Just before reaching Quirve, we crossed the Tumusla River, the site of the last battle of the Bolivian wars of independence. After Sucre’s great victory at Ayacucho, in 1824, the only Spanish troops which remained unconquered in all South America were the garrison of Callao and a small band under General Ollaneta in southern Bolivia. His men were badly disaffected by the news of the battle of Ayacucho, and an officer who commanded a small garrison at this strategic point, came out openly for the patriotic cause. Ollaneta tried in vain to suppress the revolt. The result was a battle here on the first of April, 1825, in which the Spanish general was defeated and slain. The garrison of Callao held out for a few months longer, but this was the end of active warfare.
We found the tambo of Quirve to be of the most primitive sort, not even affording shelter for man or beast. The weekly Potosí stage-coach came in from the north about six o’clock carrying one passenger. He soon spread his bed under the wagon and made himself comfortable for the night. The luggage from Potosí was shipped on pack-animals and was in charge of an Argentine Gaucho named Fermin Chaile. This man we took in exchange for Mac, whom we were glad enough to get rid of. Fermin, the Gaucho, tall and gaunt, round-shouldered and bow-legged, his dark Mongolian-like features crowned by a mop of coarse, black hair, proved to be a god-send. His loose-fitting suit of brown corduroys, far better raiment than most arrieros can afford, bore witness to the fact that he was sober, industrious, and trustworthy. No one ever had a better muleteer. Like Rafael Rivas, the faithful Venezuelan peon who had guided my cart across the Llanos in 1907, he took excellent care of the mules, yet drove them almost to the limit of their endurance, was devoted to us, and proved to be reliable and attentive. He was a plainsman, as different in spirit and achievement from the wretched mountaineers through whose country we were passing, as though he had belonged to a different continent.
As we continued northward from Quirve, the valley grew narrower and our road continued to be in the dry river course. All the water that was visible was collected in little ditches and conducted along the hillsides fifteen or twenty feet above the bed of the stream. On some of the hillsides of this valley are terraces or andines where maize, quinoa, potatoes, and even grapes are made to grow, with much painstaking labor. These terraces, common enough farther north, were the first we had seen. The staple food of the Indians is chuno, a small potato that has been put through a freezing process until its natural flavor is completely lost. One of the principal dishes at this time of the year is the fruit of the cactus. Everybody seems to be very fond of the broad-leaved edible species, a thornless variety of which we are developing in Arizona and New Mexico.
Farther up the valley I was struck by the ingenuity which had been exercised in carrying the irrigation ditches along the side of precipitous cliffs. Numerous little tunnels, connected by small viaducts, enabled a tiny stream of water to travel three or four miles until it reached a level space sufficiently above highwater mark to warrant the planting of a small field. The only animals to be seen beside mules and horses, goats, pigs, dogs, and a very few birds, were the little wild guinea-pigs of a color closely resembling the everlasting brown hills. I was surprised not to see any llamas.
Soon after leaving Quirve, we came to the little village of Toropalca, in every way as brown and dusty as the guinea-pigs. In fact, it melted into the landscape as perfectly as they did.
About noon we reached another hillside village, Saropalca, its houses placed so closely one above another on the steep slope as to give the appearance of a giant stairway. We climbed up through the irregular lanes of the little village, until we found a wretched little tambo where we bought a few bundles of alfalfa and a bowl of soup.
Whenever we could secure sufficient alfalfa for the mules and a bowl of hot chupe for ourselves in addition to the customary pot of hot water for our tea, we considered ourselves most fortunate and were willing to admit that the poste was well provided with “all the necessaries of life.” Chupe is a kind of stew or thick soup consisting of frozen potatoes and tough mutton or llama meat. In its natural state, its taste is disagreeable enough, but when it is served to the liking of the natives it is seasoned so highly with red pepper as to be far too fiery for foreign palates.
In the course of the afternoon, the valley narrowed to a gorge in which we passed more heavily-laden mule-carts making their way along with the utmost difficulty. Beyond the gorge we found sulphur springs and some banks of sulphur. One of the hot springs gushed up close by the roadside. “El Lazarillo,” the eighteenth century Baedeker, says there was once a “modest thermal establishment” here, intended to attract bathers from Potosí.
At the end of the day we reached Caisa, after having made nearly forty miles since morning. Caisa is an old Spanish town and looks like all the rest. One-story houses, narrow streets, badly paved, a city block left open for a plaza, on one side of it a church and the house of the priest, on the other three sides, a few shops where we bought newly-baked hot bread, beer, cheese, and candles. The tambo was called “La Libertad” and bore the legend “Muy barato” (very cheap). We surmised this meant that the proprietor would charge all the traffic would bear; and such proved to be the case. In fact, we had a very disagreeable dispute with the landlady the next morning. Fermin indignantly declared she had tripled the usual prices.
At Caisa the road from Argentina to Sucre branches off to the right, going due north to Puna and thence to Yotala, where it joins the road from Potosí to Sucre.