Across South America / An account of a journey from Buenos Aires to Lima by way of Potosí, with notes on Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru

by Hiram Bingham

Near the market-place is an interesting old church, its twin towers still in good repair. Services are rarely held here, and it was with some difficulty that

we succeeded in finding the sexton, who finally brought a large key and allowed us to see the historical pictures that hang on the walls of two of the chapels. They are of considerable interest and appeared to date from the sixteenth century. We commented on the fact that a large painting had recently been removed and were regaled with a story of how a foreign millionaire had bribed some prelate or other to sell him the treasured relic!

In the eighteenth century Potosí boasted of sixty churches but of these considerably more than half are now in ruins. The ruined portion of the city lies principally to the east and south. A few strongly built churches or church towers are still standing amid the remains of buildings that have tumbled down in heaps.

Several of the old convents and monasteries, however, are still in a flourishing condition. To us the chief interest consisted of their collections of fine old paintings and their beautiful flowers. Nothing was more refreshing in this mountainous desert than to walk in their lovely green gardens.

The principal object of interest in the city, however, is the Casa Nacional de Moneda, the great mint, which was begun in colonial days to receive the plunder that the Spaniards took out of the hill by means of the forced labor of their Indian slaves. It covers two city blocks, and is really a collection of buildings covered by a massive roof and surrounded by a high wall with only one entrance. The front is striking. At regular intervals along the roof are little stone ornaments like funeral urns. The few windows are carefully guarded with iron bars. On either side of the elaborately decorated façade of the two-storied portal are wooden balconies over which projects the heavily timbered roof covered with large red tiles.

As one enters the great building from the street and passes between heavy doors into a large courtyard, the first thing that attracts one’s attention is an enormous face, four feet in diameter, which looks down at the intruder from over an archway that leads to a second courtyard. The gigantic face has a malicious grin yet bears a distinct resemblance to Bacchus. Who put it here and what it signifies does not seem to be known. Suffice it to say that many of the Quichuas before starting on a journey, come to this courtyard and make obeisance to the face, throwing down in front of it a quid of coca leaves just as they used to do to the rising sun in the time of the Incas.

The courtyard is surrounded by an arcade with massive arches over which runs the carved wooden balustrade of the second-story balcony. In the second patio, which is also paved with cut stones, a tiny narrow-gauge railway is used to carry silver ingots from the treasure-room to the stamping-machines. In one of the buildings is a physics laboratory. In another a little gymnasium. In still a third, a collection of minerals. All of which are evidences that here are the beginnings of a school of mines that is being built up under the able direction of an intelligent young Bolivian engineer who received his training at Notre Dame University in the United States. In one old building are still standing the great wooden machines that were formerly used in the process of hammering out the silver. In a large room on the second floor of another building are kept the vellum-bound records of the mint and all the dies which have been used for the past two hundred years. According to the records, the value of the silver taken from here in the colonial days amounted to about one billion dollars. Most of the stamping was done by hand. The Bolivian government has cleared out two or three of the buildings and installed modern machinery, imported from the United States.

One of the most remarkable features of the mint is the size and condition of the huge timbers that support the roof. They are as sound to-day as they were two hundred years ago when, with infinite labor, they were brought across the mountains from the distant forests of the Chaco.