Up the Amazon and Madeira rivers, through Bolivia and Peru

by Edward D. Mathews

The next scheme was one brought forward by one Captain Greenleaf Cilley, a retired commander of the United States navy, who had married in Buenos Ayres a lady descended from one Oliden, who received a concession of lands from Bolivia nearly fifty years ago, and whose name is still recorded on all the maps of the republic. These lands are high and well-suited for the cultivation of coffee or cocoa, and Captain Cilley hoped to be able to attract emigration to them, if he could obtain a concession for a railway and funds wherewith to construct it. He therefore asked for a concession to construct a railway from Santa Cruz to the territory of “Otuquis,” on the upper waters of the river of the same name, an affluent of the river Paraguay, and in which the Oliden lands are situated. The length of this proposed line would probably be not less than 300 miles, and Captain Cilley, who estimated the cost of construction at £8000 per mile, asked for a guarantee of seven per cent. on the expenditure, and for two leagues of land on either side of the line. But even Bolivia was not reckless enough to promise a guarantee on such an enormous capital, and this scheme has also gone to the region of cloudland.

The fourth and last scheme was “invented and arranged” by Dr. Reyes Cardona, some time minister to the court of St. James, and to the Brazilian court at Rio Janeiro. This enterprising statesman proposed a colossal scheme of railroads, commencing at Bahia Negra on the Paraguay, crossing the deserts of Izozo to Santa Cruz, and thence passing by Sucre on to La Paz. The doctor wrote pamphlet after pamphlet and paper after paper concerning the merits of this vague scheme, but the only settled idea that he seemed to have was to seize the funds belonging to the Madeira and Mamoré Railway. In what part of the grand scheme of internal railways for Bolivia the fund was to be spent did not appear to be of much consequence, so that it was handed over to the doctor, to be dealt with as his much-vaunted “honor, talento, y patriotismo” should direct.

These numerous and spasmodic efforts to obtain an outlet for trade in an eastern direction, made by Bolivians themselves, prove satisfactorily that the proper route for the commerce of the country is acknowledged to be one that shall lead to the Atlantic Ocean. Whether this route should be down the Paraguay or the Amazon is, in my opinion, sufficiently well determined in favour of the latter river, whose affluents spring from the richest slopes of the republic, and flow through its most fertile plains. Whatever opposition there is in Bolivia to the opening of an eastward trade route, is kept up by a small minority of interested parties, principally some of the leading merchants of La Paz and Tacna, who see in the success of the eastward route a break-up of the monopoly of trade that they have so long enjoyed, and a consequent probable diminution of their profits. Another influence retarding the development of the trade of Bolivia, is the jealousy that exists between the principal towns, and which, instead of finding vent in a healthy competition of trade, occupies itself with any sort of project calculated to hinder the legitimate progress of one town or province above its neighbours. The Paceños are, as a rule, very jealous of the growth of Cochabamba, and of the importance that will accrue to that town from the opening of an eastward route; and many of the deputies of the La Paz provinces have systematically voted against enterprises whose realization would improve the condition of the eastern provinces: but in the Congress of 1874 three deputies, Dr. Belisario Salinas of La Paz, and Señores Roman and Merisalde of the Yungas of La Paz, deserve to be mentioned as having emancipated themselves from these narrow ideas, preferring to assist in the general development and welfare of their country, rather than restrain their efforts to the benefit only of their own immediate provinces.

One of the most talented ministers that the republic ever possessed, Don Rafael Bustillo, writing to the Brazilian government in 1863, described in forcible language the position of his country. “Bolivia,” he wrote, “occupies a territory entirely central in the vast continent of South America. She has but five degrees of latitude on the Pacific Coast, and even this is disputed, in part, by the Republic of Chili. (This five degrees has been reduced to two and a half by the treaty of 1874, and one almost certain result of the war now being carried on by Bolivia and Peru against Chili, will be that Bolivia will lose all her seaboard; for if Chili prove victorious, she will certainly annex the whole of the desert of Atacama, whilst if Bolivia and Peru succeed in their ill-advised enterprise, Bolivia will probably have to cede the same much-coveted territory to Peru in payment for her assistance.) Bolivia is seated upon the masses of silver of the double range of the Andes. She has a territory fertile beyond measure, where the treasures of the most opposite climates are grouped together. With all this, Bolivia perishes from consumption for want of methods of communication which may carry to the markets of the world her valuable productions, and stimulate her sons to labour and industry.” These words, which forcibly depict the condition and requirements of the republic, are almost household words in the country; yet, although they are well known and thoroughly appreciated, the interests of the monopolizing merchants of the Pacific seaboard have hitherto been powerful enough to preserve the isolation of Bolivia, which they have only allowed to be communicated with through their narrow toll-gates of Arica, Tacna, and La Paz. The only certain means of providing efficient modes of transport for the, at present, useless riches of the country, lie on its eastern side, for nature has declared that the route to Europe shall not be a western one; and the navigation of the Madeira and Amazon Rivers, when the railway of the rapids is completed, will offer a more speedy and economic transport than can be afforded by any scheme having the river Paraguay for its basis. In regard to time, the Madeira and Mamoré Railway can with ease despatch its freights from the port of San Antonio to Europe in twenty-eight days or possibly less, whilst the Paraguayan route from Bahia Negra to Europe will occupy at least forty. In reference to cost, the Madeira and Mamoré Railway offers to carry a ton of freight from the centres of Bolivia to the markets of Europe for £15, whilst the lowest estimate by the Paraguayan route was that of £26 per ton, proposed in 1858 for the navigation of the Vermejo.

