ORURO TO ANTOFAGASTA AND VALPARAISO
Notwithstanding its comfortable beds, wash-stands, and billiard-table,
we were glad enough to leave the hotel at Challapata and take the train
for Oruro. Our only regret was that we had to say good-by to old Fermin
whose faithfulness in his care not only of the mules but of ourselves,
had made us grow very fond of him. We gave him a little gratuity which
he almost immediately offered to Mr. Smith in exchange for a cheap
silver watch the latter had purchased in Jujuy!
On our way northward to Oruro we got distant glimpses of the saline
waters of Lake Poopo that receives the overflow from Lake Titicaca by
means of the Desaguadero River but has no outlet of its own. On our
right were the low summits of the Cordillera de los Frailes and on the
intervening plain was an occasional town with brown huts and a
conspicuous church. Once in a while we saw _chulpas_, so-called “Inca
tombs,” really Aymará, in which interesting remains are often found. The
Ferrocarril Antofagasta-Bolivia, a very narrow-gauge road constructed
and managed by Englishmen, was built to reach the important silver mines
of Huanchaca which, in the early ’90’s, exported annually eight million
ounces of silver. Once on the plateau, it was an easy matter to connect
the railroad with Oruro whose output of silver at that time was about a
million and a half ounces. Furthermore, Colquechaca, with an equal
output, was only two days away and pack trains could bring the silver
readily to the railway.
The road has proved to be a splendid investment, yet Great Britain has
never favored Bolivia with much capital. Apart from this line and a
small bit of railroad near La Paz, there are almost no British
enterprises in the country. It is said that even Ecuador, backward as it
is, has twenty times as much British capital as Bolivia, while Argentina
has two hundred times as much.
The ride to Oruro was devoid of interest except for a conversation which
I had with a distinguished Bolivian physician who had recently come from
the eastern provinces where he assured me lay the real wealth of his
country. He was most enthusiastic about the possibilities of the Gran
Chaco as a region likely some day to be well populated. Although a
native of this part of Bolivia, he told me that every time he came back
to this altitude, he suffered from _soroche_ or mountain sickness. I was
told by several other Bolivianos that they too suffered from _soroche_
whenever they came up from the lower elevation, notwithstanding the fact
that the author of a recent book on South America says that the
Bolivianos themselves never suffer from this infirmity.
We reached Oruro shortly after dark and were met by a pleasant-faced
Austrian hotel proprietor who obligingly put us on board of a mule-drawn
tram-car. A few minutes later we stopped in front of the Grand Hotel de
Francia y Inglaterra and were back in the civilized world again.
There are two comfortable hotels in Oruro and an excellent Union Club
where all nationalities come to enjoy themselves. Besides this, a German
club has recently been started. Another feature of Oruro, which we might
not have noticed had we approached it from the civilized instead of the
uncivilized side of the world, was a rather palatial public
billiard-hall or casino where a dozen or fifteen good tables, and an
elaborate bar, attracted every evening a crowd of foreign engineers,
clerks, and bookkeepers.
The climate of Oruro is cold and forbidding, the thermometer in the
shade usually being 50° F. The rainy season commences in November and
lasts until March; January and February being the rainiest months.
During our summer the weather here is intensely cold and snow-storms are
not infrequent. To the west and south of the city are barren hills and
the general lack of foliage makes the place rather melancholy, _muy
triste_.
The next morning we crossed the plaza to the fine large government
building where the Prefect lives and has his offices. The present
incumbent, Dr. Moises Ascarrunz, was most kind and attentive. He
received us in state, opened champagne, drank our health and then drove
us out in the state carriage to a rifle range where, as it was a
holiday, the local sporting club was holding a match.
The Prefect has taken great interest in the club and it has thriven
under his patronage. The facilities for rifle practice are excellent,
and we saw some
[Illustration: THE PREFECTURA AND PLAZA OF ORURO]
capital shooting. After a light lunch of beer and sandwiches at the
pleasant little club house, the Prefect showed us the sights of the
town.
In his annual report which was just off the press at the time of our
visit, he calls special attention to the bad condition of the _postes_
on the road from Sucre to Challapata! We were not inclined to dispute
his criticism.
