Three asses in Bolivia

LA PAZ : MONTE II.LEMAM IN THE BACKGROUND

THREE ASSES IN
OLIVIA

BY

LIONEL PORTMAN

AUTHOR OP
"STATION STUDIES," "HUGH RENDAL," ETC.

LONDON

GRANT RICHARDS LTD,

ST MARTIN'S STREET
MDCCCCXXII

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LA PAZ : MONTE ILLEMANI IN THE BACKGROUND Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

SKETCH MAP OF SOUTH AMERICA . . .14

PLAZA DE MAYO, BUENOS AIRES . . .34

PASCO DE JULIO, BUENOS AIRES . . .34

HOUSE OF CONGRESS, BUENOS AIRES . . 40

OLD HOUSE IN ORURO . . . .40

HOUSE OF CONGRESS, BUENOS AIRES . . 48

TYPICAL BOLIVIAN COTTAGES . . .48

A HOUSE AND GARDEN AT LA CORONA . . 58

SCENE NEAR MENDOZA . . . .58

THE RIVER AT TUPIZA . . . .100

ON THE WAY TO ATOCHA .... 100

STREET SCENES, ORURO .... 130

A PORTER IN ORURO . . . . .138

A BOLIVIAN MARKET ..... 138

THE PLAZA, ORURO . . . .148

THE SMALLER ' PLAZA ' 148

UNCIA : A TYPICAL INDIAN .... 172

UNCIA : OUTSIDE OUR HOTEL . . . 172

THE CHURCH, CHAYANTA . . . .176

OUR HOTEL AT CHAYANTA .... 176

SANTA MARIA : PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE TO THE MINE . 184
SANTA MARIA I THE BOUDOIR . . .184

LA PAZ ...... 194

AMONG THE MOUNTAINS .... 194

A LAKE IN THE ANDES AT ABOUT TEN THOUSAND FEET . 198
LA PLAZA, COCHABAMBA .... 198

NEAR THE SUMMIT, TRANS ANDINE RAILWAY . .210

GATE OF A CEMETERY IN ARGENTINA . 210

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WE three, Roger Martin, Cecil Martin and I, all
asses according to our friends, agreed to go chasing
rainbows in Bolivia. Which of us was the greatest
ass appears to have been a matter of debate
among those friends ; Roger and Cecil being in much
request elsewhere as mining engineers, and I stand-
ing to gain little and lose much by long absence
from home. From the first, however, these two
seem to have had no doubt as to my precedence ;
and they deputed to me as the Chief Ass the task of
keeping the log. My consent to do so may appear
to lend some weight to their contention ; but, as I
did not fail to remind them, even an Ass is apt to
gain more credence than a mining engineer ; and
if either of them had kept it he would but have
anticipated the epitaph inevitably awaiting him—
" Who hath believed our report ? "

If you inform the next man, whoever he may be,
that you are going to Bolivia you will probably see
him grow thoughtful, uneasy, anxious as though for
your state of mind, and will hear him murmur
' Bolivia — Bolivia — let me see : one of the Southern
States, isn't it ? No, no, of course, Central America.
No, I know, close to the Canal." And when you
have persuaded him that it is not in Central America,
and that it is not the same as Bolivar— a town and
province of Venezuela, several hundred miles from
Panama— but that it is a countiy all to itself, cover-
ing some 600,000 square miles, and is south of the
Equator, north of the Argentine, west of Brazil and
9

10 .THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

t . . . * . . .

east of Chile and Peru, you will probably be asked :
" But what do you get there ? I mean besides
earthquakes and revolutions and that sort of thing ?
What is it — tarpon, llama, president, mountain-
sheep — what ? ?:

The answer is that you get none of these things
except the llama, which ranks with the domestic
fowl as an object of pursuit. Earthquakes have
hardly ever been known to visit Bolivia; they prefer to
frequent the line of c faults ' or terrestrial weaknesses
which extends all the way from Cape Horn to Alaska.
(This line, by the way, passes through Valparaiso,
making it a very uncertain place to live in ; some-
times it is there, sometimes it is not.) Revolutions
are rare, and when they do come they are very mild
and limited affairs. Tarpon, if they ever strayed
so far inland, would find life almost as difficult in
Bolivia as it has been for the average citizen in
England since the war ; for the rivers are apt to
be bone-dry half the year and raging torrents the
remainder. Presidents appear to be protected by
the game laws ; I never could make out why ; at
any rate they are seldom shot at. Mountain- sheep do
not exist. Nor, taking the country as a whole and
speaking broadly, are there any other animals worth
pursuing except a few deer, the Bolivian Andes
being singularly devoid of animal life. What you
do ' get ' among them is a wealth and variety of
minerals such as few countries in the world can show.
As the veins of a man are full of blood, so are the
veins of Bolivia full of metal : of gold and lead and
wolfram and antimony and bismuth, but, far more
important, of tin and silver. Fabulous wealth has
come out of them ever since the days of the Incas,
and before them. Fabulous wealth is still coining.

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 11

And far more fabulous, it is certain, will come in the
future, when science and money have had their say
and the whole country has been made to give up its
secrets. The huge mines now existing are but a
fraction of what might exist. Only capital and
spirit are needed to multiply them. The pity is
that this capital and this spirit come as a rule from
America and Chile rather than from England.
Very little has ever been done by our people to
acquire and develop Bolivian mining property, and
still less in proportion is being done to-day. Ignor-
ance of the country and lack of confidence in it are
the rule rather than the exception with us ; and by
degrees all the wealth that might be ours is slipping
away to people of other races. A fact which fills
the beholder with dismay. For what, after all, is
our first duty as a nation if it is not to take early
and, where necessary, forcible possession of every
corner of the earth that other people are likely to
want ? Duty ! It is our faith, our destiny, our
religion. And one does not like to see duty neglected
and faith grow cold. It was, then, with the idea of
helping in the performance of this duty and of keep-
ing this faith alive, but also and more especially
with that of helping themselves and keeping them-
selves alive, that the Three Asses set forth.

The first question before them was how to get to
Bolivia. Roger, who had spent some fifteen years
there in his time and was admitted to be an authority
on the subject, plumped for Antofogasta via the
Panama Canal, and thence by rail to Oruro, the
town which was to be our headquarters : nothing
simpler for him. But Cecil and I knew our man. We
knew that the body and instincts of a wild animal
are his ; that from his monstrous and impermeable

12 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

frame all sickness and fatigues fly back as though
from a spring- buffer ; that in the matter of comfort
and convenience the very savages know more and
ask for more than he. Give him a chair, for ex-
ample, he will balance on the edge of it as on a
knife. Give him clothes, he will have them shape-
less rags in a week. Give him wine, he will ask for
water ; a bed and a room, he will dream of spruce
boughs under the stars. All foods are alike to him,
all climates equal — except perhaps that luscious
menu that he met in Labrador and has never for-
gotten, " Porpoise pie. Porpoise mince. Blue-
berries." How could we trust such a fellow to
organise a journey tolerable to human beings ?

