CHAPTER XVIII
WAYFARING IN BOLIVIA—THE ROYAL ANDES
Old Spanish Trail from Argentina—Customs Outpost at Majo—Sublime Mountain View—Primitive Native Life—Sunbeaten Limestone Hills—Vale of Santa Rosa—Tupiza’s People and Their Pursuits—Ladies’ Fashions among the Indian Women—Across the Chichas Cordilleras—Barren Vegetation—Experience with Siroche, or Mountain Sickness—Personal Discomforts—Hard Riding—Portugalete Pass—Alpacas and Llamas—Sierra of San Vicente—Uyuni a Dark Ribbon on a White Plain—Mine Enthusiasts—Foreign Consulates.
I JOURNEYED into Bolivia, the heart of South America, from northern Argentina with pack animals over the old Inca and Spanish trail. The Pacific coast routes for reaching the imprisoned country are by the railroad from Mollendo to Lake Titicaca, and then across the lake and by the little railway from Guaqui to La Paz; by the railroad from Arica to Tacna, and from Tacna by mules to Corocoro, whence a stage may be had to La Paz, 60 miles farther on; and by the railroad from Antofagasta to Oruro, 575 miles, and then by stage to La Paz, 160 miles.
The ancient and historic route from the Atlantic is the one that is followed in the prolongation of the Argentina Railway lines, and in joining the new Bolivian links so as to form a complete section in the Intercontinental or Pan-American system from Buenos Ayres to Lake Titicaca. From Jujuy, 1,000 miles distant from Buenos Ayres, up through northern Argentina, the course is in a double funnel along the great cañon, or quebrada, of Humahuaca. The trail widens in the valley of Tupiza, and then contracts from Tupiza west and north into difficult mountain passes through the Chichas Cordilleras and the sierras of San Vicente, until the Altiplanicie, or great Bolivian table-land that lies between the granitic Oriental, or Royal, Cordilleras and the volcanic Occidental, or Western, Cordilleras, is reached.
The boundary between Argentina and Bolivia is the Quiaca River. The town of La Quiaca on the Argentine side is the frontier custom house. On the Bolivian border is a big ranch with a row of willow trees. There is a fair road through an alternation of gravelly mountain-sides and rounded tops. The first Bolivian settlement is Majo in the valley, an adobe village of a few hundred inhabitants. This place is the customs outpost. Majo has a government post, or inn, which is called a tambo. The tambo consists of a corral for the animals and an adobe hut for the accommodation of strangers. Lodging is free. The traveller spreads his blankets on the earth floor or on the mud benches along the wall. The innkeeper, who is a government official, provides him with food. I got chicken, rice, and bread, which was luxurious feasting after ten days’ hardships. Fodder was supplied the animals at a fair charge, and a smithy, which was part of the inn, was free for the use of the arriero, or muleteer.
It was September when I was at Majo. At five o’clock in the afternoon the thermometer marked 76° Fahrenheit, and at seven o’clock, when the sun had gone down, it marked 46.5°, a noticeable change. At mid-day at this season the temperature was about 86°. In the early morning before sunrise I had broken a film of ice on one of the rivulets in a sequestered gulch.
But Bolivia is not seen from the little valley in which the hamlet of Majo lies. After two hours of going down and up steep hills the eminence on the edge of an extensive gorge is reached. It is the first view of the Royal Andes and their sierras. A sublime sight it is. The change from the arid, half-desert scenery is startling. The mountains in the foreground lie in irregular, transverse black and gray masses, and through the mists the fleecy peaks and pinnacled precipices are visible. The dominating one is Guadalupe, 18,870 feet above sea-level, the Pike’s Peak of Bolivia. Closer at hand the sierras are covered with some appearance of vegetation,—pale green cacti and russet brown thorn-bushes or acacias. I followed the ravine down along the banks of the dried-up river, which was bordered with pepper trees and willows. In this valley are a number of attractive small farms. After leaving it there is another hill climb. Yuruma, the hill village, is a dilapidated collection of adobe cabins.