One day during our stay, a government proclamation was heralded about
town in the usual fashion. The local regiment of infantry paraded
through the principal streets, stopping at the important corners while
the colonel read the proclamation in a loud voice. The colonel seemed so
strong and healthy that I was greatly surprised to learn on my return to
Oruro a few weeks later that he had been taken down with one of the
sudden pulmonary fevers of this altitude and died in less than
twenty-four hours.
A pleasant German-American, in charge of the local agency of a large New
York commercial house, told us that it was not at all uncommon for a man
to get a chill on his way home from an evening party and die the next
day of galloping pneumonia. The explanation seems to be that at this
altitude (13,000 feet) one needs all the lung capacity one has, as the
air is so rare. A congestive chill is followed by such a dangerous loss
in the capacity to receive oxygen, that the patient soon succumbs and
dies.
The shops of Oruro, as might be expected of a mining city that has been
for several years in communication by rail and steam with the outside
world, contain a great variety of imported merchandise. One, owned by
Spaniards, is devoted almost exclusively to the manufactured products of
Spain. Another, owned by a German, contains an indefinite variety of
goods “made in Germany.” Two or three book shops contain several
thousand volumes of Spanish and French literature, law and medicine.
There is also a small public library and reading-room and the city hopes
to have a large accession to the number of its books in the near future.
I called on one of the local physicians, not professionally, but because
I had heard of a remarkable collection of Bolivian pamphlets and
manuscripts that he possessed. One gets so accustomed to shiftlessness
and uncleanliness in South America that I could scarcely believe my eyes
when I found myself in an office whose spotless white furniture and
aseptic glass cases of modern surgical instruments would not have been
considered out of place on Madison Avenue. The surgeon had been educated
at the Chilean Medical School in Santiago although he was a Bolivian by
birth. His collection of manuscripts and prints was an extraordinary
one, but I must confess that his up-to-date professional methods
interested and surprised me more than his extensive bibliographical
learning. After having witnessed unspeakable conditions in the leading
hospital of Venezuela at Caracas where, as readers of my “Journal” will
recollect, surgeons educated in Paris and New York worked in an
operating theatre that had for its motto, “_Those who spit are requested
not to stand near the table during operations_,” I am afraid my views of
South American surgery, outside of such cities as Buenos Aires and
Santiago, had hitherto been decidedly uncomplimentary.
Oruro owes its importance to valuable silver and tin mines in its
vicinity. There are several large smelters on the outskirts of the town,
and the offices of a number of important mining companies are to be
found here. Certain parts of Oruro are not pleasant places in which to
take a walk. In fact, I never felt more uncomfortable in my life than I
did on a solitary expedition in which I found myself among a lot of
half-drunken miners of all nationalities who were hanging about the
doors of a choice collection of grog-shops. The fearless, impudent stare
of the Aymarás was no less unpleasant than the menacing looks of three
or four burly Anglo-Saxon miners who had spent their last cent for
drinks and were looking for more.
The silver mines have largely been abandoned and the principal industry
is connected with the tin deposits. No mines were discovered here until
some years after those of Potosí and they never produced as much silver,
although, during the colonial epoch, they ranked easily second.
Oruro was founded about the time that the Dutch landed on Manhattan
Island. In the latter part of the seventeenth century there was already
a population of 76,000. In the eighteenth century, the city stood next
to Potosí in wealth and importance.
Some of the churches still show the marks of that elegance with which
they were ornamented during the period of Oruro’s palmy days. There are,
however, few remains of any fine edifices. Indeed, we are told by “El
Lazarillo” in 1773 that “in this great city one will not encounter a
single building that corresponds at all to the immense fortunes which
have been spent here, during the past two hundred years, in an excess of
parades, shows, games, and banquets.”
When the price of tin went up, a few years ago, Oruro enjoyed a boom.
Old buildings were torn down and pretentious new ones begun. Some of
them were only partly completed when tin fell and the boom collapsed.
The population now is about sixteen thousand, although during the boom
it rose to over twenty thousand, of whom more than five thousand were
foreigners. A good percentage were Chileans.