Another reason for the present deplorable condition of the country may be found in the absolute non-existence of any financial talent, or even ordinary knowledge of national account-keeping amongst the ministers and officials in power of late years. This has been thoroughly exposed in the matter of the loan raised in London in 1872; and if the shortcomings of the officials of the finance department are not to be set down to want of knowledge, they must be charged to want of candour or straightforwardness. In the financial accounts for 1873 the debt appears as 8,500,000 Bolivian dollars, or £1,700,000, the correct nominal amount of the loan; and although no notice is taken of the operation of the sinking fund, which by the end of 1873 had paid off a first drawing of £34,000, there is in the estimated outgoings of the treasury a credit taken for the service of a loan of £2,000,000.

The national receipts at the time the country gained its independence amounted to 2,500,000 of hard dollars, and in 1873 were as nearly as possible of similar amount, being 2,566,034 Bolivian dollars, or say £513,207, showing clearly the state of stagnation in which the country has vegetated during its fifty years of independence. In the same year the minister of finance declared a required expenditure of 3,660,679 dollars, or say £732,135, thus showing a deficit of £218,928; and, nevertheless, the minister did not propose to Congress any plan for equalizing the national accounts; whilst it is a fact that in the Congress of 1874 not one proposal, either financial or political, except the treaty with Chili, emanated from the ministry. In the ministerial statement of the national finances, or budget, for 1874 one sees at a glance that there is no effort made to equalize income and expenditure, for not much more than £20,000 per annum is got from the Bolivian people by any kind of direct taxation.

Customs’ rentals cannot be expected to increase until the completion of the Madeira and Mamoré Railway creates new entries on the eastern side of the republic, for Peru only can benefit by any growth of commerce on the western side, having stipulated with Bolivia that it shall only pay her £81,000 per annum out of the receipts of the port of Arica. It seems certain, therefore, that direct taxation must be resorted to, and as there is no individual poverty visible in the country, there is no reason why the government should not be able to show easily a fair balance-sheet, which should meet the current wants of the nation, and provide honourably for the service of the public debt.

It is not, perhaps, too much to say that the realization of the joint enterprises of the Madeira and Mamoré Railway, and the National Bolivian Navigation Company, will change the entire character, not only of the eastern provinces of Bolivia, but also of the republic itself; whilst, at the same time, the Brazilian provinces of Matto Grosso and the Amazons will be most materially benefited. It may, in the case of Bolivia, seem absurd to say that its mineral wealth can ever appreciably decrease; and, certainly, such an assertion must, to any one that has passed over the highly metalliferous districts of Potosí, Oruro, and the whole central plain of the country, appear entirely groundless; but the examples of California and Australia teach us, that though mineral discoveries are the first cause of the creation and settlement of new countries, it is the development of their agricultural and industrial resources that causes them to take rank amongst the nations of the world: and this it is that Colonel Church’s enterprises will do for Bolivia, for there can be no doubt but that their realization will place Bolivia in the foremost rank of the republics of South America. No scheme that has for its object the opening-up of the country on any other sides than its northern and eastern can effect this result; for there alone exist immense plains and tracts of country suitable for any kind of agriculture or cattle-rearing. On the western side, the barren and inaccessible heights of the Andes forbid any attempts at settling, while the southern and eastern territory of the Gran Chaco is a cheerless swamp, never capable of affording a home to other than the irreclaimable savage, or the wild animals of the fast-decreasing forests of the continent.

Few, perhaps, are the enterprises that can hope to create and unfold such vast industries as those found in the districts to be benefited by the opening of the Amazonian route to the interior of the continent; for as the traveller descends, in an eastward journey, from the barren summits of the Andean Mountains, he will find that the railway will prove the outlet, not only for the mineral riches of Bolivia, her wools, hides, and other animal products, the cinchona bark (cascarilla), and other drugs, dyes, and commercial values of her unexplored forests, but also for the agricultural riches that already exist in considerable scale on the descending plateaux of her eastern plains. At altitudes of 12,000 feet, barley and potatoes are grown; at 9000 to 6000, corn, potatoes, apples, pears, and all kinds of fruits; at 6000 to 2000, coffee, coca, cocoa, and plantains; and from 2000 to the plains, cocoa, plantains, sugar-cane, maize, mandioc, arrowroot, yams, tobacco, and other tropical products. The republic, therefore, in addition to the speculative allurements of mineral wealth, can hold forth substantial inducements to the breeder of stock, or the tiller of the soil; and there is no doubt that the character of the people will improve when, through facilities of communication, remunerative work is afforded them, for Bolivians, whether of Indian or Spanish extraction, are very industrious, differing greatly in this respect from the inhabitants of many other countries of South America.