Panama to Patagonia

by Charles M. Pepper

We reached Pandura at nightfall to find that the stage coming from La Paz, also running off schedule time on account of the rains and the bad roads, had arrived there ahead of us. Pandura, which consists of three or four mud structures, by squeezing itself could just shelter one set of passengers. There was no possibility of accommodations for us, nothing we could do except to continue our journey over dangerous roads. The more fortunate passengers, however, were very considerate. We could not ask them to give up their beds, but they themselves volunteered to forego their dinner. It had been ordered before our arrival and would be ready in an hour. Since they had the whole night before them, they could wait for another dinner to be prepared. We accepted their offer, and after the meal had been eaten with gluttonous appetites, we plunged off in the darkness. The animals were utterly worthless and could barely drag us along. Where fresh mules were in waiting they were already blown, and the local tambo-keepers refused to let us have the animals which were reserved for the government mail. Usually after alternate threatening and cajoling we would get the post mules, sometimes taking them forcibly, and then proceed a little better. But it was a nightmare of a journey.

In the morning we reached Sicasica. Sicasica is a town of consequence and the centre of a silver-mining district. It is one of the highest inhabited places in Bolivia, the altitude being 14,000 feet. It has an old Jesuit church, built in 1622, notable for the fantastic carving on the lava stone exterior and for some passable paintings on the interior walls as well as a fine altar.

Sicasica is notable in another way. It is the meeting-place, as it were, where the two distinct Indian races, the Aymarás and the Quichuas, come front to front. Heretofore in southern Bolivia it was the Quichua race I had met and their language I had heard, but from Sicasica on the Aymarás were my study. Both these Indian idioms are spoken, and neither race learns the tongue of the other, nor do they have a common medium in Spanish. The local innkeeper told me that few of them knew any Spanish, and that the little intercourse they had with one another was more sign language than anything else. Aymará was predominant, and its barking sounds were heard in sharp contrast to the softer accents of the Quichua. I wandered into a girls’ school, where the little maids were seated on vicuña skins and, rocking forward and backward, were conning their lessons aloud while the woman teacher accompanied their sing-song, standing. There was neither bench nor desk of any kind. The primer was in Aymará, and seemed to correspond to Noah Webster’s spelling-book.

In the afternoon we reached Ayoayo, where a small garrison of soldiers is maintained. Ayoayo is historic for an uprising which was instigated by the priests against foreigners. It resulted in a massacre. The place also was the headquarters of a stubborn Indian uprising against the authority of the Bolivian government. That was many years back, and I do not know that the maintenance of a garrison at this time has anything to do with past history. The officers were bright, fine-appearing men; the soldiers were stolid-looking, but apparently were under excellent discipline. There are Indian tombs in the neighborhood of Ayoayo, though not so many as at Caracollo.

After leaving Ayoayo is the sublime sight of the peerless Illimani,—a vision to my mind equal to that of the famed Sorata seen from Lake Titicaca, and unsurpassed among the many glorious panoramas of mountain grandeur which the Bolivian Andes afford.

The Continental Andes fork northwest of Lake Titicaca in latitude 14°. The Occidental Cordilleras trend south to the Pacific coast. The Oriental Cordilleras extend in a general direction from northwest to southeast. They are marked by three series of peaks,—the Cololo, which is in Peru; the Illampu; and the Quisma Cruz, or Three Crosses. The greatest of these are the Illampu, which begin with the towering glacier peak of Sorata and end with the grouped pinnacles of the Illimani. The heights of the summits according to the best estimates vary from 21,200 feet to 21,700 feet. It is this region which entitles Bolivia to be called the roof of the world fully as much as Thibet.

On the Illimani the snows of yesterday are the snows of to-morrow. Their sublimity cannot be grasped at close view. It is necessary to see them at a distance such as that afforded after leaving Ayoayo in order fully to appreciate their magnificence, for from this point the lower flanks, brown and barren, are not visible. A great wall of marble whiteness, with turrets and minarets surmounting it, stretches along the horizon. When the turn in the road is made and the sloping sides are in sight, the view is grand enough, but nothing like the first vision. The chain extends more than a hundred miles. The cold from the Illimani is felt very sensibly, yet it is a clear and crisp cold and is not disagreeable.

The night was spent at Calamarca, where we found an unusually good tambo with the rarest of innovations—two or three camp bedsteads—and excellent food, well cooked by the wife of the innkeeper, a very intelligent chola.

We left Calamarca on the fourth day, though we should have been in La Paz at the end of the second day. The approach to the capital is across a great meseta, or mountain plain. It swarms with Indian life. All the region between Oruro and La Paz seems to be as thickly populated as the land will sustain. The stage road not only passes through many villages, but there are more of these to the right and to the left a short distance from the highway. Some of them are not unattractive collections of adobe huts, and several of the groups are rendered picturesque by the big oval ovens or kilns almost as large as the cabins themselves.

The life is a primitive, pastoral one. Sheep and some cattle, alpacas, llamas, and burros are raised and graze on the plain and in the valley. Maize, or Indian corn, and a little wheat are grown along with barley, and the native cereal known as quinua, which is like millet. The crops appear scanty, and the vegetation at this height is not exuberant.