Apart from its importance as a mining centre, Oruro has for some time
been distinguished as a railroad terminal. A line from here to Potosí is
planned. A line from Oruro to Cochabamba, on whose fertile valleys Oruro
depends for its food-supply, is in course of construction. The Bolivia
Railway’s line to La Paz has recently been completed. The road to
Antofagasta has been running since 1892.
Oruro is nearly six hundred miles from Antofagasta and the journey used
formerly to take three days, for trains were only run by daylight and at
slow speed. We found, however, that the roadbed had been improved,
although the track was not widened, and a vestibuled train with two
compartment sleeping-cars and a restaurant-car can now make the journey
from Oruro to Antofagasta in two nights and a day. Three times a week a
Bolivia
[Illustration: A QUAINT OLD BALCONY IN ORURO]
[Illustration: A CORNER IN ORURO]
railway train leaves La Paz in the morning and arrives at Oruro late in
the afternoon. Once a week, as soon after the arrival of this train as
possible, the new vestibuled train starts for Antofagasta. There is no
chance for a through service, for the Bolivia Railway has a meter gauge,
while the Antofagasta line is only three-quarters of a meter wide.
Furthermore owing to some unfortunate squabble between the railroad
companies, the stations are located at some distance from one another,
and the traveller must get across the town as best he may.
When the Antofagasta line was completed, Oruro increased in population
by leaps and bounds, and the admiring Bolivians called their city the
“Chicago of Bolivia.” The only resemblance, however, that I was able to
discover was this forced transfer across the city. The streets of Oruro
which one has to cross in going from one terminal station to the other
are not paved, and the traveller who happens to take the journey in the
rainy reason, when the roads are two feet deep in mud, will wish this
were Chicago!
The departure of the weekly train for Antofagasta is just as much of an
event for Oruro as that of the weekly steamer is for a port in the
Hawaiian Islands or the West Indies. Every one who can comes down to the
station, and those who can afford it crowd into the restaurant car,
order drinks and enjoy the iced luxuries just as the residents of the
Caribbean ports do when a mail-steamer calls.
We had been advised by friends in New York not to attempt to use this
railway as it was only intended to carry ore and no one cared how many
passengers were killed. It did give one a creepy feeling to see a heavy
sleeping-car balanced on rails that were only twenty-eight inches apart.
It seemed like riding on a monorail and I could not help wondering
whether, if the berths on one side of the sleeping-car should happen to
be filled first, the car would not capsize. Evidently this thought had
occurred to the builders of the car, for by an ingenious arrangement the
berths are all in the centre of the car, directly over the rails!
We left Oruro at dusk and during the night passed through Challapata,
the end of our mule trip, and Uyuni, where Don Santiago’s stages start
for Potosí, Tupiza, and La Quiaca _via_ Cotagaita.
The scenery early next morning was not impressive. Before long, however,
gigantic volcanic peaks twenty thousand feet high rose into view, one of
them, the volcano of Ollawe, emitting a tiny cloud of sulphurous steam
that gives a yellow stain to its snow-capped peak. We soon left behind
the great sandy tableland of Bolivia, that veritable Thibetan Sahara,
and began climbing out of the great plateau through the western
Cordillera.
At one of the stations an Indian came aboard the train with a young
vicuña that he had raised as a pet and which he was taking to be sold to
a gentleman in Chile.
About noon we crossed the frontier. Our train was boarded by two
officials. One of them was a Bolivian, seeing to it that departing
passengers did not take any gold out of the country and violate the law
which prevents any exportation of the yellow metal. The other was a
polite Chilean customs officer. Their inspection of the luggage was very
superficial. In the afternoon, at Ascotan, after crossing a pass
thirteen thousand feet high, we commenced the descent and soon reached
the banks of that wonderful white sea of borax, glistening like snow in
the sun, which has made this region famous.
The mountains were grand and inspiring but we were so tired of seeing
barren brown hillsides that we longed for something green, and yet the
further we went, the more desolate became the country. We had entered
the nitrate region which is part of that magnificent desert that extends
for two thousand miles up and down the west coast of South America.
