AND PLAZA OF ORURO
capital shooting. After a light lunch of beer and sandwiches at the pleasant little club house, the Prefect showed us the sights of the town.
In his annual report which was just off the press at the time of our visit, he calls special attention to the bad condition of theposteson the road from Sucre to Challapata! We were not inclined to dispute his criticism.
One day during our stay, a government proclamation was heralded about town in the usual fashion. The local regiment of infantry paraded through the principal streets, stopping at the important corners while the colonel read the proclamation in a loud voice. The colonel seemed so strong and healthy that I was greatly surprised to learn on my return to Oruro a few weeks later that he had been taken down with one of the sudden pulmonary fevers of this altitude and died in less than twenty-four hours.
A pleasant German-American, in charge of the local agency of a large New York commercial house, told us that it was not at all uncommon for a man to get a chill on his way home from an evening party and die the next day of galloping pneumonia. The explanation seems to be that at this altitude (13,000 feet) one needs all the lung capacity one has, as the air is so rare. A congestive chill is followed by such a dangerous loss in the capacity to receive oxygen, that the patient soon succumbs and dies.
The shops of Oruro, as might be expected of a mining city that has been for several years in communication by rail and steam with the outside world, contain a great variety of imported merchandise. One,owned by Spaniards, is devoted almost exclusively to the manufactured products of Spain. Another, owned by a German, contains an indefinite variety of goods “made in Germany.” Two or three book shops contain several thousand volumes of Spanish and French literature, law and medicine. There is also a small public library and reading-room and the city hopes to have a large accession to the number of its books in the near future.
I called on one of the local physicians, not professionally, but because I had heard of a remarkable collection of Bolivian pamphlets and manuscripts that he possessed. One gets so accustomed to shiftlessness and uncleanliness in South America that I could scarcely believe my eyes when I found myself in an office whose spotless white furniture and aseptic glass cases of modern surgical instruments would not have been considered out of place on Madison Avenue. The surgeon had been educated at the Chilean Medical School in Santiago although he was a Bolivian by birth. His collection of manuscripts and prints was an extraordinary one, but I must confess that his up-to-date professional methods interested and surprised me more than his extensive bibliographical learning. After having witnessed unspeakable conditions in the leading hospital of Venezuela at Caracas where, as readers of my “Journal” will recollect, surgeons educated in Paris and New York worked in an operating theatre that had for its motto, “Those who spit are requested not to stand near the table during operations,” I am afraid my views of South American surgery, outside of suchcities as Buenos Aires and Santiago, had hitherto been decidedly uncomplimentary.
Oruro owes its importance to valuable silver and tin mines in its vicinity. There are several large smelters on the outskirts of the town, and the offices of a number of important mining companies are to be found here. Certain parts of Oruro are not pleasant places in which to take a walk. In fact, I never felt more uncomfortable in my life than I did on a solitary expedition in which I found myself among a lot of half-drunken miners of all nationalities who were hanging about the doors of a choice collection of grog-shops. The fearless, impudent stare of the Aymarás was no less unpleasant than the menacing looks of three or four burly Anglo-Saxon miners who had spent their last cent for drinks and were looking for more.
The silver mines have largely been abandoned and the principal industry is connected with the tin deposits. No mines were discovered here until some years after those of Potosí and they never produced as much silver, although, during the colonial epoch, they ranked easily second.
Oruro was founded about the time that the Dutch landed on Manhattan Island. In the latter part of the seventeenth century there was already a population of 76,000. In the eighteenth century, the city stood next to Potosí in wealth and importance.
Some of the churches still show the marks of that elegance with which they were ornamented during the period of Oruro’s palmy days. There are, however, few remains of any fine edifices. Indeed, weare told by “El Lazarillo” in 1773 that “in this great city one will not encounter a single building that corresponds at all to the immense fortunes which have been spent here, during the past two hundred years, in an excess of parades, shows, games, and banquets.”
When the price of tin went up, a few years ago, Oruro enjoyed a boom. Old buildings were torn down and pretentious new ones begun. Some of them were only partly completed when tin fell and the boom collapsed. The population now is about sixteen thousand, although during the boom it rose to over twenty thousand, of whom more than five thousand were foreigners. A good percentage were Chileans.
Apart from its importance as a mining centre, Oruro has for some time been distinguished as a railroad terminal. A line from here to Potosí is planned. A line from Oruro to Cochabamba, on whose fertile valleys Oruro depends for its food-supply, is in course of construction. The Bolivia Railway’s line to La Paz has recently been completed. The road to Antofagasta has been running since 1892.
Oruro is nearly six hundred miles from Antofagasta and the journey used formerly to take three days, for trains were only run by daylight and at slow speed. We found, however, that the roadbed had been improved, although the track was not widened, and a vestibuled train with two compartment sleeping-cars and a restaurant-car can now make the journey from Oruro to Antofagasta in two nights and a day. Three times a week a Bolivia