VI
BOLIVIA
In the heart of the continent a vast table of land as large as all our Middle States has been crowded up into the air by some titanic convulsion to a height of more than two miles, or fourteen thousand feet. The surface in many places is deeply encrusted with salt, suggesting the upheaval of a great mediterranean sea and a spilling of its waters over the succession of terraced slopes that finally break off abruptly and merge in the summer valleys of Brazil and Paraguay; for from these heights innumerable streams shimmer off toward the distant Amazon.
The plateau is hemmed in by the Cordillera de la Costa (the coast range) and the Cordillera Real, the main range, on the east, and is intersected in various directions by cross-sections, the whole producing a topography of a grandeur that makes all attempts at description pitifully inadequate. The majestic snow-clad peaks of Guallatiri and Miniquis in the coast range, and Illampú (Sorata), Illimani, Chachacomani, and Karkaake in the Cordillera Real rise to a height of over 22,000 feet. A dozen more in both ranges exceed 20,000. On the northwestern border along the Peruvian frontier, lies Lake Titicaca, unique also in that it is the highest navigated body of water on the globe. It is 160 miles long by thirty wide and is fed by the melting Andean snows.
This plateau is the center of Bolivia’s life to-day, as it was the cradle of successive aboriginal civilizations that finally culminated many centuries ago in the Inca empire. It is the highest inhabited land on the face of the earth, with the possible exception of Tibet. The evidence at every hand of nature’s tremendous activities must have left its impress on the races that formerly had their being here. The gigantic relics which are now the enduring monuments of these peoples are proof of the bigness of their point of view. They saw largely and the range of their vision embraced great distances, great altitudes, and great depths. There is evidence also that the newly awakened present race will prove worthy of its surroundings.
The people now inhabiting this great Andean Massif have in their veins the blood of both the intrepid Conquistadores and the hardy Aymara and Inca stock, and it is in the nature of things that the present-day Bolivian, now that his republicanism is established after a century of turbulent assimilation, will make great strides in industrial progress in justification of the spirit that is his birthright. In this altitude, so high that at first most foreigners suffer from its effects, the Bolivians have built their capital and chief cities. Here the first blow was struck against the oppression of Spain, and in the mountain defiles of the Peruvian Andes leading down to the Pacific coast the last shot was fired that drove the viceregal army to its transports. With the departure of the Spanish came the establishment, in 1825, of the Republic of Bolivia, the name given to the old Buenos Airean province of Alto-Peru by its first president, Bolívar’s famous lieutenant, General Sucré, in honor of his chief.
Bolivia is fourth in size among the South American republics. It covers 708,195 square miles, and could include within its limits the combined areas of California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington. The republic lies wholly within the torrid zone, but the gradation of its topography extends from the yungas (“hot valleys”) at the border of the Amazon basin to the punas, or high table-lands, ranging from four to fourteen thousand feet, so that animal and vegetable life of every clime is represented—from the brilliantly colored flamingo and butterfly of the Amazon plains to the dread condor of the Andes; from the rubber tree, through all stages of arborial and plant life, to the little yellow bitter potato, grown near the point at which vegetation vanishes in the Arctic cold of the higher peaks.
Of course, the shortest and most direct route to Bolivia’s capital and chief cities is by rail from either of the Pacific ports of Mollendo, in Peru, or Arica or Antofagasta, in Chile. The quick change of view from the arid coast to the grandeur of Andean mountain scenery, and the familiar comforts of railway travel incline most visitors to the approach from one of those points. But, as the greater part of Bolivia’s territory is that which falls away from the plateau, like a lady’s train, northward and eastward to the frontiers of Brazil and Paraguay, a more comprehensive and impressive acquaintance with the country can be had by entering either from the north, via the Amazon and Maderia rivers to Villa Bella on the Brazilian frontier, and thence over a thousand miles on horseback to La Paz, or from the east, starting from our last resting place at Asunción in Paraguay. From Asunción one travels up the Paraguay River to Corumbá in Brazil, thence, by a small affluent to Puerto Suárez, eighty-one miles distant on the frontier, thence by a zigzag course of eight hundred miles up the rising elevation to Santa Cruz, a thriving city of 20,000 population, and thence to Cochabamba, still larger and 8000 feet in altitude. From here there is a stage line over one hundred and ten miles of mountainous country to Oruro, where connection is made with the Antofagasta-La Paz railway to the capital.
Or one may go by railroad from Buenos Aires via Rosario, Cordoba and Tucumán to La Quiaca on the frontier and then north for only two hundred miles by stage-coach to Uyuni, through which the Antofagasta-La Paz line passes on its way to the capital. But, in any event, the approach from the east or north richly repays the visitor for the time consumed and discomfort he may have to undergo on the way. The noted naturalist, D’Aubigny, says of the yungas region, through which one must first make his way on leaving the Paraguay: “If tradition has lost the records of the place where Paradise is situated, the traveler who visits these regions of Bolivia feels at once the impulse to exclaim, ‘Here is the lost Eden.’”
Leaving the dense and weirdly impressive tropical forests of the hinterland, the rolling areas of the yungas ascend toward the plateau—a succession of vast gardens delicately scented and brilliant with color. As the country is coming more under cultivation each year the traveler’s eye rests frequently upon plantations of coffee, cacao, and coca, the plant from which we get cocaine. The coca leaf is highly prized by the native as a stimulant; he chews it as a Northerner would chew tobacco but with a better excuse, since by its use he can perform great feats of endurance and go many hours without food. With his pouch filled with coca leaves and a small supply of parched Indian corn, he can run fifty miles a day, for these fleet-footed Indians constitute the telegraph system of this region. The output of the cocales, or coca plantations, was nearly nine million pounds last year.