We probed him with questions; and at last
discovered that the town of Oruro lies nearer
the sky than the sea — namely, 12,000 feet above
the latter — and the climb thereto by rail is done
so quickly, comparatively speaking, that only the
angels who frequented Jacob's ladder or climbers of
similar experience are likely to be free from siroche
or mountain sickness.

" Of course if you mind that sort of thing," said
Roger, but was not permitted to conclude.

" Could the journey be divided," we asked, " so
that we could stop half-way up and get used to the
altitude for a day or so ? 5:

" Oh yes, people do," he sniffed. " But-

No ' buts ' were allowed. We tried to find out
if there were any other charms of the route which
he had not thought worth mentioning, but failed,
and after some hesitation Cecil agreed to adopt it—
with all risks.

For me, the Chief Ass, there was a graver problem,
— namely, a wife. She could not go to Bolivia— far

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 13

too rough, even according to Roger. She could not
be left at home : firstly, because I did not want to
be away from her more than was absolutely neces-
sary ; and secondly — if you can believe it — because
she did not want to be away from me. She must
go, there seemed no doubt, to South America and
there be dumped while I pursued my wanderings.
But where ? With whom ? How should we find a
suitable dump ? Roger suggested Antofogasta — a
town far nearer, I afterwards discovered, to the
lower regions than Oruro is to the celestial. Cecil
was for the Argentine — cooler, more people, more
amusing. She herself had visions of Valparaiso.
But in none of these places did we know a living
soul. We had to sail at short notice, and so had
little time to get introductions. How would she
fare alone on those uncharted social seas ?

She did not know ; nor did we ; and there were those
who hinted that in certain conditions the wife of a
Chief Ass might compete even with that Ass himself.
But whatever their views she would not be deterred,
and with a courage far excelling that of Columbus
or Cabot decided to launch out upon the unknown
main. In or about Buenos Aires we would en-
deavour to find a dump ; and thence I would go by
rail to the northern frontier of the Argentine, and
so to Bolivia. Both I and the brothers Martin
reckoned that we should be in Oruro within seven
weeks. We appointed noon on Christmas Day as
the hour of meeting and went our ways.

II

HAPPY the criminal booked for execution beside me
booked for a voyage. Embarked, the boredom of
all Time descends upon me ; and I count the minutes
till dry land appears. Nothing worse. Perhaps
the worse might be better ; it would at least be
something to do. But at this a Half who certainly
is not * better ' on the sea cries out at me in
fury, " Brute ! If you only knew your luck ! "
And she does know it, alas ! none more surely ;
the reflections on the Sea of Glass will probably
be too much for her. It was then, with deep
foreboding on both sides, that we took ship at
Liverpool — perhaps its initial was 6 O ' and perhaps
it was not — and awaited the chastisement of
Fate.

Far kinder was she, however, than we had
dreamed to be possible. Here was November, but
no November storms; the Irish Channel and the
Bay, but both were calm as a bowl of milk. With
blazing sun, crisp air and hardly a ripple on the sea
we steamed for three days as though on an inland
river : even the Half remained immune ; and we
were able in peace to walk the ship and see what of
good and ill she had inherited from Eve.

She trembled, we found, as little as that lady her-
self—except when at odds with Adam. She took
the sea with dignity, as befits a lady of 11,000
tons. She gave us good food, well varied, un-
pretentious and inviting ; nor ever outside a village
feast have I seen such solemn, earnest, calculat-

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THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 15

ing voracity as I saw — and shared — in the first
week of that voyage. But alas for her liquors,
what can be said for these ? The tea was of that
garden which only shipping companies know where
to find. The coffee was worse. The wines and
spirits were gall to the palate and outrage to the
mind by their cost : and this, too, though the
owners can buy duty-free in France, Spain, Portugal,
all the wine-growing countries, and in Brazil where
the gods go for their coffee. Even the drinking
water was not above reproach. And at night we
dreamed sometimes of pouring these liquids one
by one down the throats of directors held flat upon
the tables : but alas ! when the morning came
there were no directors, but only the same old
tea.

There were other drawbacks of a minor but totally
unnecessary kind. In our cabin, for example, a
crevice built for three and just large enough to hold
two, someone had taken the trouble to fill up with
an unneeded and immovable chest of drawers the
only space under one of the berths where a cabin
trunk could be stowed. Here were we with, of
course, two trunks and nowhere to put one of them.
How, we wondered, could the Company afford to
employ such gifted men ? Then when we sought
a big map on which to trace our progress, behold,
there was none. And when we planned to go
ashore anywhere there was little or no attempt to
help us. Not only in France, Spain and Portugal,
but also in the Canary Islands, Brazil, Uruguay, the
Argentine, Chile, Peru, Panama, the West Indies,
and even more countries than these, people land
either temporarily or, if their sins be as scarlet,
permanently. In all there are different and devilish

16 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

coinages. Why cannot the Company print a table
of these coinages, with their approximate value in
English money, and put them up for all to see ?
And why can they not take some steps to help
passengers ashore without their being exposed to
the jubilant robbery of the local boatmen ? Alas,
the answer to these things is ' no competition.'
German shipping is dead for the moment and
the English companies have the field all to them-
selves. One scarcely knows whether to be glad or
sorry.

The calm lasted as far as La Rochelle, a busy
French port in the centre of the Bay's periphery,
where we stayed but a few hours, were not allowed
to land and apparently missed nothing. Then
arose Euroclydon or one of his relatives, and with
him the Bay ; with results first of doubt, then of sus-
picion, then of dire certainty in the minds of some.
In only two did I happen to be interested; and of
them only one — do I make myself clear? Even
she in her darkest moments did not refrain from
offering to the other such insults as, I regret to say,
form part of her habitual attitude towards him ;
and I was led to conclude that either she was not so
bad as usual, or else that the spirit in her is one that
no man can hope to subdue. It was just before a
climax that she spoke to me of the value of sea-
sickness to certain figures.

Corufia we reached late in the evening and saw
only its lights. Vigo we made next morning. And
who that has come to Vigo in the morning can ever
forget that splendid bay ? You see the brown hills
resting round it, guarding their treasury of pearl.
You see the houses on their lower slopes, the
cypresses and vines and fig-trees, the fields and

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 17

dark-frowning woods. You see the white town
before you, rising tier upon tier up the hill, the ships
and business of the harbour, brown sails and
diamond ripple. You see the great spread of water
stretching far out to the island rocks that guard the
entrance : and still when you have seen all that you
have not seen all Vigo. For far beyond the town the
water winds inland among the mountains ; you can
follow it narrowing till the last dim flash is gone ; and
then your eye is carried on by these mountains,
peak beyond peak, till they fade blue and cloud-like
into the distance. The world can have few more
wonderful scenes.

Apart from this view the Vigo of to-day has little
attraction. We went ashore and wandered about for
a few hours ; saw some very lovely vineyards with
decaying stone pergolas and leaves just turning
crimson ; smelled some very wonderful smells ; and
were deafened all the time by a tempest of noise.
Which of the Spanish- speaking towns we visited on
this trip was the most deafening it would be hard to
say. All were terrific ; and if there be any justice
in heaven their inhabitants will be endowed with
nerves in the next world, and thus equipped will be
condemned to return and live for all time in their
former haunts : no other punishment could fitly meet
the crime. For the rest, the only feature that struck
us here was the immense amount of building going on.
All the ports in Spain were doing the same at that
time, we were told; having prospered exceedingly
during the war. And here at any rate they were
building exceedingly well, with huge masses of stone
brought as ever on the ox-cart of the country, slow
and stately, with its solid wheels and still more solid
oxen.