In the evening we stopped for a few minutes at Calamá, a small town but
important as a nitrate centre. It has a moderately good water-supply
which enables it to present an attractive greenness in contrast to the
absolute aridity of the surrounding desert. In this region are several
mines of silver, gold, and copper.
Calamá was the scene of some skirmishing during the revolution against
Balmaceda in 1891, but its chief claim to fame rests on a battle that
was fought here in the war between Chile, Bolivia, and Peru in 1879,
when Bolivia lost her seaport and Chile made a large increase to her
territory at the expense of her two northern neighbors. The first thing
that Chile did after war was declared was to attack the unprotected
Bolivian seaport of Antofagasta. The majority of the population of
Antofagasta were Chileans and the small garrison was quite unable to
offer any adequate resistance to the Chilean invaders, so the Bolivian
authorities retreated at once to Calamá. Thither the Chileans sent six
hundred men to attack one hundred and forty. Although the Bolivian
forces took up a strong position the Chileans had the advantage of
superior numbers and won an overwhelming victory. The affair was
insignificant except that it destroyed all the hold that Bolivia had on
her seacoast.
During the night, we passed through a large number of little stations in
the nitrate country. Early the next morning, as the last half hour of
the railway journey, came an exciting ride down a steep grade in full
view of the beautiful blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. After weeks of
everlasting browns, it was a tremendous relief to our eyes to see such
an expanse of blue. Of course no green was to be expected in this
vicinity. But blue did just as well.
The railroad runs for some distance parallel to the shore back of the
town until it enters the terminal station. We had left Oruro Thursday at
6:30 P.M., were in Calamá by nine o’clock Friday evening, and reached
Antofagasta soon after seven o’clock Saturday morning.
Hardly were we established in a hotel when we learned that the steamer
Mexico, of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, was to sail that
morning for Valparaiso. We had had no chance to explore the sandy
streets and well-stocked shops of Antofagasta, but this was the first
steamer to sail for six or seven days and it might be a week before
there would be another. Furthermore, there was little to tempt us in
this modern seaport with its ugly, galvanized-iron workshops and
warehouses. So we decided to board the Mexico as fast as possible.
The harbor was crowded with boats and barges. A few steamers and
sailing-vessels were lying at anchor waiting for cargoes of minerals of
one sort or another, mostly nitrates and copper.
Antofagasta is a seaport of considerable importance, being the port of
entry for a large part of Bolivia and northern Chile. Yet it shares with
Mollendo the reputation of being the worst harbor on the west coast of
South America. There is little protection against westerly and southerly
winds. Even in calm weather there is a considerable swell at the
boat-landing.
Once in the boat, however, we were charmed by the gambols of inquisitive
sea-lions who thrust their snouts out of the water, a biscuit-toss away
from the boat. As a counter attraction great flocks of birds flew in
circles overhead looking for schools of fish that swim in this bay. As
soon as a school was located, the entire flock of birds would pause an
instant and then dive with the rapidity of lightning from the airy
height straight into the billows, leaving only a splash of white water
to show where they had gone. Another moment and they came to the
surface, shook themselves, flapped their wings, and were away again to
enjoy another magnificent dive a little later.
I had heard much of the terrors of steamship travel on the West Coast.
Passengers who had recently experienced it assured me that it was
simply horrible. We must have been very lucky, for we found the Mexico
most comfortable and quite as good as one could expect in this part of
the world. Of course she was neither so large nor so luxurious as the
average trans-Atlantic liner. On the other hand she was not intended to
carry luxury-loving travellers three thousand miles over a rough ocean
and keep them amused, contented, and well-fed for a week. Her task
consists in stopping every afternoon, anchoring in a badly-sheltered bay
or an open roadstead, landing passengers, merchandise, and cattle into
row-boats and barges, taking on cargoes of hides, coffee, or provisions;
and meanwhile acting as a home for itinerant greengrocers whose business
it is to provide this two thousand mile desert with fresh vegetables.
Furthermore she was built to sail over the comparatively smooth waters
of the tropical Pacific Ocean and provide for passengers who are
travelling in a climate of perpetual spring and summer. All of this she
does admirably.
