Up the Amazon and Madeira rivers, through Bolivia and Peru

by Edward D. Mathews

CHAPTER XXIII.

Total change in the appearance of nature—Cochi-janchi—Barley and potatoes—Chuño—Koad to Coni by Bandiola—Sacába—Approach to Cochabamba—Tambos—Apartments—The city and people—Luxuriously furnished houses—Fruits, flowers, and grain crops—Douche baths—Alaméda, or public garden—Sweets and ices—Tertulias and rocking-chairs—Commercial firms and their trade—Cascarilla, or cinchona bark—Hospitality of foreign residents and others—Moonlight ride—Climate—Want of sanitary arrangements—Mineral wealth of the district.

From the top of the cuesta of Malaga onwards into Bolivia the face of nature is so changed, that one seems to have suddenly arrived in another land. To the north of this hill, the mountains are covered with trees, and the plains bear their luxuriant wealth of tropical vegetation, but on the south the aspect is very different. On this side, the rocky mountain ranges of the Andes seem to produce nothing but crops of stones, which lie so thickly upon all the level plains that cultivation can only be carried on after the most laborious work. This rocky and stony nature of the soil gives the country a very dreary look, which is only relieved by trees and foliage, wherever a river has afforded opportunities of irrigation.

On the uplands and slopes of the hills barley and potatoes are grown, while on the uncultivated lands a rough and long grass grows in tufts, and affords fair grazing for sheep and oxen.

About 5 p.m. we arrived at Cochi-janchi, at 10,950 feet above sea-level. This village has a particularly melancholy look, as there is not a vestige of a tree to be seen; the houses, which are very small in size, being built with walls and roofs of mud, or adobe, placed in enclosures made by walls of the same material. There is a small church built with mud, like the houses, and there are altogether about fifty or sixty farms scattered over the hill-side. The people must be very industrious, as the hills are much cultivated, some up to their summits, of probably 12,500 or 13,000 feet elevation. The district supplies Cochabamba with potatoes, and there appears to be a large trade done in them, both fresh and preserved. In the latter state they are called “chuño,” which is really nothing more than a frozen potato, and a most horrid substitute for the real article. The process of preserving seems to be that the potatoes are cut into slices and then into cubes, about the size of ordinary dice; these are exposed to the almost nightly frosts until they present a dry, corky appearance, in which state they will keep for any length of time, and form the staple article of food with the Quichuan Indians; indeed, throughout the interior of the republic, the chuño is met with at every table. I cannot say that I discovered its excellencies, for it seemed to me to taste just as it looks, like cork; but it is nevertheless a favourite component part of the chupe, which forms the first course both at breakfast and dinner. And certainly it appears to me to be the easiest method by which potatoes can be preserved; no tins or air-tight cases being required—a dry floor or sack serving all purposes for storage.

The mules are now fed with barley, given to them in the straw and unthreshed. This fodder seems to suit both mules and horses admirably, but requires to be varied now and then with grass food when the animal is not on a journey. It costs, near Cochabamba, about two pesos, or 6s. 2d., the quintal of 100 lbs. weight, about sufficient for four animals’ nightly rations.

From Cochi-janchi there is another track that leads to Coni, by passing through a district called Bandiola, to the east of Espiritu Santo; but that track also has to pass the ridge of Malaga, and I was credibly informed that the cuestas in that direction are far more severe than those over which I travelled; and as my Yuracaré Indians refused to return to their homes by the Bandiola road, I think it may be agreed that it is not a practicable one. The Malaga cuesta, although rising to a great height, was not very steep, the ascent and descent being so gradual that I did not once have to dismount from my mule in going over it.

Next day, August 16th, the thermometer stood at 45° at six o’clock, which was quite cold enough to be pleasant, but not so sharp as the previous night at Inca Corral. I tried to get my arriero started early, but as he had many visits to make in the pueblo, and much chicha to drink at each house, it was past ten o’clock before we got on the road again. We soon began another ascent, which was very laborious, as the mules show signs of tiring more and more every day. The top of this hill was 600 feet lower than the cuesta of Malaga.

After passing several small and insignificant villages, we came to the town of Sacába, a very considerable place. The day was market day, and the “plazas,” or squares, were full of the country people, who wear ponchos and shawls of the brightest colours, so that the scene was most picturesque. These markets are held in the open air, and almost everything that can be named is to be bought. Bread, meat, general provisions and stores, drugs, dyes, woollens, calicoes, and other stuffs of all kinds, pots, pans, and household implements, the stalls being all mixed up together, so that the market has a look as though the tradesmen of the town had emptied the contents of their shops out into the plaza. There are, however, no public horse or cattle fairs in Bolivia, the trade in animals being carried on quietly between the owners of the flocks of sheep and droves of oxen that one sees on the hills, and the butchers. The beasts are always killed, and their carcases dressed and cut up at public abattoirs outside the town, the meat being sold in the plazas or market-places, there being no butchers’ shops in any of the streets. The houses of Sacába are decently built in regular streets, but as the town is situated in a stony plain, the dust was very trying when a strong north wind was blowing. Our ride up to and through the town was done during a perfect dust-storm—so thick that it was necessary to tie our handkerchiefs over our faces, or we should, I think, have been suffocated. As for the people in the open plaza, they must have suffered severely, and their goods of a perishable nature must have been almost spoiled by the clouds of dust that passed over the town.