18 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

Leixoes, our next port of call, set us wondering
as we came into it under the morning sun. What
was that black mass on the beach that looked as if
it might be a swarm of flies ? Glasses showed that
it was human ; apparently the entire Portuguese
nation drawn up in serried array. What for ? Was
there a revolution or an earthquake, or was it simply
a religious ceremony ? We guessed excitedly, and
then were told prosaically. It was just a sardine-
market ; the obliging fish entering the bay in shoals
at this time of year and leaving it — by a different
route. We went ashore, well skinned as usual by
our boatmen, and beheld the mass at close quarters ;
men, women and children working like ants. Some
waded into the sea with nets and gathered the fish.
Some, in couples, bore huge loads of them up the
beach on their shoulders. Some weighed or bar-
gained with the middleman. Some — and these were
women— slashed away heads (and other things) and
steeped the bodies in brine. Some — and these were
not women— appeared to have no function except
to chatter. There was colour, and bustle and
talk, and smell that whistled into your ears and
mouth as well as your nose : and certainly more
work done than you would expect of the whole
Portuguese nation in a year. The inrush of fish
only lasts a few weeks, that is the reason ; and so
it must be harvested quickly if at all. It is the
mainstay of great numbers of the people in winter ;
and as the source of so much food so easily obtained
Leixoes naturally has high honour in the eyes of
Portugal.

But what is this beside the honour it has, or
should have, in the eyes of all the other nations of
the world ? For is it not the gateway, the harbour,

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 19

the Outer Court to that Holy of Holies, Oporto, the
very shrine of Port ? From Leixoes you go up
by tram — oh, sacrilege! — to that celestial city; and
from it the wine of heaven comes down by river to
the harbour, and so away to the deserving and, alas,
the undeserving too. As you are borne into that
city you think with reverence what Port has meant
to you and to all mankind ; you feel as if shoes
should be removed and obeisance made before you
enter its holy precincts; and horror seizes you as
you think of the blasphemers who would forbid
the very act of worship. The very fires of Moloch
were too cool for them.

As^a matter of fact we should have fared very
badly without our shoes, for here and there the
shrine was exceedingly muddy. It is a beautiful
town, not because its buildings are especially lovely,
but because grouped one above another up a sudden
hill the houses and churches and the fort give a
grand effect of height and dignity such as one sees
only in such c hill towns ' as Edinburgh. Here, too,
is another requisite of big cities — namely, a river
running between steep banks. What if its water
be mainly red mud, you have but to think of what
that mud is privileged to carry, and it becomes
a rill as limpid as that of Parnassus. Yes, the
shrine is worthy of its deity. But of course — so
much so in fact as to be hardly worth mentioning
—the one thing you cannot get here, as a stranger
and pilgrim, is a drop of drinkable Port. No one, I
suppose, but an Ass would have tried to get it. But
I did ; and was given a liquid new, crude, sweet, full
of spirit, bestial to the tongue. I drank it, with
bitterness in my heart. But there, what matter a
moment later ? I have been to Mecca ; that is the

20 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

main thing. I have made the great pilgrimage ;
and hereafter shall be accounted a man nearer
heaven than those who have not. My soul is in safe
keeping. I ask nothing more of life.

At Lisbon we came in for fierce wind and rain,
and the difficulty of going ashore was no light one.
A few of us went and came back drenched, dis-
gruntled and ready to depart. But there we had
to stay yet another day ; for the ship was short of
water, and the lighters that should have brought
it alongside were temporarily out of order. We
got some, but not enough ; and were told we should
have to stop at Las Palmas for more. We did,
and saw the place from the deck — which is said by
some to be quite enough — a huge harbour in a ring
of barren, sun-baked mountains ; very fine, very
hot, very bare. In the valleys there is rich tropical
foliage, we were told, with flourishing corn-fields
and vineyards and orange groves. But from the
harbour nothing was visible but the scorched
mountain- sides ; and we wondered how the inhabit-
ants made their living — those, that is, who were not
engaged in making it out of us. All round the ship
was a swarm of boats laden with oranges, lemons,
grapes, vegetables, canaries, wicker chairs, baskets
and tables, as also with puppies of some mongrel
local breed : and throughout the four hours we were
there the owners thereof never ceased to offer them
for sale. Those of the population who were not
thus busy on the top of the water spent incal-
culable periods beneath it diving for coins, including
boys of ten or twelve years old: and we were
driven to the conclusion that all the males of
the islands are trained from the cradle to become
human fish, this being the highest, and certainly

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 21

the most lucrative, ideal known to man. Whether
they get degrees and diplomas for a certain time
spent under water I do not know; but certainly
no one from either University ever deserved more
fully the title ' Master of Arts.'

Ill

BRILLIG

22

IV

WHENEVER during these ten days of liquidation
or insolvency or whatever it may be politely
called — whenever, I say, we murmured of the heat
the wise would wag their heads at us in their
wisdom, and look at each other privily and exclaim
in derision ; " Hot you call it ? Hot ! You just
wait till we get to Rio." And then they would wag
their heads again, and rejoice over us together,
and be happier than any can expect to be who is
not wise.

But behold, when we got to Rio the temperature
was far lower than it had been since we left Las
Palmas. And here let me note that from end to
end of our trip, with a few brilliant exceptions, we
were never given an opinion or forecast or state-
ment of fact as to things on land or things on
the sea ; the wind, the sun, the moon, the stars, the
climate ; the life, the products of the country, the
conditions of travelling ; or any of the things which
man born of woman may wish to know about South
America which did not prove to be quite unreli-
able, if not wholly untrue. Were it not that one
authority always differed from another, and both
were usually wrong, we should have thought that a
conspiracy was afoot to mislead us and send us back
to Europe sadder and wiser. As it was, we developed
a talent for drinking in all information as though it
were liquid gold, and rejecting it on the instant as
though it were rubbish. It was not always rub-
bish, but we were amazed to find how far and how

•

24 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

frequently men of experience could differ from each
other — and from the truth.

Rio Harbour is, of course, one of the big things
of the world. To look at it is to know what sea and
mountains can be ; and nothing short of looking
will serve. At a glance you realise that it is much
finer than Vigo ; larger, more varied, more colour ;
higher, more abrupt and jagged hills. The distant
mountains are more distant, more dramatic; the town
far bigger, more imposing ; the foliage a much more
vivid green, But it is only after long gazing that
you realise its size. Towns seem as villages upon
its banks ; big ships are dwarfs, islands but trifles.
And far though the waters stretch within your sight,
you know by the lie of the valleys that they wind
yet farther among the hills, forming great creeks
which it would take you days to explore, and wash-
ing the feet of towns and villages whose smoke
alone you see. To go up each inlet, climb each
hill, explore each hidden corner of the bay, that
is what you want to do, and must do, to see Rio
properly. But that would take a month ; and a
day is about all that most travellers can spare.
To describe is sheer futility. You must go and see
for yourself.

