In order to attend the Scientific Congress, I had been obliged to interrupt my journey from Buenos Aires to Lima and had left my saddles and impedimenta at Oruro. It was now necessary to return thither and pick up the overland trail.

Leaving La Paz early one morning by the electric train for the Alto, we took the Guaqui train as far as Viacha, the northern terminus of the Bolivia Railway.

This railway was built to order for the Bolivian Government by an American syndicate, and we found it equipped with American-made locomotives and cars, and operated by American railroad men. Most of them had had some experience in Mexico and were familiar with the difficulties of handling Indian laborers, and also with the use (and abuse) of the Spanish language. None of them seemed to be particularly enthusiastic over the prospects of the country, and all were looking forward with pleasure to the time of their vacation when, according to the terms of their contract, they would be sent back to the States.

The construction of this road over the plateau offered no great engineering difficulties such as are met with by the roads that cross the Cordillera. The heaviest grade is not over ten per cent, and there are no tunnels. To offset this advantage, however, rock ballast is difficult to procure, and the earth that has been dug up on each side of the track to form the roadbed seems to lack cohesion. The gauge is one metre. The ties are of California redwood and Oregon pine. Owing to the high cost of rails and ties and the distance which they had to be brought, the railroad has been an expensive one to build. There is only a difference of eight hundred and sixteen feet between the highest and lowest portion of the line, yet the hundred and twenty-five miles have cost two million dollars and a quarter, or eighteen thousand dollars per mile.

The Bolivia Railway is remarkable for the promptness with which it was constructed after the signing of the contract. The National City Bank of New York and Speyer & Co. agreed, on the 22nd of May, 1906, to build the line from Viachi to Oruro. Work was commenced seven months later, and the line was opened for traffic in less than two years. Everything considered, the prompt completion of the work is a great credit to the American engineers who had the line in charge.

There is another side to the story, however. Owing to the fact that the opening of the road had to be rushed in order to please President Montes of Bolivia, trains began to run before the road was really finished, and it has been necessary to continue the service in order to avoid criticism. The South American is not as patient as the North American and is ever ready to enter vehement and furious protests against anything short of perfection in railway management. Not content with actual progress, and not having had any practical experience in the difficulties of railroad construction and maintenance, he imagines that all accidents and all shortcomings on the railway are due to gross carelessness on the part of the chief officials. Every time a train is late, he blames the management and accuses it of bad faith, although he knows many of his friends and neighbors would miss any train that started on time. The necessity of catering to the desires of the politicians has made it extremely difficult to get the roadbed into good shape. At the time of my visit six hundred Indian laborers, conscripts, were still employed in getting the track properly ballasted. Their wages average a trifle over fifty cents a day.

I had heard that accidents occurred “every trip,” but thought it only one of those extravagant criticisms that are so common, until I asked the conductor. He admitted that some of the wheels generally left the rails at least once a day. For an hour or so nothing happened, and in my interest in the landscape, dotted here and there with mud-colored villages and ancient tombs, I was beginning to forget the delightful sense of approaching danger, when suddenly, with a rattle and a bang, we came to a sharp stop. One of the forward cars had left the rails and plowed its way across the ties for some distance. The train crew, well experienced in such matters, soon had the refractory car back on the rails again and, nothing the worse for our accident, we proceeded merrily southward for another half hour until brought up with a sudden jerk by a repetition of the rattle and bang. This time it proved to be the tender whose wheels had found a weak spot in the roadbed. Upon further examination, it looked as though we were going to be delayed for at least four or five hours. The tender had lost its balance and was lying over partly on one side, kept from a complete upset by the weight of the engine and the strength of the couplings. In ten or fifteen minutes, however, the crew, well trained by daily practice, had the port wheels back on the track, but the starboard wheels continued to remain in the air five or six inches above the rails. As the water tank had recently been filled, the centre of gravity was too high to allow the tender to assume its normal position, and the added weight of several men failed to bring it down. The engineer suggested that a bend in the track less than a quarter of a mile away would “do the business,” and so he was allowed to pull down to the curve. It looked like an extraordinarily clever acrobatic performance to see this refractory tender going merrily along on a single rail. True to the engineer’s expectations, as soon as the wheels felt the changed angle of the track, down came the tender with a lurch that almost capsized it on the other side. In less than twenty minutes we were again on our way, thankful that we had experienced wreckers instead of the ordinary train crew of the eastern United States, whom I have seen take several hours to perform what these men did in a few minutes.

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.”

The next day after my return from Oruro, through the courtesy of Mr. Rankin Johnson, I enjoyed the privilege of visiting the village and ruins of Tiahuanaco on the plains several miles south of Lake Titicaca.

