CHAPTER XVIII
WAYFARING IN BOLIVIA—THE ROYAL ANDES
Old Spanish Trail from Argentina—Customs Outpost at Majo—Sublime Mountain View—Primitive Native Life—Sunbeaten Limestone Hills—Vale of Santa Rosa—Tupiza’s People and Their Pursuits—Ladies’ Fashions among the Indian Women—Across the Chichas Cordilleras—Barren Vegetation—Experience with Siroche, or Mountain Sickness—Personal Discomforts—Hard Riding—Portugalete Pass—Alpacas and Llamas—Sierra of San Vicente—Uyuni a Dark Ribbon on a White Plain—Mine Enthusiasts—Foreign Consulates.
I JOURNEYED into Bolivia, the heart of South America, from northern Argentina with pack animals over the old Inca and Spanish trail. The Pacific coast routes for reaching the imprisoned country are by the railroad from Mollendo to Lake Titicaca, and then across the lake and by the little railway from Guaqui to La Paz; by the railroad from Arica to Tacna, and from Tacna by mules to Corocoro, whence a stage may be had to La Paz, 60 miles farther on; and by the railroad from Antofagasta to Oruro, 575 miles, and then by stage to La Paz, 160 miles.
The ancient and historic route from the Atlantic is the one that is followed in the prolongation of the Argentina Railway lines, and in joining the new Bolivian links so as to form a complete section in the Intercontinental or Pan-American system from Buenos Ayres to Lake Titicaca. From Jujuy, 1,000 miles distant from Buenos Ayres, up through northern Argentina, the course is in a double funnel along the great cañon, or quebrada, of Humahuaca. The trail widens in the valley of Tupiza, and then contracts from Tupiza west and north into difficult mountain passes through the Chichas Cordilleras and the sierras of San Vicente, until the Altiplanicie, or great Bolivian table-land that lies between the granitic Oriental, or Royal, Cordilleras and the volcanic Occidental, or Western, Cordilleras, is reached.
The boundary between Argentina and Bolivia is the Quiaca River. The town of La Quiaca on the Argentine side is the frontier custom house. On the Bolivian border is a big ranch with a row of willow trees. There is a fair road through an alternation of gravelly mountain-sides and rounded tops. The first Bolivian settlement is Majo in the valley, an adobe village of a few hundred inhabitants. This place is the customs outpost. Majo has a government post, or inn, which is called a tambo. The tambo consists of a corral for the animals and an adobe hut for the accommodation of strangers. Lodging is free. The traveller spreads his blankets on the earth floor or on the mud benches along the wall. The innkeeper, who is a government official, provides him with food. I got chicken, rice, and bread, which was luxurious feasting after ten days’ hardships. Fodder was supplied the animals at a fair charge, and a smithy, which was part of the inn, was free for the use of the arriero, or muleteer.
It was September when I was at Majo. At five o’clock in the afternoon the thermometer marked 76° Fahrenheit, and at seven o’clock, when the sun had gone down, it marked 46.5°, a noticeable change. At mid-day at this season the temperature was about 86°. In the early morning before sunrise I had broken a film of ice on one of the rivulets in a sequestered gulch.
But Bolivia is not seen from the little valley in which the hamlet of Majo lies. After two hours of going down and up steep hills the eminence on the edge of an extensive gorge is reached. It is the first view of the Royal Andes and their sierras. A sublime sight it is. The change from the arid, half-desert scenery is startling. The mountains in the foreground lie in irregular, transverse black and gray masses, and through the mists the fleecy peaks and pinnacled precipices are visible. The dominating one is Guadalupe, 18,870 feet above sea-level, the Pike’s Peak of Bolivia. Closer at hand the sierras are covered with some appearance of vegetation,—pale green cacti and russet brown thorn-bushes or acacias. I followed the ravine down along the banks of the dried-up river, which was bordered with pepper trees and willows. In this valley are a number of attractive small farms. After leaving it there is another hill climb. Yuruma, the hill village, is a dilapidated collection of adobe cabins.
Genuine Bolivian life, the primitive and patriarchal existence, I encountered in the villages of Nazarene and Suipacha. They lie on either side of the Grand, or San Juan, River, which is easily forded in the dry season. It was a rural scene that would have delighted the poet or the philosopher who wants to go back to Nature. Nothing more tranquil in all the world than this secluded nook in the Andes. The women were washing clothes in the streams, the men and boys were working in the fields, the flocks of sheep and cattle grazed placidly in the valley and on the hillside, and everybody had a respectful greeting to the stranger, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in the Quichua tongue. The donkeys wandered about bearing clay water-jars and apparently without a driver until a small and wrinkled old man with most wonderfully patched and brilliantly colored trousers, screamed to them, and they stopped where a customer waited. The cabins were of adobe, or unbaked brick. Some were quite neat and were half hidden in gardens surrounded by mud walls covered with thorn-bushes.
I never met so many very old people as in these two primitive villages. Far from the carking cares and ambitions of the world, they follow their uneventful course until the sands of life literally run out. In front of one cabin was an old woman crooning over her bowl of porridge. She appeared to me a vitalized mummy. I reined my mule before a dwelling a little farther on and asked, “What is the age of la viejicita (the little old woman)?” “We don’t know, sir,” replied the occupant, civilly. “We think she is more than one hundred and fifteen years old. Her great-grandchildren say she is one hundred and twenty-five.” I might doubt the family records of the crone as preserved by the great-grandchildren, yet seeing her it was easy to believe that her life may have spanned three centuries,—born in the late years of the eighteenth and stretching through the nineteenth into the twentieth,—for she certainly was more than one hundred. When the Bolivian census was taken a few years ago, the enumerators reported 1,261 persons whose age passed the century mark, and many of these centenarians dwelt in this San Juan valley.