We at any rate had but one day to spare ; and
we could but hope, with the aid of the funicular, to
climb one hill — namely, Corcovado. Even that under
the circumstances was not quite so easy as it may
sound. For the Half, alas, was little better than a
Quarter now. All through the boiling heat of the
tropics she had had bad influenza, days and nights
of high temperature; and after that, of course,
profound weakness. As though to make her re-
covery more impossible, we had had a following wind

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 25

nearly all the way, so that the scoop put through
the port-hole to catch the breezes had caught none ;
and the air in our cabin was still the air of Las
Palmas, we could almost tell to a second when each
patch of it would come our way. In such condi-
tions no one could hope to make any progress ; and
I ventured to doubt whether she would not be more
dead than alive by the time she reached that hill-
top. " Dead or alive," was the answer, " I am
sick of this ship, and I go." Nothing more to be
said. So down the companion-ladder we struggled
amid a seething crowd. Into a steam-launch we
were packed tight as cheese under the scorching
sun. Five minutes we spent in that — at the price
of five shillings a head. We landed ; and almost
immediately she had to be deposited on a chair in a
shop, lest she deposit herself in a dead faint on the
pavement. A promising start.

After a few minutes I was able to leave her, and
set to work to find someone who in this town of
Portuguese could speak a word of English, and tell
me how to ascend Corcovado. The geography of
the place being as strange to me as its language, I
had little choice at first but to go about inquiring :
" Donde el Cook ? " (Where is Cook's office ?) And
it was some time before I discovered that that admir-
able (but in this case exasperating) person had never
been heard of in Rio, nor I believe anywhere in
South America. Then for some time I tried my few
words of Spanish on various people without success,
asking for someone who could speak ' Ingles ' ; but
it was, I think, some two hours in all before I hit
upon a majestic hotel porter who at any rate
thought that he spoke French. He informed me
that if I took a certain tram-car not later than one

26 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

o'clock we might just catch the last train that went
up Corcovado that day. It was now twenty
minutes to one. The Half was still in her shop,
perhaps a mile, perhaps two miles, away. I took a
car and fled back to fetch her. We caught the tram
by inches, fussed ourselves to rags, missed lunch,
and clanged for hours as it seemed through the
deafening town, only to be told when we reached
the funicular station that we had forty minutes to
wait. Our first taste of South America.

What we saw, however, was worth many periods
of forty minutes, not to mention noise, heat, hustle
and hunger. Far above us rose the precipitous
hill, a sheer wall of green, clothed with great trees,
tangled with creepers, carpeted with ground plants,
and oozing, one might almost say, steaming moisture
out of the reeking soil— all the conditions, in fact, of
a tremendous orchid-house. On the lower slopes—
if slopes they could be called, which were almost
perpendicular — houses large and small managed
somehow to cling to the rock, seeming almost to
stand on the top of each other, so steep was the
incline. Each was buried in flowers ; and each
had a little garden full of vines, fig-trees, peaches,
oranges, bananas, and always Indian corn and a
few vegetables. Plants grow almost visibly in these
conditions; but so, alas, does the jungle too; and
we were told that it is almost an impossibility to
maintain a garden at all, so swift and ceaseless is
the encroachment of the forest.

At last the c train,' which consisted of one
carriage, started to groan up its pathway of cogs,
and we could see at close quarters how precarious
was the hold which both houses and gardens had on
the hill-side. There were two or three stations on

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 27

the way ; for this is a suburb of Rio, and such soil
as there is is probably worth many hundred pounds
an acre. Then we climbed away from the houses,
and found ourselves in pure forest ; now in a cutting,
now on the side of a cliff ; now on a skeleton bridge
crossing a gorge at an angle of forty-five degrees
with the horizontal and looking far down into depths
of tropical jungle. Here and there a window
seemed to open in the foliage, and we had glimpses
of the town and harbour below, the wooded hills
that come down to them and the vast expanse of
ocean beyond. We passed two or three more
stations, only one of which, close to a big hotel,
seemed to have any reason for its existence ; then,
after some thirty-five minutes' journey in all, we
were told that the train went no farther ; there was
a needle-shaped rock at the top which even the
German engineer could not tackle — alas, the whole
railway is German— and up this, if we wanted to
see the view, we must walk.

This meant climbing about a hundred feet of
stairs, no trifle for the Half, who was barely fit to do
that distance on the flat. However, to my shame
be it said, I proceeded to prove myself no fitter
than she ; for on leaving the train I found my-
self wobbling about like a drunken man, and only
too glad of the support of some kindly railings.
Siroche, thought I, at only about two thousand six
hundred feet ? Impossible ! Yet I had had other
symptoms on the way up : a split in my ears and a
clamp across the top of my head. What else could
it be ? I was furious ; for if I crumpled up thus
contemptibly at this altitude how was I going to
fare in Bolivia, the greater part of which lies at ten
or twelve thousand feet ? I could not imagine ; and

28 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

I did not realise then, as I did later, the obvious
fact that within limits it is the pace of a climb,
not the height, that tells. Give your system time
to adapt itself to the increased blood-pressure,
and it will probably agree to any altitude within
reason. Hustle it up on a funicular, and it may
raise the most childish objections, as mine did. I
soon snubbed it, and we struggled slowly to the
top ; but not without scathing — and for once
unanswerable— comments on my condition from one
to whom I was nominally to have been a crutch, a
tower of strength and a rock of support. Arrived
there we found, as might have been expected, a
hideous open pavilion of glass and iron crowning
the pinnacle of the hill. But in this we could sit
for a time and drink in the view. Yes, and not only
the superb view which we had seen from the ship,
magnified and dignified ten thousand times by our
height above it, but also several other views all
equally sublime. No words can convey an idea of
the grandeur of this scene : horizon beyond horizon
of mountain and water, arid tossed jungle, and
foliage of dazzling green : as well try to put it all on
canvas as on paper. We stayed there as long as the
train would let us. Then down to the town again,
feeling that we had had one of the most wonderful
experiences of our lives ; and so to our ship again,
where the Half declared herself to be at least seven-
sixteenths now, though for my part I would not
have put her at more than three.

What else is there to say of Rio ? Nothing
probably that has not been said before. It is very
large— extending for miles round the sea-coast as
well as inland so far as the hills allow. Much of
it is very beautiful — white houses amid exquisite

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 29

tropical flowers and foliage. All of it is madden-
ingly noisy— trams running along most of the by-
streets however narrow, as well as the main, with
ceaseless clanging of wheels and bells ; and cars
rushing everywhere at top speed, with deafening
hooters and open cut-outs. It is abnormally ex-
pensive— we were told that if you play there at all
regularly the cards alone, apart from any stakes,
will run into £80 a year. It is also enormously
rich — the proceeds of Brazilian coffee, sugar,
cattle, tobacco, diamonds and rubber being largely
concentrated here. It is strongly anti-German —
evicted the Hun very early in the war from all
his offices and business, and will not have him
back : did he not sink a Brazilian ship ? It is
the town where Woman is kept in her proper place.
When a man goes to his office in the morning,
we were told, he usually turns the key on his wife
for the day— which shows what he thinks of his
fellow- men. It is comparatively healthy ; some
fever still, and occasionally small-pox ; but nothing
like what there used to be. It is a beautiful place
to be away from.