Genuine Bolivian life, the primitive and patriarchal existence, I encountered in the villages of Nazarene and Suipacha. They lie on either side of the Grand, or San Juan, River, which is easily forded in the dry season. It was a rural scene that would have delighted the poet or the philosopher who wants to go back to Nature. Nothing more tranquil in all the world than this secluded nook in the Andes. The women were washing clothes in the streams, the men and boys were working in the fields, the flocks of sheep and cattle grazed placidly in the valley and on the hillside, and everybody had a respectful greeting to the stranger, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in the Quichua tongue. The donkeys wandered about bearing clay water-jars and apparently without a driver until a small and wrinkled old man with most wonderfully patched and brilliantly colored trousers, screamed to them, and they stopped where a customer waited. The cabins were of adobe, or unbaked brick. Some were quite neat and were half hidden in gardens surrounded by mud walls covered with thorn-bushes.
I never met so many very old people as in these two primitive villages. Far from the carking cares and ambitions of the world, they follow their uneventful course until the sands of life literally run out. In front of one cabin was an old woman crooning over her bowl of porridge. She appeared to me a vitalized mummy. I reined my mule before a dwelling a little farther on and asked, “What is the age of la viejicita (the little old woman)?” “We don’t know, sir,” replied the occupant, civilly. “We think she is more than one hundred and fifteen years old. Her great-grandchildren say she is one hundred and twenty-five.” I might doubt the family records of the crone as preserved by the great-grandchildren, yet seeing her it was easy to believe that her life may have spanned three centuries,—born in the late years of the eighteenth and stretching through the nineteenth into the twentieth,—for she certainly was more than one hundred. When the Bolivian census was taken a few years ago, the enumerators reported 1,261 persons whose age passed the century mark, and many of these centenarians dwelt in this San Juan valley.
The gold-hunters at various times have ruffled the placid life of the inhabitants. A ledge of quartz cropping out from the side of the sierra near Suipacha has been attacked viciously, but more promise has been held out by the placer yields. Its sands are not all golden, yet they have yielded enough to encourage the investment of a large amount of capital in companies formed for the purpose of dredging the river-bed. These enterprises have their headquarters in Buenos Ayres. During my journey I found the people impatient for the arrival of the heavy dredging machinery which was at the seaboard awaiting transportation. It arrived later.
After leaving Suipacha there was a very hot and dusty hill climb of three hours, although most of it was along a fine piece of mountain highway, really a splendid triumph of road engineering. The hills all around here seemed to be limestone, and the sun beating on them created the most intense heat that I experienced anywhere. In the morning at sunrise my thermometer registered 50° Fahrenheit. In the early afternoon in the midst of these limestone cliffs it marked 110° Fahrenheit. This was 15 degrees higher than at any other point in the journey. I might have questioned the correctness of the thermometer, but its previous and its subsequent registrations I was able to verify, so that there was no reason to doubt its verity in registering this locality.
But though the glaring sun and the choking dust made the afternoon very uncomfortable, there was compensation. It was almost dusk when we—myself, the muleteer, and the pack animals—descended into the vale of Santa Rosa and found it gloriously restful. A model ranch spreads through the valley. The bed of the river is among spur cliffs and broken mountain walls on either side, out of which plunge miniature Niagaras. The stream is bordered by willows. It narrows until its course is forced through a cliff which rises sheer in front to the height of 700 or 800 feet and is known as the Angustora, or Narrow Way. The needle-point chasm made by the river has been enlarged by artificial means, and the narrow way is wide enough for ox-carts.
After the Angustora the course broadens again into the valley. The stream is very crooked and has to be forded often. At this season the fording was not difficult, but in January and February, when the rains come, the only passage is along a trail well up the side of the precipice, for the river-bed is a tumultuous torrent.
Tupiza lies in this vale of Santa Rosa, the brook being an affluent of the San Juan and sometimes called the San Juan. I entered the village by moonlight. I left it early one morning by starlight. The night of my arrival fourteen hours continuously in the saddle had wearied me greatly, yet the physical sensation disappeared in an instant on entering the beautiful valley, bathed as it was in the soft moonlight. When taking a last look at it, there was the same impression of charm. The river is fringed by drooping, feathery willows of the softest and most velvety green. They seem to be taking a perpetual bath in the dews. There are also the pepper trees. After a long desert ride the sober verdure of these trees is always refreshing. It is a harbinger of revivified Nature, but here in contrast with the glistening green willows they are the merest drabs.
