Bolivia

“ Bolivia is seated upon the masses of silver of the double range of the Andes. She has a territory fertile beyond measure, where the treasures of the most opposite climates are grouped together. With all this, Bolivia perishes from consumption for want of methods of communication which may carry to the markets of the world her valuable productions, and stimulate her sons to labour and industry. ”

“ Few travellers approach or ascend these mountains, whose beauties the inhabitants themselves generally prefer to contemplate from afar.
Bolivia is generally regarded as a "mountain republic," remote, inaccessible, backward. Such a concept requires some modification. It is true that the country, deprived of its seaboard, has its population and centres of life mainly upon the Andes, that its population is relatively small in comparison with those of its neighbours, and consists to a larger degree of the Indian element. But it is not all mountain, nor all Indian folk. ”

“ Bolivia is a place of great possibilities; its mineral wealth, its commerce, its forests, all mean that sooner or later it will be developed. To-day it is much like its neighbor, Ecuador. One of its chief interests lies in its history. ”

“ Bolivia has a little more than two millions of inhabitants, about one fourth of them whites. There are several varieties of the native and mixed races, from the civilized Indians of La Paz and other cities to the wild tribes of the upper waters of the Amazon. ”

“ Named after the great Liberator,{152} Simon Bolivar, Bolivia is a large country covering about 597,000 square miles, bounded on the north, south, and east by Brazil, Paraguay, and the Argentine Republic, and shut away from the Pacific seaboard on the west by Peru and Chili. Prior to the assertion of its independence it was known as Upper Peru, and in its early years it was virtually a part of a neighbouring State, from which it derived its name. The country is naturally divided into two portions, the high lands to the westward and the grean plains that roll away to the east. ”

“ The old feudal system holds sway in what we call the civilized portions of Bolivia. Civilization, indeed! Only in the wilds is there true freedom and independence. The servants on ranches and farms are bought or sold with the land on which they live. So, Mr. Bill, if you purchase a farm in Bolivia, it won't be only the cows and cocks and hens you'll have to take, but the servants as well, ay, and the children of these.
"Bolivian Indians, who are troubled with families that they consider a trifle too large for their income, have a simple and easy method of meeting the difficulty. ”

“ Bolivia was for two centuries after the Spanish Conquest a part of Peru and has neither natural boundaries nor any distinctive physical character to mark it off from its neighbours, Peru on the northwest and Argentina on the southeast. It is an artificial creation, whose separate national existence is due to two events. ”

“ The political division of Bolivia is a crying injustice to that lovely country and its industrious population. The harbour of Arica belongs by natural position to Bolivia and not to Peru; commercial interests and general intercourse unite it far more intimately with Northern Bolivia than with Peru. The chief exports of Arica are silver, copper, alpaca wool, cinchona bark, chinchilla furs, cotton, and tin. There are also two steam flour-mills within the little town in full operation; the grain comes from the interior, and is shipped as flour to the various harbours along the coast. ”

“ The population of Bolivia is estimated at 2,300,000, but no census has ever been taken, and it is doubtful if it has more than 1,500,000 inhabitants. Fully fifty per cent. of its people are docile, full-blooded Indians, living the most primitive life and speaking their own dialect with a few head men familiar with Spanish, which is the official or state tongue. The Beni, or white Indians of 83Bolivia, are a rather warlike race and have maintained their tribal laws, the control of their lands and customs, independent of all attempts to subjugate them. ”

“ A law has been passed granting liberty of worship.
Bolivia, with its vast natural riches, must come to the forefront, and already strides are being taken forward. She can export over five million dollars' worth of rubber in one year, and is now spending more than fifty million dollars on railways. So Bolivia is a country of the past and the future.
CHAPTER V. JOURNEY TO "THE UNEXPLORED LAKE." Since the days when Pizarro's adventurers discovered the hitherto undreamed-of splendor of the Inca Dynasty, Bolivia has been a land of surprises and romantic discovery. ”

“ Politically considered, the enterprise will be of vast benefit to Bolivia, for her population will find employment in the impetus given to commerce, and will consequently become less turbulent, as revolutions will decrease commensurately with the interest that each one will find in their increasing prosperity. A bond of unity will also be created for Bolivia, with her powerful neighbour Brazil, whereby she will be rendered more secure from the encroachments of the republics of the Pacific seaboard. ”

“ Its capital city, La Paz, has a population of 70,000, but the vast interior is almost uninhabited. In the number of inhabitants to the square mile, Bolivia ranks the lowest of all the nations of the earth.
Perhaps no country of the world has been, and is, so rich in precious metals as Bolivia. "The mines of Potosi alone have furnished the world over $1,500,000,000 worth of silver since the Spaniards first took possession of them." [Footnote: "Protestant Missions in South America."]
Bolivia can lay claim to the most wonderful body of water in the world—Lake Titicaca. ”

“ The power of the government of Bolivia rests upon its armed force. The voting population is thinly scattered over an extensive country, and the army is large. Intelligent people of this country much dislike the mother country—Spain. They blame her rulers for the manner in which the creole portion of South America were treated while she held the country. To keep them ignorant and get their silver was the sole policy of that government. ”

“ Politics in Bolivia are best described as purely personal, for the different political parties seem to spring up, change, and die out according as some ambitious leader comes to the front, and soon gives place to a newer man. During my stay in the republic I tried to discover whether there was any difference in the policy of the parties, but, to my perhaps limited vision, they all seemed embued with the same creed, namely, either to turn or keep your adversary out of place and power. ”