If you want proof— just one story. During a
great epidemic of fever the corpse- cart, on its daily
round, was hailed aloud by a lady recently widowed.

" Hi ! " she cried — I can only tell it in English—
" Hi ! I must have my husband taken away to-day.
He has been here a whole week."

" Sorry," said the carter, glancing back at his load.
" I really can't take him to-day. Too full already."

" But you must. A week. Think of it ! "

" Sorry ; if I took him he would only topple off.
You can see, I haven't an inch to spare."

"But "

30 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

" I tell you what I can do if you like. I can give
you an exchange. Here," surveying his cart-load,
" is one of only three days. I could let you have
that — for a consideration."

She took it.

ON the way to Buenos Aires we had evidence of
the strong spirit of national revival which is said
now to animate the Spanish race. In art, literature,
commerce and industry alike they are reported to
be making great progress, and certainly they show
promise in diplomacy.

Among other pikes upon which we were impaled
during this period by the Entertainments Com-
mittee, that Terror of the Deep, was a book-tea, or
book-dinner, or some meal which, thank heaven,
was not breakfast. Some essayed wit, some beauty,
some originality ; others — one other at all events
—strove only to save himself trouble, and with
anchovy toast on the lapel of his coat succeeded in
this respect, if no other. (Miss Cholmondeley never
knew when she wrote her most famous book how
valuable she might be to Man.) Three or four efforts
were decidedly good ; and these divided the English
votes, gaining ten to fifteen apiece. But behold,
when the figures were counted, did any English
head the poll ? By no means. A total of twenty-
eight was scored by a Spanish lady for a dull,
witless, utterly commonplace drawing of Don
Quixote which, offered by anyone else, would have
earned no notice at all. Then why did she win ?
Why she competed, and the five-and-twenty other
Spaniards on board voted, that was all. Why not ?
Are we not always saying that team-work is the
essence of success in games ? Spain believes it now,
as to one game at any rate. And that is why it

32 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

is better to be a citizen of that race than of the
British. You ' get there.'

It is better, apparently, to be a citizen of the
Falkland Islands than of either, judging by the
exalted standards which alone seem to decide men's
worth in these climes— namely, their power of mak-
ing money. According to tradition, the population
of these islands consists of a 6 flea, a governor and a
sheep.' But in point of fact both here and on the
mainland the sheep-farming industry has been
carried to a very high degree of prosperity. Large
sums have been made out of it, especially of late
years : and, provided nose and grindstone are firmly
kept together, large sums may still be made,
especially in Patagonia. For my part, I had always
thought — and so had you — that the latter was a
country of mountain and desert inhabited solely by
mountainous savages, any of whom would eat you
for breakfast and be hungry for your wife by lunch-
time. But here, it seems, we were in error. Much
of it is ideal country for sheep ; and there are little
colonies of sheep-farmers all along the coast, some
Welsh, for example, some Scottish and some, alas,
German, all waxing fat on mutton and wool. A
man who wishes for that kind of life— if such there
be — could hardly do better than go to Patagonia
in these days ; though he will not, of course, get the
tit-bits of the country now. If he does go he will do
well to insure himself previously against theft : for
on three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, and
also on three hundred and sixty-five nights, the wind
blows with such hurricane force, both on the main-
land and on the islands, that he may at any moment
find himself whisked away to the South Pole, or
wherever the wind may list. Needless to say, the

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 33

inhabitants regard this with philosophy, and will
tell you that these are the only regions in the world
worth inhabiting. But for my part I would have
a special form of thanksgiving inserted in the
Prayer Book whereby we could daily express our
gratitude that we do not live there. There are
many less vital things for which we do, or do not,
give thanks.

There was no want of thanks on our part, you may
be sure, when we left the ship at Monte Video ; she
to continue her voyage to that temple of the winds,
and thence to Chile, Peru, and home through the
Panama Canal. Monte Video is very like any other
Spanish- American city ; beautiful in places with its
white houses and deep green foliage, but dirty, noisy,
grotesquely over- ornamented and excessively ex-
pensive. There is, in fact, nothing much to be said
of it, except that it is the principal port and the
capital of Uruguay, which is apparently regarded as
the most honest — or shall we say least dishonest
—of the South American Republics. There have
been lurid episodes in her history of course ; but on
the whole people speak of her with praise or at any
rate with patience now ; and when you hear what
they say of the other Republics— but I dare not
quote, present-day paper blisters too easily.

We had an afternoon looking round the town ; then
sought the river-boat which runs nightly to Buenos
Aires. Everyone had assured us that this would
be the roughest part of our voyage ; that if there
were any wind the shallow water of the estuary
would rise mountain-high ; that the boat would
stand alternately upon its head and upon its hinder
parts, and make people sick who had never been sick
before ; and altogether that we were booked for the

34 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

worst night we had had since we left England.
Fortunately, however, there was no wind ; the boat
proved very fast and comfortable, and we duly
found ourselves at Buenos Aires next morning,
twenty-eight days from Liverpool. This was a
disgracefully slow passage ; for our ship was quite
capable of fifteen or sixteen knots, and during the
war had even been ' whacked up ' to eighteen
on occasion. But coal being at the price it then
was, and every additional knot meaning an immense
increase in consumption — the thirteenth knot, for
example, needs far more fuel in proportion than
the twelfth — she had preferred to dawdle along
most of the way at eleven or twelve knots, a pace
more enjoyable for the shareholders than the
passengers.

Now you may suppose that it is an easy thing to
enter the Argentine Republic, and that we had but
to knock at the door to secure ready admission.
But if you think that you will be very much mis-
taken, as we had already discovered. In the first
instance, you must go to the Lake Dwellings and
get a passport, which the Foreign Office will usually
take a week to provide — though, as we proved, by
pulling a string, it can be done within an hour.
Then you must have this passport vised by the
Argentine Consul in London — two minutes' work,
for which he keeps it six hours. Then you must
find a dependable person who will declare in writing
—whether truly or not— that you are sane and have
been out of gaol for two years. Then you must get
vaccinated — or failing that a certificate that you have
been, which is fortunately not quite the same thing.
And lastly, you must make sure that no one on your
ship has influenza, lest you find yourself stowed

PLAZA DE MAYO, BUENOS AIRES

DE JULIO, BUENOS AIRES

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 35

away in quarantine until the crack of doom. All
these things have their reason, it is true. Firstly,
influenza is apt to be epidemic in the Argentine, and
is a far more serious thing there than in England ;
at any rate creates far more panic. Secondly, your
ship will probably have touched at Brazilian ports :
and Brazil is usually a hot-bed of small-pox — we
were told, for example, that there were thirty
thousand cases at Bahia at the moment, all walking
about just as usual. Thirdly, the Argentine is not
only one of the resorts of those whose character has
been impugned in Europe, but since the War it has
been the scene of a desperate conspiracy, supposed
to be of Bolshevik origin, which very nearly became
a widespread insurrection. Altogether one cannot
be surprised at their anxiety to say ' Not at home '
to certain visitors. Once inside the Republic and
proved to be dangerous, I like the way these
gentry are dealt with. After the recent rising we
were told that two thousand— and some say it was
nearer eight thousand — were taken for a voyage for
the good of their health and 'died at sea.' I hope
it is true, and that the fish did not suffer pain.
We could do with that ship nearer home than South
America sometimes.