The mountains which shut in the valley are brown, with granite flanks exposed; and the sunsets—ah! the artist would have to penetrate this lovely region to see whether the miracle of silver gray changing into impalpable azure and then flaming into red prairie fire can be transferred to canvas.
Tupiza is the most important place in southern Bolivia. It is the gateway north, south, east, and west. It is 9,800 feet above sea-level. The town has 5,000 inhabitants, and is the head of administration for the department. The church edifice has twin towers and a blue front, with much gaudy and gingerbread ornamentation inside and out. The government building, which includes the custom house, post-office, and telegraph office, is more tasteful. It is of two stories, with brown front and with arcade windows. There are a few two-story houses with narrow window balconies, but the dwellings are mostly of one story, with sloping grass-thatched roofs and whitewashed or dark blue fronts. They have square inner courts, or patios, and are without windows opening on the streets. As the street door is kept closed, there is complete seclusion from outside life.
The plaza is ornamented with feathery willow trees, under one of which in the heat of the day the public business is transacted, the desks and chairs being moved out from the government building. I watched the process for a couple of hours one day, and found it a not unpleasing picture of local and patriarchal administration. A fountain in the centre of the plaza at all hours is thronged by the men and women with their earthen water-jars, gossiping and quarrelling. There are many small shops for the sale of fruits, vegetables, and gaudy handkerchiefs. The women venders exercise squatter sovereignty on every street corner.
Ladies’ fashions are of so world-wide an interest that I digress to describe them as they were seen at Tupiza, as I had seen them in the primitive villages of Nazarene and Suipacha, as I saw them afterward at Uyuni and other places, including the capital.
The prized possession of the Bolivian Indian woman, and her chief pride also, whether she is pure Indian or chola, is her petticoat. Her dowry is in this garment. Like the Dutch woman of tradition, she carries her wealth about her. These petticoats are of all the colors of the rainbow and divers other hues not found therein. I first noticed them at Nazarene, and remarked the love of color, which must be inborn, for the garments were of purple, violet, fiery red, crimson, scarlet, subdued orange, glaring saffron, blue, and green. They were very short, reaching barely below the knee, and no difference was observed between childhood, maidenhood, matronly middle life, and wrinkled old age. Glancing from my window in Tupiza, I thought it was a parade of perambulating balloons.
The more well-to-do of the Indian women have stockings and shoes, but the love of color does not extend to the hosiery. Most of this wear is of ordinary brown or black. There is, however, pride and something like social distinction with regard to the footwear. I was amused on seeing the number of russet gaiters. Later at Uyuni I remarked that the prevailing fashion was high-heeled French gaiters, but in Tupiza and the other villages the extreme was not so great. Nor does the possession of the shoes make stockings necessary. Many of the Indian women with their plethora of petticoats apparently consider the acme reached if they can also have shoes, and do not fret themselves over hosiery.
These women have a habit which the bashful traveller does not at first understand. When he sees one of them calmly removing a petticoat, he is apt to turn away, but he need not do so. It may be that the advancing heat of the day has caused the wearer to discard the outer skirt, but more likely it is the vanity of her sex, and the desire to make her sisters envious by showing what is beneath, for each new vesture disclosed is more brilliant than the one which overlapped it. I sat in the plaza at Tupiza and watched two Indian women try to make each other envious. The first one removed the outer petticoat, which was of purple. This divestment disclosed another garment of blazing red, and after that came a brilliant yellow. The other woman started with a green petticoat, and gradually got down to a mixture of blue and yellow. By that time I had begun to fear for the consequences, and made a pretence of turning my back by strolling to the hotel.
From Tupiza to Uyuni is three days’ hard riding with horse or mule, and usually it is nearer four. The region is graphic in its grandeur of conical peaks, Chorolque, Guadalupe, Cotaigata, Ubina, eternally snow-covered, which hold beneath their granite domes a mass of mineral wealth that is for the centuries. The trail by which one passes is along the torn flanks and through the harsh passes of the Chichas and the San Vicente ranges.
