Two years after the captain had denounced the rich old Jesuit mine, Monte Cristo, he returned ready to start work and re-develop the property, but on arriving there he was disagreeably surprised to find work going on in full swing. He was told by the manager that his discovery had been re-denounced by Don Fulano six months after he left, under the Mining Laws No. 3 and No. 4 quoted above, and as neither he nor his authorized representative had answered the notice as per Rule No. 5 quoted, after fifteen days it was made over to him, and he worked it with a considerable number of men for eight months, and then sold it to a company for £72,000. The manager said the Company gave him a salary of £1,200 a year. He told the captain it was very hard lines on him, but it showed how fatal it was to denounce a rich discovery and apply for a concession, until he was certain of being able to comply with the mining laws. The captain was so disappointed and grieved at his loss that he immediately went on a shooting trip into the forest, where he got malarial fever and died.

A similar thing happened to me once. One year I bought two good saddle mules, hired some cargo animals, two men and a boy, and went shooting guanacos, and vicuñas, and looking for old mines in the Cordilleras. I was away for four months, and during this time I came across a good many Indians who lived there with their sheep and llamas far away from any town, and in some cases miles from the nearest neighbour, and they showed me many old gold and silver mines and one copper mine. I made a note of them all, and took samples from each one. On returning to civilization, I denounced one, not the best, but a good mine, paid the dues, and exactly a year afterwards forfeited the property through not complying with the law respecting labour. The man who re-denounced it put on forty men for six months, and sold it to a Company for £7,000. Personally I think the mining law respecting the proper working of concessions a very good one and most fair. You should always be careful not to denounce unless you know you are going to derive benefit by doing so. There are many people who are quite ready to reap the profits of any rich find, but who would never dream of taking the trouble, and going through the rough preliminary work of finding them.

The second instance I am going to relate refers to a great silver mine in Bolivia, which we will call San Carlos, and which was worked by the Jesuits and subsequently lost sight of for many years when they left Peru. In this case there were two partners concerned, both of whom I know personally; the one was a rich man who found all the money for expenses, and the other a well known mining engineer, who did the rough part of the work, and went to locate the lost mine. After two years among the Indians they showed him the place, and he was guided there by two Indian girls. The mine was opened out and proved to be so rich in silver that in a few years the two men were worth half a million sterling and over. This mine is still in work, and still belongs to the finders, whom we will call Don Alfredo and Don Jorge. Don Jorge died, and left his share to his eldest son, who has extensive properties at home and in Bolivia, is a good sportsman, and divides his time between England and Bolivia and Chili. The other partner is still alive and enjoys the income derived from his half share. Many workmen are employed on this property, and much expensive machinery has been erected. In this case no one received any benefit except the discoverers.

The third case was that of a gentleman whom we will call Mr. Clarke from San Francisco. He got hold of some documents relating to an old Jesuit mine, which we will call San Martin, and which they had worked till they left Peru. There were a lot of silver bars ready for shipment, supposed to be buried in this mine, and he started off with the documents to locate the place. He found nothing but a big high hill; the place to all appearances had been covered over by a slide of earth and stones caused by the earthquake shocks of 1842 and 1867. However, he began the work of uncovering this big mound, with the help of two men and a boy. Clarke had a few thousand pounds to start with, and after working away for fourteen years with a few men, never more than five and sometimes not so many, and being convinced he was on the right spot, he went to the States to see his brother, who had done pretty well with his horses in South America, and try and persuade him to help. His brother, however, did not believe in this old mine hunt and refused to stand in. But Clarke found another man, a manager of a big store, who thought he was on the spot right enough, and offered him £40 a month of his £60 monthly pay, to enable him to employ more labour. In two years’ time he removed the big mound of hill and found the mine. Six months afterwards the bank shipped on Clarke’s account silver bars worth £400,000. He gave his friend £3,000 in cash, and £1,500 a year for life, and continued the working of the mine, which proved a valuable one, making his friend manager with an additional salary of £1,500 a year. Clarke died in London a few years ago, leaving £2,000,000.

