THE BOLIVIA RAILWAY AND TIAHUANACO
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
[Illustration: “GREAT PLATFORMS OF STONE WEIGHING MANY TONS”]
[Illustration: PART OF THE GREAT MONOLITHIC DOORWAY]
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!_