Having successfully entered the Republic, we had
three problems. First, to find a hotel one day in
which would not mean a week in the Bankruptcy
Court. Second, to understand a word of what was
said to us. Third, to find a ' dump ' for the Half.
We had been told that Buenos Aires acts like a
vacuum-cleaner upon money, and that the hotels
have even greater capacity in this respect than the
shops. We found that it was so ; and if the actual
figures interest you, here they are. Three or four

36 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

of those which had been recommended to us— the
Phoenix and Savoy, for example — would take us for
about 15 pesos a day, and 15 pesos meant at that
time little less than £2 a head ; for exchange was
terribly bad at the moment, and the English pound,
which is worth ordinarily about 12 pesos, would then
buy only 7-50 to 8. At the La Plaza Hotel, the
Ritz of Buenos Aires, we did not inquire ; Dives
lives there and probably pays £3 to £4 a day for
the privilege. The Palace, to which nearly all the
English go in these days, is said to be more com-
fortable than the Plaza and very much cheaper ;
but unfortunately we were never told of this ; and
finally we decided upon a small but quite tolerable
hotel to which we had been recommended, where
English or at any rate American was spoken, and
the vacuum-cleaner was not so powerful. Here,
for 10 pesos a day per head— about 26s.— we had
quite good food and a fair- sized bedroom with
two excellent beds and a balcony. The floors were
bare, the rooms very high, the noise terrific — trams
and motors tearing past us, the latter at top speed
with their cut-outs usually open and all hooting or
ringing almost continuously. The heat also was
very trying, December, January and February being
the worst months in Buenos Aires. Altogether the
conditions were not what I liked for a Half well
below par. However, the other hotels were not less
noisy ; and none of them had what we had here—
namely, a big and quiet garden at the back in which
we could take refuge from the din — so here w<
decided to stay while we looked about us.

Looking about meant first and foremost presenl
ing our introductions. These owing to the huri
of our departure numbered but three all told ; and

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 37

one of them was at once rendered useless by a mis-
take on the part of someone c not ourselves making
for righteousness '—namely, a well-meaning gentle-
man in an office. The man we ought to have seen,
as I discovered a few weeks later, was an English
railway director who is largely responsible for the
erection of one of the finest stations, probably also
one of the finest modern buildings, in the world,
namely the Retiro terminus. The man we did see
—of the same name, but of Argentine birth— was
also a director of a big railway ; very kind and
courteous in every way, and anxious to do all in his
power to help us, but not possessing much capacity
to do so, since Argentine and English people do not
6 mix ' much and he could not hand us on to any of
our own race. This mistake we never discovered
till we had left Buenos Aires. The second introduc-
tion was to our Minister there, Sir Claude Mallett,
who also did everything in his power to help us, and
to whom we owe infinite thanks for the trouble he
k to make our way smooth. The third was to
Englishman in business in the city whose office

e entered admittedly in fear and trembling ; for

itherto, be it remembered, we had made no pro-
ss whatever to the solution of that knotty

roblem, the storage of the Half. But soon in joy
d comfort we came forth ; for he was 'It,' the

lie man in the whole country perhaps who could
and would give us exactly the help we needed.
4 T.C.B.A.' we christened him at once ; for to every
problem and difficulty we put before him he had one
unfailing answer: "That can be arranged." Did
we want somewhere for the Half to stay at ? " I
know just the place, a sugar plantation ; that can

r arranged." Did we want to change our money ?

88 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

" Oh yes, I'll see to it; that can be arranged."
" Would we like to do our journey by aeroplane ? '
" To be put up for the English Club ? " " To have
a sleeping carriage for four reserved for us two ? ':
etc., etc. All that could be arranged without the
least difficulty or trouble to ourselves. It mattered
not a jot apparently that our hosts of the sugar
plantation had never heard of us nor we of them ;
he had but to telegraph and they would be delighted.
In the same way he decided at once that Bolivia
was quite out of the question for the Half ; she
must certainly remain in the Argentine. Time
after time he and his fascinating wife entertained
us at his house. And it was in fact almost entirely
due to his kindness, resource and knowledge of the
country that the Half's experience of South America
was a decided success instead of, as it might easily
have been, a dismal and solitary failure. No words
can express our gratitude for what he did for us.

VI

WHAT did we think of Buenos Aires ?

What we thought is of no great importance in
view of the fact that we were there only ten days.
But for what they are worth I give our im-
pressions, based partly on our own observation and
partly on that of English people long resident in the
town.

To arrive at this port by sea is to gain at once a
glimpse of the national character : for as you steam
up the river from Monte Video you see on either
side of the carefully marked channel the masts of
numerous wrecked ships sticking up out of the
water ; and on making inquiries you learn that
they are victims not only of the frightful waves into
which these shallows are lashed by a gale, but also
of c manana,' the great national habit, which dis-
courages the doing of anything to-day which can
possibly be done to-morrow. Salvage, in fact, is
either incompetent, or c prohibitive,' or is waiting
or someone to come from Europe to do it ; at any

te it is not done, and there the wrecks remain till
the wind and waves dispose of them.

Then, looking at the town, you get a totally
different impression, and quite inconsistent with
the first — namely, that of the nation's colossal
prosperity. Material wealth, utter ugliness — it is
almost like another New York. Buildings of
colossal height rise like factory chimneys out of the
general level ; and the effect is like one of those
tables of the different mountains of the world which
39

40 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

you see in an atlas and never look at again ; except
that even there the peaks have some beauty of form
and here there is none, only a desire apparently to
hit the sky with piles of offices. When you land
you find this impression confirmed. Almost all the
chief buildings are new, bizarre, meretricious, and
to an English eye grotesquely over- ornamented.
The Latin cannot stop, that is his failing. Often
he gives you — and has given you here — designs of
splendid form, dignified, graceful, even magnificent
in line ; but always in deference to national taste
he must deck them out with sensuous, unmeaning
ornament ; so that the effect is often that of a
wedding cake, and that of the town as a whole
one of gaudiness rather than beauty. Beauty there
is, of course. Here and there the eye is not only
relieved but ravished by some exquisite little
building that has somehow escaped the attention
of the wedding-cake man. Some of the plazas too
give a luscious impression of peace and beauty, with
their deep green tropical trees. And there are two
features of Buenos Aires which I think are without
parallel in any town of to-day and which are really
worth the long journey to see — namely, the Retiro
station, which I have already mentioned, and the
iron gates and balcony-fronts with which every
house of any pretensions is adorned. Designed and
made in Paris by men of to-day, this iron-work
seemed to us far more beautiful than anything of
the sort we had ever seen in the Old World either
in or out of museums. In elegance, lightness and
dignity ; in loveliness and variety of pattern ; in
proportion and freedom from the conventional ; in
everything that metal-work should be they strike
the perfect note. House after house is distinguished

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 41

by some exquisite piece of work ; all different, all
first-rate, all 'just right.' Nowhere — as so univers-
ally with us — do you see a design you already know
by heart. Nowhere does the artist, whoever he may
be, fail in novelty, strength and right relation of
parts to whole. In this matter Buenos Aires — or I
suppose I ought to say France — has set up a new
standard of what a town can be, a standard which,
like that of the Adams and Flaxman in English
architecture and decoration, is never likely to be
surpassed.

