The Cordillera of the Andes is, we might fancifully say, the great banker of the West, the great guardian of gold and sliver, the father of minerals, and the progenitor of the treasure of the rocks. We have seen that Peru is a land fabulous for its mineral wealth; Colombia, far to the north, has only lesser stores of metals, precious or base; Ecuador has been but little favoured in this respect, but nevertheless has a famed old gold mine; Chile is markedly rich in almost every mineral. But Bolivia perhaps surpasses all these. There was a famous Peruvian scientist and traveller, of Italian extraction—Raimondi—who described the plateau of Bolivia as "a table of silver supported by a column of gold." The same might be said of Peru. In the Cordillera generally we find gold in the lower districts, silver in the higher. It would almost seem that the metals have some affinity with the climate. At least the native Peruvian miner says that "the gold looks for the warmth, the silver for the cold."
Thus in the cold and the bleakness of the high hills do we find the white metal in Bolivia: we find, indeed, two white metals verging upon the regions of perpetual snow—silver and tin.
The tin mines, indeed, were first worked for silver, and the tin ores thrown away.
For the lore of silver-mining let us ascend to Potosi, the Silver Mountain. Its summit rises in perfect sugar-loaf form to over 16,000 feet above the level of the sea. Upon the slopes of this wonderful mountain, some 2,000 or 3,000 feet lower down, stands a city, founded in 1545 by the adventurous Spaniards, with their keen olfato, or instinct for gold and silver, and fifty years later 150,000 folk had their habitations there. For lodes and seams of the richest silver ore lay here—native silver and others; and the shell of the mountain quickly became honeycombed with shafts and galleries. Of five thousand such, a thousand may be seen to-day.
All classes of adventurers flocked to Potosi. There were bankrupt Spanish nobles, thinking by a lucky stroke, or with their name and prestige, to recoup themselves; there were merchants, anxious to obtain sudden wealth; gamblers, thieves, demi-mondaines and all else, and Potosi became a centre of prodigality, romantic adventure, revelry and often disorder. Here Spanish hidalgos vied with each other in squandering fortunes in pleasure and ostentation, matters which caused faction-strife among the bands into which the people of the place were divided. The old chronicles of Potosi are very interesting, revealing as they do the custom of those times, the superstition, the chivalry and all else, which not even the high and solemn environment of the Cordillera could dampen.
To-day an English mining company works upon the mountain, striving to earn dividends for its shareholders. The silver is far from being exhausted, but methods of recovery fell back; and the low value of silver and the high rate of wage demanded by the miner were other factors in decadence.
The Potosi mountain was not a possession of the Spaniard alone. It has a metallurgical interest more remote. A traveller in the Cordillera before the time of the Conquest might have seen, as he approached the spot at night, a number of twinkling lights upon the slopes. They were the fires of the little furnaces in which the Indians, of the Incas, smelted the simpler silver ores, the winds of the Cordillera furnishing the needful blast; and these furnaces were called in Quechua Guayras, which word means "the wind." It is said that at one time more than 15,000 of these little furnaces were to be seen upon the Silver Mountain, which reared its desolate slopes to heaven, but was a treasure-house of Nature.
ACONCAGUA, THE HIGHEST ANDINE PEAK, CHILE.