Upper Peru, now called Bolivia, was always considered by the Incas as the richest part of the Empire. The Jesuits came to the country some years before the last Inca Chief died, and found and continued to work many of the richest gold and silver mines belonging to the Incas, prospecting and exploring the Andes and the tropical rivers all the time they were in Peru. They thought so much of Upper Peru for its great mineral wealth that they actually plotted a revolution against the Government, their idea being to form a republic of their own in the country that is now Bolivia. It was for this reason that the Government of Lima, on discovering this plot, expelled them from the country.

The Jesuits never worked for long at a mine that was not a good one, and in prospecting for old mines the good can always be told from the bad by the way they have been worked. There are many fabulously wealthy mines which have been lying idle since their times, and up to the present have never been denounced. I personally know of several, gold, silver, copper, lapis lazuli, quicksilver and others. I have a sample of copper out of a lode six feet wide taken from one of these old mines, which gives fifty-nine per cent of copper and is still undenounced. Mining companies, instead of sending men to prospect for new fields, would do well to send and look for some of these abandoned Jesuit mines.

In the provinces of San Juan and Rioja in the Argentine and in Bolivia I have seen many so rich that the lodes are actually in sight and no dump is to be seen. The famous silver mines of Potosi, to which I have already referred, gave in three hundred years a total value of £340,000,000 worth of silver, and is still giving £40 to £50,000 worth a year. The Cerro Potosi is 15,400ft. high, the town 13,200ft., and the atmosphere is so rarified that many children die soon after birth. The Indians in this district eat clay dumplings which they put in their stew. Then there are the silver mines of Muanchaca, 13,200ft. high, which exported 8,000,000ozs. of silver annually between 1892 and 1897, till the lower workings of the Pulacago mine were flooded with water.

The silver mines of Oruro for years yielded 1,700,000 ozs. a year, Colguechaca 1,500,000, and Guadaloupe, 700,000. The most valuable tin mines are those on the Huanuni near Oruro; there are others at Inquisivi, Tres Cruces (?), Arque, and other places. I discovered one at the Tres Cruces that was afterwards taken up and sold for £19,000. The tin mines of Bolivia are very rich, and the higher altitudes seem to yield a bigger percentage than the lower, and the workings are more accessible. I once located a tin property that gave at 13,000ft. 9 per cent, 15 per cent at 14,000ft., 25 per cent at 15,000ft., and at 16,000ft. as much as 60 per cent, according to samples essayed at Lima. The same thing happens in the case of gold, silver, and copper; the richest mines are often found in the most inaccessible places.

Prospecting for old mines is a rough life, but when your journeys take you along the Cordilleras you are sure of a healthy and enjoyable time in an exhilarating climate. You have bright sunshine all day and freezing cold at night. There is a fair amount of sport to be had on these trips, and it is advisable to take both gun and rifle. For the gun there are geese, duck, martinettes, partridges, woodcock, and snipe; and for the rifle you get jaguar, bear, wild cattle, puma, vicuña, deer, guanaco, and the white-collared condor, the biggest bird that flies. On several occasions when I was far away from any kind of civilization, and there was no habitation in sight so far as the eye could see, vicuñas have remained staring at me, and allowed me to get up quite close to them before galloping off. I remember once suddenly coming across a herd of eleven vicuñas, which stood up in a line not more than fifty to seventy yards off, and remained stationary for quite two minutes; they were wondering I suppose what object it was that suddenly appeared on a big black mule. They looked so graceful that I did not disturb them and never fired at all. I have shot them for their pelts when the Indians have told me the fur is at its best, and on two occasions for meat when we ran short; their flesh is not very nice to eat, but not quite so nasty as llama. I managed also to get three puma on these prospecting trips; one was a pretty good one measuring 7ft. 7ins. when green, another was 7ft. 2ins. and the third 6ft. 7ins.

