building of the continuation to La Quiaca, its importance is bound to decrease. However, it will always be a favorite resort for Bolivians seeking a refuge from the rigors of their Thibetan climate. We met many families in southern Bolivia who had at one time or another passed the winter season here.
Before leaving the Bristol we succeeded in getting eggs and coffee only with considerable difficulty as the train was due to leave at seven o’clock, and the average Spanish-American traveller is quite willing to start off on a long day’s journey without even a cup of coffee if he can be sure of something substantial about ten or eleven o’clock.
When we arrived at the station, we found a scene of great confusion. The line had been running only a few months, and many of the intending passengers were not accustomed to the ways of railroads. An official, and his family of three, had spread himself over one half of the car, with bags, bird-cages, bundles, rolls, and potted plants. He filled so many seats with his impedimenta that several of the passengers had to stand up, although that did not worry him in the least. Had we known how much luggage belonged to him, we should have dumped it on the floor and had a more comfortable ride, but unfortunately we did not discover how greatly he had imposed on everybody until the end of the day.
From Jujuy the train climbs slowly through a valley toward a wonderful vista of great mountains. At 6000 feet the verdure disappeared, the grass became brown, and on the barren mountains a few sheep and goats were trying to pick up a living.
The railway had a hard time overcoming the difficulties of the first part of the way. The grade is so steep that for some distance a cog road was found to be necessary. In the first one hundred and fourteen miles, the line climbs up 8000 feet to an altitude of over 12,000 feet above sea-level.
Notwithstanding the newness of the road and the steepness of the grade, we carried with us an excellent little restaurant car that gave us two very good meals before we reached La Quiaca.
The cog railway begins at Leon at an altitude of 5300 feet and continues to Volcan, rising 1500 feet in a distance of eight miles. At Volcan there is supposed to be a mud volcano, but, as was pointed out some years ago by Mr. O’Driscoll in the “Geographical Journal,” there is no volcano at all. It is simply a mud avalanche, that comes down after unusually heavy rains from the rapidly disintegrating hillside. Although not a volcano, it is nevertheless a difficult problem for the engineers. It has already completely submerged a mile or two of track more than once.
This is on the line of the proposed Pan-American railway from New York to Buenos Aires. With a sufficiently vivid imagination, one can picture a New Yorker of the year 1950 being detained here by a mud-slide which will have put the tracks over which he proposes to travel two or three feet under ground. It is to be hoped that he will not be obliged to stay at the local inn where Edmund Temple stopped on his journey from Buenos Aires to Potosí. Temple was aroused in the middle of the night by a noise under his bed as if of a struggle between two animals. To his astonishment (and to that of the reader of his charming volumes) he “discovered, by the light of the moon, a cat eating the head of a viper which she had just subdued: a common occurrence I was informed, and without any ill consequences to the cat, however venomous the snake!”
Some effort had been made to plant a few trees in the sandy, rocky soil around the station of Volcan, which is not far from the mud-slide. They seemed, however, to be having a hard time of it, although, at a ranch near by, quite a grove of eucalyptus trees had been successfully raised by means of irrigation. The mountains round about are very barren and gave evidence of being rapidly wasted away by erosion, their summits assuming many fantastic forms.
Twenty miles beyond Volcan is Maimará, where there was further evidence of irrigation in the valley, the trees and green fruits being in marked contrast to the barren hillsides.
As the road ascends, the country becomes more and more arid. Cactus is common. Sometimes it is used as a hedge; at other times, by being planted on the top of a mud-fence, it answers the same purpose as a barbed wire.
Great barren mountains on each side continue for mile after mile, making the scenery unspeakably dreary. Judging by the northward inclination of the cactus and the trees, the prevailing wind is from the south.
Some of the valley is irrigated, but there is little sign of life anywhere. Nothing grows without irrigation. In the days before the railway it was absolutely necessary to have alfalfa and other animal fodder grown near the post-houses that supplied travellers and freight-carriers with shelter at night. This business has, of course, fallen off very much in the past few months, yet just before reaching Humahuaca we stopped at Uquia, where enough hay is still raised to make it worth while to bale it and ship it north to the barren plateau beyond.
Late in the afternoon, we saw a group of llamas, but they are not at all common in this region.
At Tres Cruces, 1052 miles from Buenos Aires, we reached our highest elevation, something over 12,000 feet. It was a dreary spot with scarcely anything in sight except barren mountains, the two wire fences that everlastingly line the railroad tracks, and the mud-walled railroad station. The little “hotel” looked like an abandoned adobe dwelling in Arizona, and the region bore a striking resemblance to the unirrigated part of our new southwest. Erosion has cut the hillsides into interesting sections of shallow gulches and semi-cylindrical slopes. The only green things to be seen are occasional clumps of bushes like sage-brush.
From here to La Quiaca, sixty miles, we maintained about the same altitude, although La Quiaca itself is 500 feet lower than Tres Cruces. We had, in fact, surmounted the great plateau of the Andes. South of us lay the desert of Atacama; to the north the arid valleys of southern Bolivia and the Bolivian tableland. East of us, beyond many intervening ranges and the steep slopes of the eastern Andes, lay the Gran Chaco of Bolivia and the valley of the lower Pilcomayo with its wild Indian tribes and its tropical forests. To the west lay the still higher Andes of the great Cordillera, some of whose peaks rise at this point to an altitude of twenty thousand feet. Notwithstanding these interesting surroundings, the extreme bareness of this desolate region reacts on one’s enthusiasm.
We reached La Quiaca just before nine o’clock. The railroad offices were still incomplete, as the line had only been opened to traffic for a month or two. The old town of La Quiaca, a small mud-walled affair two miles away from the railroad station, is destined soon to be deserted for the thriving young settlement that is springing up near the terminus of the railway. There are two “hotels.” Ours, the 25 de Mayo, had only just been opened. In fact, its exterior walls had not yet received their proper coat of whitewash and stucco.
All day long we had been travelling through an extremely sparsely populated region, so dry, high, and inhospitable as to dispel any idea that this railroad can rely upon it for much traffic. In fact, the line was built by the Argentine Government, not so much to open up this part of the Republic as to tap the mining region of southern Bolivia, with the idea of developing Argentina’s foreign commerce by securing in Bolivia a good market for her food-stuffs and bringing back in return ore to be shipped to Europe from the ports of the Paraná.
An agreement was entered into between Argentina and Bolivia whereby Bolivia was to extend her system of national railways southeast from Oruro to Potosí and thence due south to Tupiza, fifty miles north of the Argentine boundary. The Argentinos on their part agreed to continue their railway north from Jujuy to Tupiza. By the time they reached La Quiaca, however, the English Company that owns the rich Oruro-Antofagasta line became alarmed lest such an arrangement as was proposed would interfere with their profits. By some means or other, the Bolivian government was persuaded to change its plans and decide to build the national railways so as to connect with the Antofagasta line rather than with the Argentine lines. This breach of faith on the part of the Bolivianos was naturally resented not only in Argentina but also by the southern Bolivianos themselves who would be much more benefited by having good connections