In size the principal part of the town, the kernel
of the nut as it were, seems small for so important
a place. But this is more than made up for by
the range of its suburbs. Take the train in any
direction, and it seems as if you will never come to
the end of them ; rows and rows of white one-
storied, flat-roofed cottages stretching away in per-
fectly straight lines as far as the eye can reach, every
one with a little garden behind it, but no attempt
at metalling the road in front, which remains

rhat it was when first created — namely, mere
•th. These are the homes of the ' labouring '
Masses ; and to look at them is to realise something
of the labour problem with which the town is always
faced. Apart from the Argentine pure — or impure

—most of these people are Italian or Spanish, mere
tinder in the hands of their agitators. Of these
agitators there is always a plentiful supply arriving
from Italy and Spain. And when you reflect upon
the numbers of the so-called c workers ' and the fact
that they are always being incited in season and
out not only to strikes of an utterly unreasonable
kind, but also to murder, arson, pillage and general
revolution, you see on what a powder-barrel the

42 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

community dwells. To do it justice, the Government
knows how to deal with these gentry. Violence
is always met with still greater violence ; and in
this respect the rulers of our own country might
learn a good deal from their proceedings.

The streets of Buenos Aires are all laid out on the
American plan, and are strangely narrow for so big
a town. Only two or three, like the Avenida or
Entre Rios, have the breadth of Oxford Street ;
and most of the rest, even the busiest, give little
more room than is needed for the walking traffic
alone. The object is to keep off the sun ; but the
result is one of great inconvenience. Down al-
most every street runs a tram-line, almost always
crowded with cars ; usually there is only enough
space left for one motor or mule-cart to wriggle
by ; and so progress along a busy street is no light
matter. Try the pavement, and you have almost
to fight for every inch of the way. Leave it by so
much as a foot and you are threatened if not struck
by an advancing tram. Take a taxi and the only
thing that advances is the cost. If the people who
built and who continue to use these streets were
ever in a hurry there would have to be a ' first-aid '
station at every corner for cases of insanity. But
luckily they never are ; I doubt if there is any word
in their language corresponding to the American
' hustle.' And as for visitors, why, if they do
not like the congestion, they must just lump it, and
acquire as soon as possible the basic philosophy
of the country, ' The morrow is as good as the
day.'

This congestion is worse than it otherwise would
be for the fact that there is no ' Strand,' ' City,'
'Billingsgate,' 'Bond Street,' or 'Temple' at

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

Buenos Aires. Business, law, fashion, hotels,
theatres, shops and clubs are all huddled together
in a few narrow streets ; and the followers of all
compete for space which is hardly enough for one
set alone. Add the tram-line and you have the
confusion complete. No street is too narrow for
it to invade, nor any route too devious for it to
follow. Imagine, for example, a line starting from
Victoria and going along Ebury Street and Eaton
Terrace to Sloane Square ; thence by Cadogan
Square, Lennox Gardens and Beauchamp Place to
Brompton and Exhibition Roads ; and then up
Church Street— that would be a parallel case, or
nightmare. The fares are relatively cheap for
Buenos Aires, twelve centavos (about threepence)
for any distance, and the cars are always crowded,
for there is no other means of conveyance except
taxis and a not very serviceable 'Tube.' The
taxis, which are mostly touring cars, are also
relatively cheap ; one seemed to be able to go
almost anywhere within reason for ' un peso.' But
to one who has any fear of death it is worth any

umber of pesos to keep out of them. For the
iver's one idea of pace is the maximum to which
e car can be urged. Round corners, across main

reets, between trams, anywhere where there is
m to squeeze or skid, there will he dart without

he faintest regard for safety, yours, his own or
anybody else's. If ever there were a law on the
subject, it has long become obsolete. The vigilantes
(police) occasionally interfere in extreme cases ;
but to an Englishman it is the ordinary everyday
driving which will seem extreme. Never before

ave I at any rate been so continuously reminded

f Charon's proximity, ticket-book in hand.

44 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

Shops in Buenos Aires are things of majesty — and
so are their prices. Except in times of abject de-
pression the people are so rich, so anxious to spend
their money, and so fond of the best that money can
buy, that the tradesman must have the very finest
goods that England, Europe and America can produce.
Clothes, wines, furniture, boots and shoes, jewellery,
motors, fancy goods of every kind, all that the most
fantastic luxury can suggest the Argentine will have ;
and even that is not good enough for him — or
her. Both ' he ' and c she ' are always beautifully
dressed, probably by far the best-dressed nation
in the world. The women's dress, like the men's,
appears inordinately expensive ; at any rate it is
always of the very latest design ; and often indeed
it is ahead of that, for the seasons are of course the
reverse of those in Europe, and Paris is apt to send
out by way of experiment in December and January
what she means to offer her own customers in the
following June. I am told, however, by those who
have a knowledge of these tremendous matters that
the Argentine woman's expenditure is nothing like
so great as it would appear. For in contrast to the
Englishwoman she needs only one kind of gown.
Golf, hockey, hunting, skating, tennis, yachting,
walking, the various pursuits for each of which our
women must be separately and appropriately clad,
hardly exist for her. Even on the estancicf (ranch)
she seems to do little or no riding, walking, garden-
ing or anything in fact but sitting about. Clad in
almost anything up to midday, she only puts on
the dress of state when she leaves the house ; and
then it usually does for the evening as well as the
afternoon, there being no regular and matter-of-
course change at dinner-time as there is in England.

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 45

'hus she really needs very few clothes ; and if you
Id that she is almost always an expert on the
subject, has exquisite taste, does much of the work
herself, and indeed, besides being an excellent wife,
mother and housekeeper, has little other interest in
life but dress, you will realise that she is not quite
so expensive as she looks. Englishwomen in the
Argentine do not attempt to dress on the same
scale ; they have not the wealth, and if they had
would not care to live in the same way, like animated
fashion-plates ; they have their usual interests and
activities as in England, and dress very much as
they would at home, though even this must be no
small matter in Buenos Aires, the home of Dives.