While on one of these trips to locate silver mines and bring back samples for a German firm, I was travelling one day with fourteen cargo mules, two saddle mules, bell mare and horse, and happened to be riding along with a gun in front about half-way up the forest, with my boy walking behind carrying the rifle, when I heard some poujil. I got off the mule to get a stalking shot, and on turning the corner just round the bend came on a magnificent jaguar, lying down sunning himself on a green bank not twenty yards off. I was much relieved when he got up and trotted quietly away into the jungle. These beasts will never attack a man in daylight unless they are hungry or angry. The natives in the interior of Bolivia near Santa Cruz hunt them with the spear, rifle, and dogs, when they can locate them in the savannas or grass plains, and the Government pay them £2 10s. for each skull, as they are known to be dangerous man-eaters. But they only go after men when they get too old and inactive to catch wild cattle, deer and pigs. It is also said that once they have tasted human blood they prefer it to any other kind of food.

In spite of all the trouble I had taken, I had eventually to give up the search for the treasure on the Caballo Cunco Hill. Neither Solis Mendizabal nor I could get the necessary number of men to continue the work satisfactorily, and we tried several times to form a small company from Chili to go into the work, and also to uncover the many smaller tapadas that still remain intact near the convent and the church, but without success. Colonel Trollope, of Lord’s Castle, Barbados, who was interested in the project and promised me the money to take over fifty men from Barbados in 1912, unfortunately died before this could be done. A well known mining engineer came all the way from Tacna at my suggestion to look at my handiwork, and see whether he thought what was being uncovered was the work of man or nature; I have his report in which he forms the same idea as I do.

Now what has this big cave been dug out of the mountain side for, and why has it been covered over with so much care? Not for any amusement, I am sure. The only thing I know for certain is that José Ampuera found a big gold bell there, sixty years ago, but ceased excavating because one of his sons was killed by a piece of rock. Then there is the case of the two mule men, who uncovered one of the numerous smaller tapadas, and in eight days took out £1,500 worth of treasure. I still have hopes of being able to bring, say, forty men from the West Indies for each dry season, May to September, and finish the job. It might or it might not be a success; who can tell?

CHAPTER X

A NOTE ON BOLIVIA AND HOW TO TRAVEL IN THOSE PARTS

Second: The great plateau between the heights of 8,000ft. and 14,000ft. At this altitude the atmosphere is the purest in the world; people consequently live to a great age. Besides the old men I have already mentioned, another old man of the Andes is fresh in my memory. A few years ago while I was looking for old abandoned mines in the most out of the way parts of the Cordilleras, travelling very often over the same paths as the Incas had used, I was told of an old Chilian patriarch, who had at one time been wealthy, but had a lot of his property confiscated by the Government, after the revolution of Balmaceda’s time, as he had backed the wrong horse. He was still pretty well off, and retired to the Cordilleras and built himself a fine stone house and stables, in a beautiful fertile valley about 9,000ft. above the sea. I stayed with him and his wife for three days. He told me he was 97, and his wife 82. She looked older and more fragile than he did. He told me that a few leagues off there lived a wealthy old Argentine, called Don Antonio, who had lived in the Andes all his life, was 127 years old, and had married his fifth wife. I went to visit him, and was received by a pretty woman, whom I asked whether I could see Don Antonio. “He will be sorry he missed you,” she said. “He has ridden to San Juan” (which was eight days off by mule-back), “and will only be back next week.” She very kindly put me up for the night, and told me she was the old man’s fifth wife, and had been married ten years, and was now twenty-seven years old.

This part of Bolivia is the home of the beautiful chinchilla fur. The chinchilla is only found in certain parts of the Andes, and lives at 15,000ft. to 16,000ft. There are three classes, the Chinchilla real, the Moskat and the Raton; the first is by far the best, but the second is not bad, and looks beautiful when seen by itself, but when seen side by side with the first looks quite common.