The morning we left we followed the river-bed, passed some good farms and mud huts, and continued through a pasturage on which were grazing goats, llamas, and sheep. The vegetation was of yellow mustard flowers in bloom, pale cactus stalks, brown thorn-trees, and clumps of russet grass. There are a big, gaudy ranch-house, which looks like an imitation French castle, and an ornate little chapel at the head of the valley before it narrows into a chain of crooked gorges. The mountains seem to lie squarely across the way in irregular masses, like gigantic wedges, but there are abrupt hatchet gashes in the sides and many defiles, crevasses, and chasms.
A few miles from Tupiza the geological formation is very curious. At a distance the appearance is that of an old city of crumbling brown cathedrals, towers, buildings, and solitary sentinels. The sandstone formations resemble brown instead of crystal stalagmites. Some of the figures are strikingly grotesque. It is really a series of crenellated mud mountains which have been worn by the atmosphere and the water cutting down and washing away the earth.
The first stopping-place is the hamlet of Ingenia. This place has a tambo and a mud chapel and church. The Indian natives were blear-eyed, dirty, and the most repulsive that I met anywhere, but they were devout and hospitable. They escorted me to the chapel to see the image of the Virgin, which had some special history, and they got some fresh eggs for me. The altitude of Ingenia is 10,200 feet. I set out in the early morning with my pack animals and muleteer, all of us in ill humor because of a bad night’s entertainment. The day’s journey to Escariano, the next lodging-place, was not a long one. Beyond Ingenia the river course is narrow, and allows no room for ranches or even farms of the ordinary size, though there are some pasturage and a weedy kind of grass, scrub fir, or juniper. I was surprised at the number of quail which started up from every bush, and also at the variety of song-birds that hardly would be looked for in a treeless country.
Two or three hours from Ingenia the thread of the trail along the margin of the ravine narrows until it is not possible for animals or persons to pass. On entering the long cañon it is necessary to call out and make sure that no one is coming from the opposite direction. The echoes rumble through the gorges and finally die away. If no answering call is heard, it is safe to go forward along the edge of the sloping precipice. Sometimes tropas, or droves of burros and llamas, get into this gorge from both entrances, and then there is a controversy, and also a difficulty about backing out until space can be found for passing.
The cañon opens into a circle of slaty limestone hills, which have to be climbed and descended with considerable care. There are some white cactus bulbs with yellow flowers, and also in this locality some abandoned mine shafts. The cost of fuel and of freight transport made it necessary to close the mines until a railroad shall be built.
An incident of the day is thunder and a threatened rain. A ragged purple curtain hangs over the summit of Guadalupe, but that is far away and the clouds pass. They are followed by a soft wind which grows almost into a gale.
These winds are said by the Indians to cause the siroche, which is the dread both of the natives and of travellers. Some authorities claim that the illness is due to the presence in the earth of minerals, which are exhaled like gases and poison the atmosphere. I had been warned especially against this sickness when crossing the sierras between Tupiza and Uyuni, but during my travels in the Andes I experienced only one attack of siroche, and this was before reaching Tupiza. It had been a long morning climb and ride across sandy plains and among the cactus and fir underbrush. Coming up gradually from the sea-level and by slow stages, I had not felt any serious apprehension, though somewhat troubled by a neuralgic headache and by just the appearance of bleeding at the nostrils.
That morning the wind was blowing so softly that it seemed to cradle itself. A feeling of intense depression came over me. It was purely mental, because the day had not advanced far enough for the physical fatigue to manifest itself. I was out of temper, and my nerves were on edge. At noon, taking the observation of the temperature by means of a Centigrade thermometer, I found myself in a hopeless muddle in trying to reduce it to Fahrenheit. The method was absolutely clear in my mind,—“divide by 5, multiply by 9, add 32,”—but at every calculation the result was different, though I was certain I was following the rule. Finally I turned to the muleteer and asked him crossly, “Loreto, what’s the matter with me?” “It’s the siroche, sir,” he explained. “The wind is very bad to-day, but if you can keep on for a few hours we’ll be all right.” Then he looked at me a little suspiciously and said, “I don’t think we had better stop here.”
