This is also the home of the highly nutritious if impossibly named jamacch’ppeke plant, which, when dried and powdered and mixed with water, produces a delicately flavored milk much used in hospitals and even for babies. Higher up in the valle zone wheat and corn fields may be seen as well as the famous chincona tree, so named because, in 1638, the Condesa de Chinchon (wife of the Peruvian Viceroy) wrote of her wonderful cure from malaria by an Indian draught prepared from the bark of this tree. It has been known since as chincona or Peruvian bark, but it was not until 1820 that the French chemist, Pelletier, extracted from the tree the calisaya or quinine with which we are now familiar, and which, by the way, is said to be one of the two or three natural specifics ever yet discovered for disease.
On these slopes also grows the new substitute for wheat, quinua, a grain more nutritious and more cheaply produced than its northern prototype, also the delicious camote, a delicately flavored type of sweet potato, the palta, known in Cuba and Mexico as the aguacate and in Florida as the alligator pear, which makes the rich salad, and all variations of the sweet, pulpy fruits like the pomegranate, granadilla, capote, etc. This is also one of the homes of the nutmeg, olive, and castor bean, and of sugar, cotton, oranges, cinnamon, vanilla, saffron, indigo, and ginger; also of a remarkable variety of medicinal plants: for instance, those from which are derived aconite, arnica, absinthe, belladonna, camphor, quassia, cocaine, digitalis, gentian, ginger, ipecaque, jalap, opium, sarsaparilla, tamarind, tolu and valerian. The Indians of this belt are the most artistic leather workers in the world, and their beautiful ponchos (a sort of circular cape the mountaineers wear, with a hole in the center for the head to go through), woven from native silk, are eagerly sought by all visitors.
Leaving this richly endowed agricultural region for the still richer location of Bolivia’s mineral wealth, the traveler ascends to the great plateau on which the capital and important cities are built. At Potosí one is in the heart of the great silver country. From one mountain here, the Cerro de Potosí itself, over three billion dollars’ worth of silver has been taken since its discovery in 1545. The luxury and almost unbelievable extravagance told of in the annals of this city have given it a world-wide fame. Its principal building, the mint, cost the then unprecedented sum of two million dollars, an expenditure that brought many qualms to the miserly ascetic, Philip II, who would have preferred to pour the flood of wealth into the coffers of the church. The author of “Don Quixote” refers to Potosí as the synonym for fabulous wealth, and there is hardly a writer of the early days of the colony who did not mention the silver mountain to illustrate the idea of lavish abundance. In those days silver was regarded as equally valuable with gold.
Bolivia’s marvelous wealth in tin is unexcelled even in the Malay Peninsula. Already one of the chief centers of the tin industry, this metal promises to bring to the twentieth-century Bolivia as much commercial fame as the gold mines brought Alto-Peru in the sixteenth century. Copper, iron, lead and bismuth, as well as topazes, emeralds, opals, jasper, and marble, are also present in large quantities throughout the plateau.
After descending from Potosí, which is at an altitude of 15,380 feet, one should visit the white city of Sucré before proceeding to the present seat of government, La Paz. In Bolivia the name of Sucré is as omnipresent as Bolívar’s in Venezuela and Colombia, and most naturally when the new republic was formed the name of its chief city, Charcas, was changed to Sucré to honor the hero of Ayacucho—Antonio José de Sucré—when this “right hand” of Bolívar became its first president. The city is ancient, kindly, and romantically beautiful in its setting on the eastern slope of the royal range, and once, under a law enacted some eighty years ago, it was the capital.
SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF CAPACABANA, ON BOLIVIAN SHORE OF LAKE TITICACA.
TOWN AND MOUNTAIN OF POTOSÍ, BOLIVIA.
Its extreme altitude, however, made impossible the cosmopolitanism that must pertain to a capital city—the foreign diplomats in most cases refused to reside there because of the severity of the siroche, or mountain sickness, that nearly always assails the newcomer to these altitudes. So the seat of government was removed to La Paz, and now it is the tribunal of the Supreme Court and Archiepiscopal see only. Here also are located the University of San Francisco Xavier and the homes of many of Bolivia’s most aristocratic families. Thus far, modernism has had a beneficial influence on the city in many respects, but has not changed its appearance. Its public works have made it healthful and comfortable, but its stately old dwellings and public buildings preserve their peculiar charm unaltered to suit the modern architectural taste.