The staterooms opened onto the promenade deck. There was a well-stocked
library of fiction with books in four languages. The Chilean stewards
were polite and obliging. Altogether we had little to find fault with.
The food might have been a little better, but when one looked toward the
land and saw that bleak desert coast continuing for hour after hour and
day after day and realized that in the mountains behind it there were
even greater desert solitudes, it did not seem surprising that the food
was not up to our ideas of what it should be on board an ocean steamer.
Most of the passengers were natives of the West Coast. To them the diet
seemed quite luxurious. To us who had come from the _postes_ of southern
Bolivia the table fairly groaned with abundance. I can readily believe
that a traveller, who, while on his way south from Panama to Lima, has
his first South American meals on board of one of these West Coast
steamers would find the fare distressingly bad and the boats not very
clean. Perhaps the discipline would seem lax and the service execrable.
It all depends on one’s point of view.
If one is going to travel in South America at all, it is necessary to
make up one’s mind to put up with a lot of this sort of thing. It need
only be remembered that these boats are as safe and comfortable as those
in other parts of the world, and that they have better accommodations
than will be found anywhere in South America outside of half a dozen
cities.
The first day after leaving Antofagasta brought us to Caldera. On the
second day we reached Coquimbo which seems to be a flourishing seaport.
Of course there are no wharves, but the bay is fairly well protected and
steamers are able to anchor within three quarters of a mile of the
landing-stage. New villas in course of construction on the heights at
the south end of the bay testify to the prosperity of two of the leading
business men of the place.
Devoted as Coquimbo has been to commercial pursuits, very little
attention has been given to making the buildings attractive, and only
recently has an effort been made to improve the appearance of the
plaza. I visited two book shops in the hopes of getting some local
prints and found a recently published anthology of the poets of
Coquimbo! The books for the most part were those such as are found in
the usual South American book store: French novels, French text-books, a
few Spanish novels, and the local legal commentaries and law books.
It is a night’s journey by steamer from Coquimbo to Valparaiso. The
temperature was much cooler than we had expected, and grew more so as we
neared Valparaiso. To be sure, Valparaiso is as far south of the equator
as San Francisco is north and the same general climatic conditions
prevail.
The beautiful bay and harbor of Valparaiso have been repeatedly
described by enthusiastic visitors for many years. Since the terrible
earthquake of 1906, the city has lost much of its beauty, although many
of the buildings have been restored and business is going on quite
briskly. In the harbor were fifteen or twenty ocean steamers lying at
anchor, two or three Chilean men-of-war and two large floating dry docks
capable of taking care of the West Coast merchant steamers.
The naval dry dock is at Talcahuano. Although Valparaiso is the
principal seaport on the West Coast, there are no wharves. The business
section is built on the old beach and on a terrace. The hills rise
abruptly from this narrow shelf and the residential district is on the
hills. Elevators and trolley-lines connect the upper and the lower city.
The railroad station is very near the boat-landing.
The railway fares were very moderate and the officials of the road
seemed to us quite courteous and obliging although, during our stay in
Santiago, we read in one of the local newspapers a letter from a lady
globe-trotter who declared the Chilean railway officials were the rudest
and most disobliging that she had found anywhere in the world. Chilean
railways have grown tremendously during the past fourteen years. At the
time of the revolution against Balmaceda, in 1892, there were barely
seven hundred miles; while, at the time of the Scientific Congress, the
trackage had increased to three thousand miles of which half is owned
and operated by the government. More lines are in course of
construction.
Valparaiso is the commercial capital of Chile and her Stock Exchange
determines the rate of exchange. The shops of Valparaiso are filled with
things that appeal to Anglo-Saxons, for there is a large British colony
here.
Perhaps it was natural that we welcomed most eagerly of all the presence
of an attractive English book shop where we purchased files of English
newspapers and all the recent pictorial weeklies and magazines that we
could find. Partly for this reason and partly because we had grown tired
of looking at scenery, the four hours’ railroad journey between
Valparaiso and Santiago passed without making much impression on us so
far as our immediate surroundings were concerned, and almost before we
knew it, we had entered the political and social capital of Chile.