About two miles south of Puno is the establishment built by Mr. Begg, at the foot of the Laycaycota mountain, and facing the lake. The buildings stand round a long courtyard, containing four trees of the oliva silvestre, probably, as the only trees in the country, once carefully tended by the former English residents. There is a steam-engine which turns a large stone wheel, twelve feet in diameter, for grinding the ores; and the quicksilver was separated by the heat of fires of llama-dung and tola,[140] the only fuel to be had. In the house there were papered rooms, fire-grates, and English conveniences, now all in ruins, and the rooms used as stables for donkeys. At a short distance from Mr. Begg's ruined house, and a little higher up the mountain, is the entrance to the famous "Socabon de Vera Cruz" of the manto mine, commenced by the Marquis of Villa Rica, and finished by Mr. Begg. The "socabon" penetrates into the mountain, in a generally south-west direction, for a distance of a mile and a quarter; the first 900 yards having a depth of some feet of water, which is dammed up at a little distance outside the entrance. This part of the gallery is navigated by an iron canoe about a foot and a half wide; but the canal is so narrow that the canoe frequently grates on both sides at once against the rocks. The roof of the excavation, too, is very low, and several times we actually had to crouch down in the bottom of the canoe, to avoid knocking our heads. Thus we penetrated into the bowels of the earth by this subterranean navigation, with an Indian holding a burning torch in the bows. From the entrance, for about 300 yards, the excavation traverses a mass of grey porphyry. In the 900 yards of navigation there are six locks; and when the water terminates, the gallery continues for a hundred yards, where there is an iron tramway laid down. The metal was dragged down to the head of navigation in cars, by two old mules, one of which had not seen daylight for fifteen years when they ceased to work the mine. At the point where the tramway comes to an end, the gallery still continues for 1200 yards; but this part is very narrow and tortuous, and the metal was carried down to the cars on the backs of Indians. The rock at the extreme end of the excavation is a very hard green porphyry, with quartz and veins of silver ore.
The Cachi Vieja works are high up on the Laycaycota hill, and not far from the famous "Veta de la Candelaria." The mouth of the shaft is in a building opening on a courtyard, where women were sorting the ores in small heaps. The most abundant ore is called brosa, containing forty marcs of silver in the cajon of fifty quintals (cwts.); other ores are called rosicler, pavonado, and polvarilla. The rosicler, or ruby silver, is a most beautiful rose-coloured mineral, containing a considerable quantity of silver.[141]
Besides Cachi Vieja in the immediate vicinity of Puno, there are some very productive silver-mines at San Antonio de Esquilache, twenty miles south-west of that town, which have been worked since 1847 by Don Manuel Costas, one of the most influential citizens of Puno, and my host during my stay in that city.
Wool and silver are the great staple products of the department of Puno; the whole value of exported articles being about 1,200,000 dollars.[142] The population is rather under 300,000 souls; that of the town of Puno 9000.[143] Upwards of 1,500,000 dollars come into the department yearly, either in payments for wool, or in salaries for officials, without counting the expenditure for the troops; and it is calculated that more than half this sum eventually finds its way into the hands of the Indians, who bury it. Thus, in considering the mineral wealth of Peru, the enormous quantities of coined money, and vases or other articles made of the precious metals, which have been buried by the Indians, must be taken into consideration; for this practice has been going on since the time of the Incas. Now that the currency consists almost entirely of the debased half-dollars of Bolivia, if a Spanish dollar or any other good coin is accidently received by an Indian, it is immediately buried.
The principal people in Puno, during my visit, were General San Roman, in command of the army of the South, an old man with the face and head of a pure Indian, and plenty of white hair brushed off his forehead, who has been mixed up in all the wars since 1822, and from whom I received much information respecting the Indian rebellion of Tupac Amaru in 1780, and of Pumacagua in 1815; Señor Garces, the Prefect; Don Juan Francisco Oviedo; Don Manuel Costas; and Don Manuel Ferrandis, the proprietor of the mine on the Laycaycota hill. Every evening there was a party assembled at the house of the latter to drink coffee, and talk over the news of the day. On these occasions, amongst other topics of conversation, the possibility of forming a company for the navigation of lake Titicaca was frequently discussed. Costas had first been struck by the immense good that steam navigation on the lake would bring to the department of Puno in 1840, and in 1846 he purchased a small steamer called the 'Titicaca,' and had her sent out in pieces. He sold her to the Government, on condition that they would defray the expense of sending her up to the lake; but this was never done. It is considered that any steamers which may hereafter be ordered for this purpose should be about forty tons, drawing four and a half feet, with paddles (as a screw would inevitably foul amongst the rushes), and accommodation for passengers on deck. They would take all the products of the Bolivian forests, bark, timber, chocolate, coca, fruit, and arnotto, to Puno; European manufactured goods, sugar of Abancay, and aguardiente of the coast, from Puno to Bolivia; provisions and traffic of all kinds amongst the Indians of the shores; and copper of Coracora to Puno. Timber in vast quantities might be felled in the forests of Caravaya, and floated down the rivers of Azangaro and Ramiz during the rainy season, which, with the coal on the island of Soto, would furnish supplies of fuel. Markets and easy means of communication having been formed, the trade would rapidly increase on all sides. The face of the country would be entirely changed; the people, finding new wants, would become more civilised; and Puno, instead of a city with empty silent streets, and half a dozen balsas at its anchorage, would be a flourishing and busy port.[144] These bright prospects, however, will require time, and a total change in the political condition of Peru, for their realization in a somewhat distant future.