I had no desire to stop there under the savage sun, while the wind was forming white mantles of sand on the fir bushes, and told him we would go on. We kept on, and I began to feel myself again, though for a period of perhaps six hours I was in a condition of collapse similar to that which I often had experienced following attacks of sea-sickness. In my own case, however, there was none of the nausea which accompanies that distressing malady, and which with most persons is also an incident of siroche. My muleteer’s fear was that I would insist on stopping or on turning back. He had had that trouble with two or three persons whom he had guided over the mountains, and, as he told me, they had given him a great deal of worry by their whims.
Having had this attack, I was a little apprehensive with regard to crossing the punas, or table-lands, from Tupiza to Uyuni, and I could see that my arriero also was watchful. But I felt not the slightest symptoms. Mining engineers who make that journey two or three times a year told me that they always suffered from the siroche. Animals likewise suffer from it. The horse is of little use in these altitudes, and the mules are not immune. My own pack animals gave out twice.
My greatest annoyance was from the blistering and bleeding of the lips due to the dry wind. The natives grow expert enough to save themselves by means of scarfs while riding, but I found that this method gave me no protection. My lips were swollen unnaturally, and local applications did not reduce the swelling or the pain except temporarily at night. It was weeks before they became normal, and this I found was the gravest inconvenience in traversing the punas. My nerves also were under intense strain. That tension is unavoidable so high up, but it is something that gradually can be overcome. After living a month at an altitude of 12,000 to 14,000 feet, I experienced little annoyance from keyed-up nerves.
The increased heart movement is something which no one can escape, and it varies only in degree according to the individual. Jogging along comfortably on the back of a mule, the accelerated action is not appreciated, but let the traveller get off to rest the animal by walking and he quickly discovers the limit of his exertion. In my own case I found it easier to climb the hills afoot than to descend them, the heart apparently pumping with more regularity on the up-grade. But at night, after a hard day’s travel, on lying down to sleep it would be half an hour to an hour before the trip-hammer beating would lull itself away into slower and more regular palpitations.
From Escariano to Tambilla is a wearying ride. The course is across gorges and chasms, up the dry river-bed, then down for a good many hundred feet and again up into white plains covered with scrub. The longest climb is up the corkscrew height of Portugalete. It would be not only cruelty, but physical impossibility, to surmount this summit on the back of a mule, and I trudged it at an even pace with the panting pack animals. The pass or gateway of Portugalete is 14,137 feet above sea-level. Through this pass the railroad will wriggle its way.
After the divide was reached the descent was fairly steady, though abrupt. Guadalupe was in sight part of the day, and there were also glimpses of other peaks, snow-covered, while in some of the transverse gorges which the sun did not penetrate I saw the perpetual ice and snow. I stopped two or three times to gather a handful of snow, and then climbed back on the mule, passing in a very brief space of time from temperature below freezing to 90° or 95° Fahrenheit. On this slope were pasturing many alpacas and other sheep as well as goats and llamas.
During that long day we passed just two human dwellings, adobe huts, and reached Tambilla after nightfall. Tambilla lies in a valley, but its altitude is 12,900 feet. The Indians who kept the tambo were very indifferent to our comfort. They were having some kind of a celebration, and at first professed not to understand Spanish. As the arriero knew a little Quichua, he went after them in the Indian vernacular, and I swore some Spanish oaths, which were not nice but which brought out sullen rejoinders and the promise of something to eat. This was prepared in time,—the usual chupé,—but having seen its preparation, my stomach revolted, and I went to bed after partaking of hot coffee and crackers. During the night a freight train arrived, burros laden with dynamite for the mines, and I felt satisfaction in hearing the freighters, all of whom were natives, take possession of the sleeping quarters of the inmates of the tambo.
It was a relief to get away in the early morning long before sunrise. The sun disclosed the edges of a vast mountain plain, with sand-dunes and scrub breaking its monotonous stretch and a rim of chalk-white mountains enclosing the whole basin. This was the Sierra of San Vicente. Again I noticed the presence of both quail and song-birds. About noon we reached a bend in the dry river-bed and even a rivulet of water. A ruined cabin and a corral fallen into disuse were here. In front were two graves marked by stones and a rude cross. My muleteer mused a moment. He pointed to the cabin, then to the graves, and shook his head. “I was here a year ago, Señor,” he said, “and they [pointing to the graves as though he could see their tenants] were there [pointing to the cabin] then.”
