Notwithstanding our two accidents we arrived at Oruro about five o’clock in the evening, after a journey of nine hours, on time!
We found the Government House surrounded by throngs of people. Presently a company of infantry marched through the streets from their barracks and took up a position in the courtyard. The occasion was the death of the major who, six weeks before, had read the proclamation in the streets and now had just died after an illness of twenty-four hours.
The scene at the railroad station the next morning at eight o’clock, when I left Oruro to return to La Paz, was characteristic. The local regiment was drawn up in front of the train after having escorted the remains of their major from the Prefecture. Several hundred citizens thronged the platform and tried to crowd into the cars. Friends of the deceased major and his family, men and women, were weeping loudly, and some of the women uttered piercing shrieks and wild cries. Altogether, it was rather trying.
The plain over which we passed for a good part of the journey was very flat, treeless, and covered only with small, scrubby growth. At one station we were met by thirty or forty Indians who had brought bundles of fagots, dry brush from the neighboring mountains. These they piled onto a flat car and carried down the line to one of the new settlements which have sprung up near the tracks, and which depend on the trains for both fuel and fresh water. The latter is carried in tank cars, like oil.
At the principal stations, a dozen or more Aymará women, seated in a long line on the ground, offered for sale chicha, cakes, buns, and little pears, brought from the fruitful valleys far to the eastward.
The only part of the road that offered any attractive scenery was that near the river Viscachani, an affluent of the Desaguadero. Near Ayoayo, there are a number of ancient tombs east of the track. Some of them have been opened by the railroad people and artificially flattened skulls found. The railroad men told us that when they were building the line they saw many vicuñas and biscachas, but these have now almost entirely disappeared.
We stopped for lunch at a little station whose new adobe buildings and corrugated iron roofs told of railroad enterprise. The restaurant was kept by a pleasant American, who did his best to please all of his patrons, but chiefly the railroad “boys” on whom he depends for most of his income. On my way down to Oruro, I had had the good fortune to sit at the same table with part of the train crew, but this time the two seats nearest me were occupied by Bolivian army officers who were as rude and ill-mannered as possible. If I had introduced myself as a delegado they would have been the pink of politeness. Any one connected with the Government would be sure to receive their kind attention. But, so far as they could see, I was simply an American traveller. Accordingly they proceeded to act as though they owned the restaurant and everything in it, presuming that I would be glad enough to get whatever they chose to leave. There is, however, a certain relief in avoiding the excessive attentions which such men as these bestow on any one with a government “pull,” and it was instructive to see how they behave toward foreigners who were apparently travelling without official recognition. It enabled me the better to appreciate the different attitude that is taken toward South Americans by distinguished foreign visitors who are in the hands of attentive friends during their entire stay, and by casual travellers who have failed to fortify themselves with official letters of introduction. I do not mean to imply that one who merely wishes to visit the chief centres of interest will fail to be comfortable unless he supplies himself with important looking documents tied with red tape and sealed with a great seal, but I do know from personal experience that such a preparation can give one, in at least eleven Latin-American republics, a very different impression of the country and of the courtesy of its inhabitants.
There does not seem to be much likelihood of any large amount of traffic being developed along this desolate plateau. The railroad must depend for its freight on foreign merchandise coming to La Paz via Oruro and the port of Antofagasta. As it has a longer haul than that of its competitor, the Peruvian Southern from Mollendo to Puno, it will have some difficulty in getting much of this. Furthermore, there is the new Chilean government railroad now under construction, a direct line to La Paz from the port of Arica. When that is finished, it is difficult to say how the line from Oruro to La Paz can secure enough freight to pay expenses. There will always be a certain amount of passenger traffic, but at present one train, three times a week, is amply sufficient.
A branch of the Bolivia Railway is now in course of construction from Oruro to Cochabamba, which will bring to La Paz the food and coca cultivated in the warm valleys northeast of Sucre where frost is unknown and there is an abundance of rain. There is an imperative demand for coca all over the plateau where it cannot possibly grow. Furthermore it does not keep well, loses its flavor after four or five months, and fresh supplies have to be brought continually from the eastern valleys. This makes it an important article of commerce to be reckoned as one of the surest sources of revenue for the Bolivia Railway.
Shortly before reaching Viacha we passed a truncated hill, the Pan de Sucre, that has been a favorite camping-ground in revolutionary wars. It is easily defended and its summit is spacious enough to furnish refuge for quite a number of troops. On the hills west of it, romantically perched on an almost inaccessible peak, is a little church where services are held once a year. To the eastward we could begin to see the magnificent snow-range of the Bolivian Andes. Words fail to describe adequately the grandeur of the Cordillera Real with its two hundred and fifty miles of snow-capped mountains, scarcely one of which lies at a lesser elevation than twenty thousand feet. It must be seen to be appreciated. Still, one can get a very vivid impression of it in the pages of Sir Martin Conway’s fascinating “Climbing and Exploration in the Bolivian Andes.”