It is also a very important question whether larches, firs, and birch-trees might not be naturalized in the more sheltered ravines of these lofty treeless regions; where large plantations might be formed for the supply of timber and fuel. The Indians are now entirely dependent, for the framework of their roofs, on the crooked poles of the queñua tree (Polylepis tomentella); and for fuel on llama's dung and the tola shrubs (Baccharis). The winters, from May to September, are not nearly so cold as in Scotland, though very dry; and, during the summer or rainy season, though it is cold, there is plenty of moisture. The introduction of these plantations would change the whole face of the country, and the introducer would confer an inestimable blessing on the inhabitants.
I remained for some time at Puno, in order to collect information, and come to a determination respecting the best course to pursue in the performance of the service on which I was employed. The supply of the bark of Chinchona Calisaya trees is now entirely procured from the forests of Munecas, Apollobamba, Yuracares, Larecaja, Inquisivi, Ayopaya, and the yungus of La Paz in Bolivia; but I found that the difficulties in the way of making a collection of plants and seeds in these districts would be very great, and it afterwards turned out that these difficulties would have been insurmountable. As a considerable part of the revenue of Bolivia is derived from the bark trade, which is not the case in Peru, the Bolivians are exceedingly jealous of their monopoly; and the nature of my mission was already suspected. Moreover there was an imminent prospect of a war between Peru and Bolivia; a large army was massed in three divisions—at Puno under General San Roman, at Vilque under Beltran, and at Lampa under Frisancho; and, as soon as hostilities commenced, it would have been next to impossible for a private person to preserve his mules from seizure. This war did not actually take place, but Linares, the President of Bolivia, issued a decree on May 14th prohibiting all traffic, or the passage of travellers, from one country to the other;[145] a decree which was strictly enforced, and which would have rendered it impracticable at that time to have conveyed myself and companion, with laden mules, from Bolivia to the coast, without long delays and detentions. One of the pretexts for this threatened war is perhaps the most extraordinary that has ever been alleged in modern times; namely, that the Bolivian Government persisted in coining and deluging Peru with debased half-dollars. A strange way of settling a financial difficulty!
While these objections weighed against an attempt to collect plants in the forests of Bolivia, I found that, with regard to the chinchona forests of the Peruvian province of Caravaya, on the frontier of Peru and Bolivia, the facilities for such an enterprise would be much greater. I had reason to believe, though I afterwards found myself in error, that, as there was no bark trade in Peru of any importance,[146] no jealousy would be felt at the nature of my mission. Any hostile proceedings on the Bolivian frontier would not materially affect the route between the Caravaya forests and the coast; and, above all, Caravaya is much nearer and more accessible, as regards an available seaport, than any part of the chinchona forests of Bolivia. This latter point was of the very greatest importance, because success depended chiefly on the rapidity with which the plants could be conveyed across the frozen plains of the cordilleras. I knew from Dr. Weddell that, though the bark trade from Caravaya has now ceased, and bark from that district is of no market value, owing to a foolish habit of adulteration amongst speculators in former times, yet that young plants, and trees bearing fruit, of the Chinchona Calisaya, and other valuable species, were abundant in the forests of that province, as far north as the valley of Sandia.
I, therefore, after much anxious consideration, determined to proceed direct from Puno to the forests of Caravaya.
During my stay at Puno I had opportunities of examining some interesting ruins, and of collecting information respecting the Indian population of Peru, especially with regard to the great insurrections of Tupac Amaru and Pumacagua in 1780 and 1815. Much of this information is quite new; and I, therefore, trust that a description of ancient ruins near Puno, and an account of some of the most stirring events connected with the Indians since the Spanish conquest, may prove of sufficient general interest to justify a halt on the road to the chinchona forests, and a brief digression from the principal subject of the present work.