Leaving La Paz at eight o’clock in the morning, we had six hours in and around the village and returned in time for dinner the same evening. It was necessary to take our lunch with us, for there is no inn and the little village shops afford scarcely anything that is fit to eat. The Tiahuanaco station is within a mile of the most interesting ruins. The railroad track passes within a few feet of three of the monolithic images and one of the monolithic doorways.

At the station we secured the services of a picturesquely dressed old AymarÁ who the station master assured us was a competent guide. He took us across the dusty plain towards a large mound which had once been surrounded by terraces and stone walls. It is popularly known as the “fortress.” Originally a truncated pyramid about six hundred feet long, four hundred feet wide, and fifty feet high, treasure-seekers have dug great holes in its sides and excavated part of its summit in an effort to find the “buried riches of the Incas.” Besides the fortress there seems to be evidence of a great “temple” and also of a “palace.” The “temple,” roughly outlined by rude stone blocks, occupies an area of nearly four acres. For the most part the blocks are from six to ten feet in height and three feet in thickness. Within there is still evidence of a terrace, and from this on the eastern side there leads a remarkable stairway. Scattered about over the mound and all over the plain are many rectangular stones whose purpose has been entirely lost, thanks to the activity of treasure-seekers who have ruthlessly moved them from their original position and left them lying in indescribable confusion. There seems to be evidence that many of the blocks were held in place by strong metal pins, for there are round holes drilled into the stones and insertions made to receive “T” clamps.

The principal ruins are in a broad level part of the plain where the soil is firm and dry. They consist of rows of erect, roughly-shaped monoliths, sections of foundations, portions of giant stairways, monolithic doorways, some bearing carvings in low relief, monolithic statues, and innumerable small cut stones strewn about on all sides.

Great stone platforms, weighing many tons, aroused our keenest curiosity. One looks around the plain in vain for a near-by quarry from which they could have come. The most natural supposition is that they must have been quarried on the spot from ledges outcropping here, for it would seem scarcely possible that blocks twenty feet long, ten feet wide, and four feet thick could have been transported any distance by the primitive methods at the disposal of those prehistoric people.

The ruins were much more complete in 1875 at

the time of the visit of the American archÆologist, E. G. Squier, who spent some time here, and whose account of the ruins in his book on Peru is one of the most complete and satisfactory that we possess. Unfortunately, his drawings give an erroneous impression of the size of many of the monuments which are not so large as he has represented them.

Squier saw no subterranean vaults or passages, but we were more fortunate, for only a short time previous to our visit, thanks to the activity of Mr. John Pierce Hope of La Paz, who has taken a great interest in the work of exploration, a small vault was discovered and we were able to enter and examine it. It is about six feet square and the same in depth and is made of beautifully cut stones, accurately fitted together. Nothing of value was found in the vault and it is probably one of those to which Von Tschudi, who was here before Squier’s visit, refers. The winds that blow over these sandy plains will soon fill the vault and cover it up again and leave it to be rediscovered by some future traveller.

The largest monolithic doorway, now broken, is covered with figures not unlike some of the Central American monuments. It is very different from anything else here or in Cuzco. The story goes, that when the Spaniards first arrived, it was lying on its side, and there appears to be no record to show who raised it nor when the crack developed which led finally to the door breaking into two parts. The southern and larger half has lost its balance and will soon be lying on the ground. By a curious coincidence, Mr. Barbour, who made a careful photograph of the carvings on this doorway, afterwards secured from a grave near Pachacamac in the vicinity of Lima, a textile that was decorated with a similar pattern.

After examining the ruins, we spent an hour or more in the village itself where we were struck by the great number of finely cut stones inserted into the walls of the huts and used as paving in the streets. The church on the plaza is built entirely of blocks brought from the ruins. It has a fence or wall in front composed of a row of arches that reminded me of PotosÍ and Bartolo. The exterior of the church gives no evidence of the extraordinary magnificence within, which is quite in keeping with the ancient importance of this little village. Here we found religious paintings, some of them very good, elaborate gilded carvings, and an altar built of pure silver, beautifully worked.

La Paz has two or three remarkable collections of antiquities which consist largely of material brought from Tiahuanaco. Perhaps the best is in the National Museum, which owes its existence to the enlightened patriotism of Sr. Don Manuel Vicente Ballivian, a descendant of one of the most distinguished Bolivian families, and the leading antiquarian in the republic.

Of the ancient Tiahuanaco, there is comparatively little left now. Not only did the Spaniards use cartloads of it in building the churches of La Paz and Guaqui, but the modern Guaqui-to-La Paz railroad has taken away within the past ten years more than five hundred trainloads of stone for building its bridges and warehouses. From the point of view of the railroad manager, whose business it is to secure lasting results with the greatest possible economy, it must have seemed a most fortunate circumstance that within a few rods of his tracks there should be such a quantity of nicely cut stone, and “a lot of old stone walls,” all ready to use! O tempora! O mores!