The afternoon was a gradual but steady climb among vast sheep pastures which were still peopled with many flocks, although nearly all the huts had been abandoned by their human dwellers. Toward evening after another long ascent we crossed an easy gradation of summits and then down to Amachuma. It is 12,444 feet above sea-level. The Indians at Amachuma were indifferently hospitable. At first they professed ignorance of any language except Quichua, but later, when the government innkeeper appeared, we got passable accommodations, one of the mud benches along the wall being cleared of the dogs and the natives in order that I might spread my blankets.
From Amachuma the next morning we rode for two hours up and across the chalk-white hills, and then a dark ribbon forked out on a vast plain below. “That is Uyuni,” said Loreto, my muleteer, simply. It lay against the horizon like a frozen sea. For the first time in weeks Loreto became enthusiastic. “There [to the north] is Oruro; there [to the south] is Antofagasta; there [to the east] the Potosi silver mines; here, Huanchaca silver mines; but, Señor, there is no water in Uyuni for my mules. I shall have to lead them back here to-night.”
Uyuni is a waterless oasis on the salt pampa.
Two hours descending through the white sand and scrub and we were on the outskirts of the place. The most prominent spot which we had seen proved to be the cemetery. The town is a staked, plain kind of settlement, without shrub or tree. The railroad yard, enclosed by a corrugated iron fence stockade, takes in most of the municipal territory. Caravans of llamas and droves of burros and mules filled the streets. Much of the freighting is done by the llamas. There are many small shops and several very extensive warehouses and supply stores.
Uyuni is an outfitting and shipping centre. It is on the edge of one of the most productive and varied mineral districts in Bolivia. In 1885 there was almost no settlement, but the development of the Huanchaca and the other mines made a town necessary. Huanchaca is nine miles away on the railroad spur. Though the company a few years ago was compelled to spend a large amount of money in pumping out the Pulacayo mines, the output was diminished only temporarily. It furnishes the bulk of the freight down the railroad to the coast at Antofagasta.
Everybody in Uyuni is an enthusiast on mines. I felt myself in Colorado or the Black Hills when the local judge and a party of citizens came to welcome me. The judge drew a rough map of the district. “Here,” he said, “is tin; there, gold; yonder, silver; over there, copper; out this way, borax; off here, bismuth; this way, lead; a little beyond, antimony.” He and his fellow-citizens were very anxious for the railroad to be built to Guadalupe and Tupiza, so that the mineral industry could be assured of transportation facilities.
In strolling about I observed all the characteristics of the native Indian race, and of the cholos. The fondness of the women for bright petticoats and French gaiters I have recounted. It affords a lesson to the political economist by showing that artificial wants can be created and goods sold in remote communities. Not only were French gaiters in demand, but gaudy handkerchiefs for head-dresses and also much jewelry that was not gaudy. Many of the women had finger-rings and ear-rings of gold. They appeared superior to the men, who are given to imbibing alcohol. But I would not be too censorious. I had seen these men in the desolate, lonely passes and on the dreary sand-plains, and was not sure, if my life from New Year’s to New Year’s had to be passed in the same way, that whenever I got into Uyuni with a chance for human companionship, I also would not get drunk.
Uyuni is intensely cold, lying, as the town does, at an altitude of 12,100 feet under the snow mountains which send down their icy breath, and on the salt plains which, when the rays of the sun are off them, are scarcely less chilling. The legend told every newcomer is of going to bed with a bottle of hot water to keep the feet warm, and waking up to find the glass in fragments and the ice retaining the perfect form of the bottle. I did not have this experience, but in September, which is in the beginning of Spring, the cold was penetrating enough to make me believe the story.
I noted on Sunday several foreign flags flying over various consulates; and this was a reminder that Uyuni, through its commercial and mining interests, is a kind of international centre. The Italians, French, Germans, and Chileans have the largest interests among the foreigners, though a fair proportion of the business is in the hands of Bolivians. Some of the foreigners originally came over the trail from Argentina. More of them followed the routes of travel from the Pacific.