“ Bolivia is a republic, now entirely inland, occupying the broadest part of the table-land of the Andes, with a montana to the east. Its population is about two millions, inclusive of about eight hundred thousand uncivilized Indians. Even the civilized population is mainly of Indian origin. The communications of Bolivia with Peru and Brazil have already been referred to. ”

“ The interest which Argentina arouses is entirely unlike that which appeals to the traveller's eye and mind in Peru or Bolivia or Chile. In each of these three countries there is scenery grand in scale and different in type from what any other part of the world has to shew. In Peru and Bolivia there are also the remains of a primitive civilization, scanty, no doubt, but all the more attractive because they stimulate rather than satisfy our curiosity. ”

“ In Bolivia the combined effect of the low temperature, thin air, extreme dryness, and poor food has not only made a large part of the plateau a sterile desert, but has also checked the advance of the aboriginal race, and has confined the population of Spanish origin to a small number of towns lying so far away from one another that common political action becomes difficult and social antagonisms remain acute. ”

“ Notwithstanding the difficulties under which trade is carried on in Bolivia, the merchants appear to do a flourishing business, and some of the best firms keep up princely establishments, and generally have branches in all the chief towns of the republic. The foreigners resident in Bolivia are somewhat exclusive in their social life, and although on friendly terms with the townspeople, it is only on certain occasions that one sees a mixed company of Bolivians and Europeans. ”

“ The popular conception of Bolivia is that of an extremely rugged mountainous country, although fully three-fifths of it, including the Chiquitos region, is composed of low alluvial plains, great swamps and flooded bottomlands, and gently undulating forest regions. In the extreme south are the Bolivian Chaco and the llanos (open grassy plains) of Manzo, while above these in eastern Chuquisaca and southern Santa Cruz are extensive swamps and low-lying plains, subject to periodical inundations and of little value for agricultural and pastoral purposes. ”

“ The formation of a great Bolivian State, after a period of isolation lasting more than a century, is certainly the dream of generous statesmen. It is not easy to conceive of the political union of peoples as far removed as those of Venezuela and Bolivia, but this assembly might well result in a natural union of the peoples of the North; a new Greater Colombia, whose provinces would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. ”

“ Bolivia is divided into an archbishopric and three bishoprics. The first includes the departments of Chuquisaca, Oruro, Potosi, Tarija and the Chilean province of Antofagasta, with its seat at Sucré, and is known as the archbishopric of La Plata. The sees of the three bishoprics are La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. Mission work among the Indians is entrusted to the Propaganda Fide, which has five colleges and a large number of missions, and receives a small subvention from the state. It is estimated that these missions have charge of fully 20,000 Indians. ”

“ Bolivia includes several regions quite different in their character. Nearly all the western part is a desert, with a few mining towns scattered here and there, a desert enclosed by the two great almost parallel Cordilleras of the Andes. ”

“ Below this mountainous area the ranges open out and enclose extensive plateaus. The western range, the Cordillera Occidental, a part of the boundary between Bolivia and the northern provinces of Chile, closely follows the coast outline and forms the western rampart of the great Bolivian tableland or alta-planicie, which extends from the Vilcanota knot in Peru, south to the Serrania de Lipez on the Argentine frontier, is 500 m. ”

“ But, as the greater part of Bolivia’s territory is that which falls away from the plateau, like a lady’s train, northward and eastward to the frontiers of Brazil and Paraguay, a more comprehensive and impressive acquaintance with the country can be had by entering either from the north, via the Amazon and Maderia rivers to Villa Bella on the Brazilian frontier, and thence over a thousand miles on horseback to La Paz, or from the east, starting from our last resting place at Asunción in Paraguay. ”

“ In Bolivia the name of Sucré is as omnipresent as Bolívar’s in Venezuela and Colombia, and most naturally when the new republic was formed the name of its chief city, Charcas, was changed to Sucré to honor the hero of Ayacucho—Antonio José de Sucré—when this “right hand” of Bolívar became its first president. The city is ancient, kindly, and romantically beautiful in its setting on the eastern slope of the royal range, and once, under a law enacted some eighty years ago, it was the capital. ”

“ This densely timbered and sparsely inhabited region keeps Venezuela from having any dealings with Bolivia more effectually than if an absolute desert lay between them.
There is nothing that separates one of the United States from another that is at all comparable to the lofty chain of the Andes and the impenetrable jungle that lies for hundreds of miles on the eastern slope of the Cordillera. ”

“ Bolivia, though its population is not so preponderatingly aboriginal as that of Paraguay, furnishes a good instance. The Indians, mostly Aymarás, are either tillers of the soil, or engaged in the transportation of goods by mule or llama, or are artisans of the ruder sort. They are entirely illiterate. Nominally Catholics, their religion is the primitive spirit worship of their ancestors with a varnish of Christian forms and the cult of Christian saints. ”

“ A president who would introduce this beneficent system into Bolivia would, in my opinion, confer a far greater favour on his country than any of its rulers have hitherto succeeded in doing. It will, perhaps, scarcely be credited, that even in the best establishments there are no closets or other receptacles for house refuse ”

“ It is 160 miles long by thirty wide and is fed by the melting Andean snows.
This plateau is the center of Bolivia’s life to-day, as it was the cradle of successive aboriginal civilizations that finally culminated many centuries ago in the Inca empire. It is the highest inhabited land on the face of the earth, with the possible exception of Tibet. The evidence at every hand of nature’s tremendous activities must have left its impress on the races that formerly had their being here. ”

“ No, the policy of the so-called statesmen of Bolivia is the short-sighted one of self-interest, and because the realization of Colonel Church’s enterprises would not be attended by immediate pecuniary advantages to themselves, they have of late years placed every possible impediment in his way. ”