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.