From Cuzco I went direct to Lake Titicaca, where more Inca ruins, such as the cylindrical towers of Sillistayni, existed at Puno. Lake Titicaca is a heavenly sheet of water, situated at an elevation by hypsometrical apparatus of 12,202 ft. With its magnificent background of snowy peaks, the lake looked indeed too impressive for words, as I steamed across it in the excellent steamer of the Peruvian Corporation.
Early in the morning of February 17th, having travelled the entire night in order to cross the lake from north to south, we arrived at Guaqui, the port for La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. Although I travelled in the most luxurious comfort, owing to the kindness of the Peruvian Corporation, the journey by rail and the going about examining the ruins at Cuzco had tired me considerably. My brain was so exhausted that it would really take in no more.
Worse luck, when I reached La Paz it was during carnival time, when it was impossible to go out of the hotel without being smothered in cornflour or chalk, and sprinkled with aniline dyed water. Even bottles of ink were emptied on one's head from the windows. So that, although I crossed Bolivia from one end to the other in its longest part, I was unable to do any further work. I tried to get down to the coast as quickly as possible in order to return home.
La Paz was a beautiful city, extremely neat, with bright red-tiled roofs and white buildings. It was situated in a deep hollow surrounded by a great barrier of mountains. So deep and sudden was the hollow that within a few metres of its upper edge one would never suppose a town to be at hand. Bolivia is a go-ahead country in which English people are greatly interested. We have in our Minister there, Mr. Gosling, a very able representative of British interests.
Bolivians have shown great enterprise in building railways in all directions in order properly to develop their enormously wealthy country. Many important lines are in construction; others are projected—of which, perhaps, the most interesting will be the one from Santa Cruz to Corumba on the Brazilian boundary.
The day will come when the port of Arica on the Pacific Ocean will be joined to Oruro, on the Antofagasta line, the well-known junction in Bolivia, and eventually to Santa Cruz. The present plan is to build a line from the already existing railway at Cochabamba to Porto Velarde on the Rio Grande (Rio Mamore), then to Santa Cruz. The Brazilians on their side will eventually connect São Paulo with Cuyaba and Corumba. It will then be possible to travel by rail right across the South American continent in its richest part.
There is also a project of connecting Santa Cruz with Embarcacion and Campo Santo, in the Argentine Republic, and eventually with the Trans-Andine Railway.
Other smaller lines projected are those between Potosí and Sucre, and one from the Chilian boundary at La Quiada to Tarija. That system of railways will greatly develop the entire southern portion of Bolivia. A small railway is also proposed in the most northern part of the Republic, between Riberalta on the River Madre de Dios and Guajara Merim on the Madeira-Mamore railway, a district of immense wealth for the production of rubber.
The exact elevation of La Paz by hypsometrical apparatus was 12,129 ft.
I left La Paz on February 21st, and travelled through flat, alluvial, uninteresting country—only a huge flock of llamas or vicuñas enlivening the landscape here and there, or a group of Indians in their picturesque costumes. The women, with their green, violet or red shawls and much-pleated short skirts, generally blue, afforded particularly gay patches of colour.