When wealthy merchants send some one to buy up these skins from the Indians, they must take care to pick out a man who knows the difference between the three classes of skins. I knew a big firm once that sent the wrong man and lost heavily over the buying up of these rare skins; the Indians had sold him a lot of the second class skins (the Moskat) as the Chinchilla real. But their representative had never been further than the railway train could take him, did not know Spanish, and had never done any travelling with mules; in fact, he was an absolute greenhorn at the work, and got badly swindled. On the other hand, I met a man who had been in the mountains for six months, and had bought a good lot of skins from the hunters for a New York firm, and sold them at a profit of £8,300; he got 1,800 of the Chinchilla real and 1,700 of the second class. Once when I was on a mine-hunting job far away from any town, I bought several of the Chinchilla real skins for £1 10s. each and sold them at £50 per dozen, and at the same time I bought some second class for 2/6 each and sold them at £6 per dozen. I could have bought many more, but had not the cash with me.

Third zone: Semi tropical valleys 4,000ft. to 8,000ft., in my opinion the finest climate in the world. Not too warm in the daytime and cool at nights. All kinds of fruit grow at these altitudes, and there is plenty of shooting of different varieties to be had without much trouble.

Fourth zone: Low lying lands of the Beni, Madeiro, Mamore, Tipuani, Challana and other tributaries of the Amazon, and lands sloping to the River Paraguay. This is a great rubber country in the interior; very beautiful and very unhealthy. To get to it you have to cross the highest ranges of the Andes. There is plenty of game, but it is very hard to get at. In this zone you find some of the rarest and most beautiful orchids known, as well as gorgeous butterflies, lovely creepers and tropical plants, and flowers in wild profusion.

The Mamore district is full of rubber trees of the best class. It is calculated that six hundred trees give 30 to 40 arobas of rubber during the first month; in the second month the trees give less, and in the third less still, so that a good seringuero must know when and how to tap. In wet weather the trees give more latex, but the quality is not so good, as water mixes with it. Only the bark must be tapped, and there is a fine of £50 for cutting down a tree. Several methods are employed for coagulating the latex. Here is one of them. The latex is poured into a wooden bowl two feet long, half a foot wide, and a foot and a half deep, and a solution of alum and hot water is poured on it, causing coagulation. In order to compress the latex, a heavy wooden bar is inserted into the cavity of a tree, and heavy logs of wood, or big stones are suspended at the end. One night is sufficient for the rubber to become white. This method was discovered by Strauss. Another method, supposed to be the best, is to place the latex near a fire, and stir it round continuously with a stick; this makes it remain a dark brown, nearly black. For every estrada the Bolivian Government charge a rent of 32/-yearly, payable in advance, half yearly. If any half yearly payment is not paid, the concession may be confiscated and taken up by anybody else. An estrada measures 150 by 150 metres, and contains anything from twenty-five to one hundred trees. A good rubber property means a thousand estradas or more. Trees are supposed to be at their best from twenty to one hundred years old; after fifty years they do not give so much latex, and after one hundred they give still less. Most of the seringueras are in the hands of rich merchants, who have given them goods up to the value of twenty pounds, and even over one hundred pounds or more on credit; consequently, the picker is usually in the debt of the merchant. The life is a hard and unhealthy one. Some rubber experts say that plantation rubber will go back after twenty-five years, and will not contain the same degree of elasticity as the wild rubber; if that is so, it will be a heavy blow for the plantations. I am not in a position to say either way. But it is pretty well known in Brazil that in San Paolo the rich Dumont Coffee Estate, to satisfy its shareholders, planted rubber at 2,100ft. Only the Ceara did at all well, and that gave very little latex; at ten years old the rubber trees planted on this estate proved a complete failure.

The chief tribes of Indians in Bolivia are the Quichua, Aymara and Guarani. All the principal towns here have schools, doctors, and many lawyers, but very few dentists and not many undertakers. Approximately there are in the country:

The people are hospitable, and the Indians are quite easy to get along with, if you go the right way to work, though of course there are good and bad, as there are in most parts of the world. The dry season is from April to October, and the other months are wet. When it rains in the forest, it snows in the mountains. The limit of forest is 14,000ft. and the snow line 16,000.

