CHAPTER XIX
WAYFARING IN BOLIVIA.—THE CENTRAL PLATEAU
A Hill-broken Table-land—By Rail along the Cordillera of the Friars—Challapata and Lake Poöpo—Smelters—Spanish Ear-marks in Oruro—By Stage to La Paz—Fellow-passengers—Misadventures—Indian Tombs at Caracollo—Sicasica a High-up Town, 14,000 Feet—Meeting-place of Quichuas and Aymarás—First Sight of the Famed Illimani Peaks—Characteristics of the Indian Life—Responsibility of the Priesthood—Position of the Women—Panorama of La Paz from the Heights—The Capital in Fact—Cosmopolitan Society.
THE Altiplanicie, or Great Central Plateau, because of its mineral riches, was called by the geographer Raimondi a gold table with silver legs. Once the bed of a vast inland sea, the table-land now forms the Titicaca basin and lies between the Oriental and the Occidental Cordilleras. Its surface is broken by many conical hills and small sierras, supposedly the result of volcanic eruptions, yet it comes within the definition of level country as level country is understood in the Andine regions. The southern zone of the Altiplanicie has been aptly described as a solid cape of salt.
From Uyuni, in the lower corner of the great plain, the railway skirts along the mountain range known as the Cordillera of the Friars. The road crosses the salt pampas and winds among the foothills and along the Marques River into agricultural lands, chiefly grazing, with pasturage for some cattle, donkeys, and llamas, and many sheep. There are a number of villages, always with a little church in the centre. The September day on which I took the trip the people were making a romeria, or pilgrimage, from hamlet to hamlet, to celebrate one of the numerous religious holidays.
During the first three hours weather changes were swift and sharp,—heavy clouds, thunder, the first rain I had experienced for weeks, a whirling dust-storm, thunder again with looped lightning, pelting hail, and finally blinding snow. My fellow-passengers were Bolivian business men and their families, and English and German mining superintendents. An excellent breakfast was served in the station at Sevaruyo.
The principal town on the line is Challapata, near the borders of Lake Poöpo. Challapata is a starting-point for Sucre. Sucre is the old capital of Bolivia,—an historic city and a very rich one, lying in a fertile valley but very remote from the highways of travel. Few foreigners or natives in Bolivia know how to find it. The most confusing directions are given in regard to reaching it. A trail or cart-road of a very hard kind to travel runs from Tupiza to Sucre, and in La Paz I was gravely told that to get there I would have to go to Tupiza. Other directions are as vague. The shortest way from either La Paz or from the coast is to proceed to Challapata and then procure mules to Sucre, though for two days the journey may be followed by means of a stage or similar vehicle.
Lake Poöpo is a teacup beside a soup-tureen in comparison with Lake Titicaca; yet it receives the waters of that lake, which is not an evaporating pan, through the Desaguadero River, and then loses them in the Laca-Amra, a disappearing and reappearing stream. Only one gallon in a hundred of the water drained into Lake Poöpo by the Desaguadero is carried off by other streams. The Titicaca current is 23.73 metres per minute, and the volume of the Desaguadero is 4,822.5 cubic metres per minute.
From Poöpo on to Oruro I noted a succession of smoke-stacks from the smelters, and very apparent evidences of the mining industry. After that it was all mine sights and mine talk. There is a large foreign colony, which includes Yankees, Englishmen, Germans, and Chileans. The town is a bare sort of place, with the shafts gaping from the mountains all around. It has a population of 10,000, a newspaper, two banks, and some extensive commercial establishments.
Oruro is an old town, and still shows many Spanish ear-marks. The Jesuit chronicles say that in the height of the mining fever, in the seventeenth century, it had 70,000 inhabitants. The streets are narrow, and the buildings have balconies and overhanging eaves. The local administration is progressive, and the plaza is an evidence of local public spirit. It has a fountain in the centre, and some effort at adornment has been made by fencing in the flower-plats. The pilgrimage of women and children to and from the fountain with their water-jars is an endless one. There is a military garrison and a Cabildo, or municipal headquarters. In the market are the women venders, decked out in their brilliant petticoats, selling onions, fruits, fish, rock salt, and the other commodities of humble life. Here, as in Uyuni, I observed many kindly and intelligent faces among them, and they seemed to me superior to the men. The latter are the cargadores, or burden-bearers. They travel around with their backs bent, pedler fashion, even when they have no burden.