It will be seen by the short description given in this book that Bolivia, or Upper Peru as it was until 1805, was one of the richest parts of the Inca kingdom. Many of the remains of the work done by these people can be seen still, and some of them are kept in good repair, especially the old roads which they used. One of their famous stone bridges is still in existence and kept in repair. In Bolivia you have every sort of climate, from the most freezing cold of the Cordilleras to the steamy atmosphere of the tropical forest. Hundreds of rich old mines still remain to be re-discovered in the mountains, which are known to many Indians but to very few whites. I suppose I know of about as many as most people, all accessible, and most of them very rich. It would pay any Companies interested in silver, gold, copper or tin to send some one to locate some of these old workings; and take samples. Personally I enjoy those long mule rides in that healthy atmosphere, and hope to go again on another trip.

For successful travelling in Bolivia, two things are necessary—to be in the best of condition physically, and to have the right outfit and equipment.

The following outfit is the final result of my experience in what was necessary for crossing the passes of the Cordilleras and traversing the steamy tropical forests.

Shoes for all your animals and nails, rasp and pairing knife.

A good roomy native saddle, not a heavy one, for your mule, and a light roomy semi-military saddle for your horse.

A good pair of blunt spurs.

As many strong raw hide nets as required for the cargo.

Plenty of blankets, thick and thin.

A big canvas saddle cloth for the back of each animal.

(The blankets go on top and serve the double purpose of preventing the animals backs from getting sore, and keeping the men warm at night.)

A piece of canvas well oiled and dried to go over each cargo.

Two tents—one for yourself and the other for the boys.

Two buckets, two pots with iron legs like Kafir pots, one big one and one little one.

A good big kettle and a small one.

A Collins’ axe, and a cutlass of the same make.

Plenty of rope of Llama wool and a halter of the same for each animal.

A thick long horsehair rope to put round your tents to keep away snakes.

Some cowhide boxes for your clothes.

Thick socks or stockings made by the Indians. (These can be bought at the market in La Paz or Oruro—English socks are no good).

A good pair of shooting boots.

Several pairs of alpagatas.

Frying pan.

Pair of scales.

Tea pot.

Coffee pot.

Plates and cups of enamel ware.

A folding canvas catre for yourself.

A few loose boards for nailing on to thick branches of trees for a floor to your tent is advisable.

A pick and spade.

A good rifle (personally I have mostly used a fine double barrel Holland and Holland sixteen bore, given me by my father, with very good results).

A good breach loader.

Metal cartridges.

A big six shooter.

A Kodak.

Compass.

Metrometer.

Hexemeter.

Aneroid to mark up to 20,000ft.

Thermometer.

Canvas folding bath.

Baking powder.

Flour.

Sterilized milk.

Small medicine box.

Rum and whisky.

Old port and old Madeira.

Plenty of coca leaves for barter and to give away.

Liebig’s extract.

Some tools; nails and screws.

Two or three horn lanterns.

Plenty of soap.

Each mule should carry half a challona, which you can buy off the Indians living on the slopes of the Cordilleras.

Mackintosh.

Some sugar and rice, sufficient for the trip.

Tinned meats to be used when wanted; at once when opened taken out of the tin and not kept after using.

A big mosquito net, and a small one, to be used as occasion may require.

Fifty pounds of ships biscuits.

Coffee, tea, cocoa.

A small basket with a naptha stove, small kettle, pot pan, etc., to be used when required in your tent.

A vicuña wool mask and night cap of the same material.

A good pair of sheepskin or bearskin gauntlets.

Two pairs of wind and sun glasses.

Pith helmet.

Panama hat and cap.

Crowbar and drill.

Miner’s hammer and dynamite.

Gold pan and quicksilver.

Big carriage umbrella.

Thick poncho (rug with a hole cut in the middle).

Camp stool.

Seat stick, pulley and tackle.

Nail extractor.

Matches, etc.

No. 5 is the best all round shot to have your cartridges loaded with; but it is as well to have an odd few charged with buck shot as well.

Three or four scout watches, and

Anything else you think you need.

THE END