The Argentine lady's figure is not to our eyes
worthy of her dress, though she always carries it
splendidly, and walks with a grace and dignity we
certainly cannot beat in England. She is esteemed
in fact as in Germany, Spain or the country of the
late President Kruger, very largely by her cubic
capacity ; and consequently she makes no attempt
—quite the reverse — to restrain that which in Eng-
land is the chief terror of her sex. You have to
form a new ' orientation ' when you go to the
argentine. Fat is fashionable, corpulence com-
mlsory ; double your waist-line and you double
rour proposals. Many of the young girls are as
iim arid elegant of figure as our own, but no one
:hinks anything of them till they have 4 developed '
Ltisfactorily, and that is not likely to be much
>fore the age of twenty- five or thirty, so high — or
ither wide— is the standard demanded by men.
'he strange thing is that even Englishmen, after
living here a little time, seem to acquire the same
LSte, and demand bulk before anything; so that

46 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

one hears of girls of our own race complaining
bitterly that they are nothing accounted of, what-
ever their charms, if some creature of nobler girth
is present. From the practical point of view, too,
slimness has its drawbacks. The Half, for example,
spent an incalculable period — I waiting — in search
for a c ready-made ' garment which did not seem
fitted for a female elephant rather than a woman ;
and must have tried on at least a score before she
found one that did not leave room within its folds
for at least one other person of the same size.

Argentine women— if I may continue for a
moment to describe what I have heard of them and
their lives — have a very limited sphere as compared
with ours. They never seem to enter or indeed
are supposed worthy to enter into their husbands'
activities or interests. The political work, the
estate management, the farm, the games, the
' running ' of clubs and societies in which they bear
so large a part in England, are not for them in that
country. Even the amusements are hardly ever
shared. The husband after the first year or so
seldom or never goes about with his wife. In
Buenos Aires, for example, he will spend evening
after evening away from her, gambling ; and seldom
or never does he dream of taking her with him to
a restaurant or theatre. An English friend of ours,
staying at one of the Cordoba hill-resorts with her
husband and going about with him as usual, was
asked by one of the Argentine women in the hotel
quite as a matter of course : " Then you are only
recently married ? 3: "On the contrary, we have
been married ten years." " But— But only
with difficulty could she believe that it was true.
This naturally limits their outlook very closely,

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 47

id the majority in fact aim at nothing more than
;ing good cooks, dressmakers, hausfraus, wives and
mothers; which naturally does not make them in-
teresting. Moreover, their etiquette appears to our
eyes preposterously narrow. No married woman,
to give an example, would dream of admitting
a man into her house even for an afternoon call
unless her husband were present. (She knows
what would happen if she did.) And the mourning
regulations if carried out are so strict that it seems
as though they must spend half their lives in black
and ceremonious inertia. The departure of even
the most remote— and detested— relative is treated
like that of a father, sister or wife in England.
Out comes the crape for a prescribed period, perhaps
as much as two or three years ; and for the greater
part of that time if not the whole they must live
cloistral lives, not even playing the piano in their
own houses, lest the atmosphere of unreal grief be
lightened by so much as a gleam of happiness.
With all their discontents Englishwomen have
something to be thankful for !

Argentine manners are a mass of contradictions.
The man in the street seems more courteous and less
brusque and aggressive than our men in England,
but on the other hand he shows very little real con-
sideration for anyone but himself. Time after time,
for example, I have seen a woman laden with
parcels or a baby climb into a tram-car crowded
with men and forced to stand the whole way unless
I had a seat to offer her. If I had, I could see
that my giving it up caused quite a sensation among
the caballeros (gentlemen !) there present. And we
were warned that no woman of the upper classes
should ever go about alone in Buenos Aires. It is

48 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

frequently done no doubt, and as a rule no un-
pleasantness results ; but there is always a possi-
bility of this ; and it is certain that no unmarried
girl should ever go about without an escort ; nor
any woman, married or unmarried, after dark ; if
she does she risks being arrested by the vigilantes as
a suspected person, and may have to spend a night
in gaol before she can establish her identity and
innocence. That is what they think of unescorted
women in Buenos Aires.

What of the men ? Well, of course they are
chiefly to blame. Twenty years ago apparently a
good-looking woman walking anywhere in Buenos
Aires would be the subject not only of perpetual
staring but of unceasing personal remarks. Almost
every man she passed would mutter some gem of
gallantry : " Red lips," " O cruel ! " " Eyes of love,"
"Ah, rapture!" and the like. And if she were at
all well known for her beauty she would quite
likely find in a crowded street a whole rank of men
drawn up on the edge of the pavement with hats off
and hands on their hearts smiling at her and mur-
muring flattery. Not that she minded — within
limits. On the contrary, we were told that the
Argentine or Spanish damsel would be considerably
disappointed if she did not receive such well-merited
tributes to her beauty, and to this day counts her-
self by no means a success unless she can glean a full
harvest of stares and amorous glances. She has to
be content with these now ; for at last the fashion
of spoken and whispered flattery became so gross
that no woman was safe from insult in the streets,
and the young men of the better class took the
matter in hand and succeeded in making it a punish-
able offence for a man to be 'seen speaking to a

HOUSE OF CONGRESS, BUENOS AIRES

TYPICAL BOLIVIAN COTTAGE

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 49

woman — even his own sister — in the streets! After
that the conditions improved and were never so
bad again, though what the ladies thought of them
has never been revealed. It is not, one gathers,
solely from c cattishness ' that Englishwomen have
been known to refer to their Argentine sisters as
' Swivel-eyes.'

It must not be supposed from all this that the
Argentine man is always impossible to tolerate in
English society. On the contrary, the best of them
are as refined, well-read and well-educated as any
people in the world, and always intensely generous
and hospitable. But the best are few and far
between ; and the majority, both men and women,
are steadily avoided by English people, so that
there is little or no social contact between the two
races.

One word as to the cost of living here. The
whole scale and habit of expenditure not only by
the Argentine but also by our own people seem to
a newly arrived Englishman so tremendous that he
will be apt to find the financial atmosphere very
demoralising at first. He may come here with fixed
ideas as to what he will spend ; but he will be very
clever if he manages to adhere to them. Not only
is the cost of living tremendously high, but everyone
seems to spend his or her money far more lavishly
than in our country and with far less thought for
the morrow. Added to this the peso is always
crying out to him : "I am a shilling. Everyone
spends and regards me as a shilling, why not you ? '
And though he knows that it is really more like two
shillings, he will be a very stout fellow if he does not
soon forget this and fall into the prevailing habit.

To give an instance of one's expenses, a man

D

50 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

making perhaps four or five thousand pounds a year
will only have a tiny house in a suburb such as in
England would be inhabited by a prosperous clerk
and be rented at seventy to a hundred pounds a
year ; and he will be exceedingly careful too how
he lives in it, so immense are the wages demanded
by servants and so vast the general expenses of a
household. No, the Argentine is not a country for
the poor. Nor without big capital can you expect
now to become one of the rich. The day of small
starts and big results has gone by. Those who
think to find a fortune here should ask Mr Punch's
advice — and take it.

VII

To travel by rail in the Argentine summer is to
become a dust-bin. You breathe dust and eat it,
drink it, smoke it, see it and almost hear it buzzing
round you, sleep in it and when you wake in the
morning find yourself buried in it. Escape is not.
Resignation and a dust-coat avail but little. You
can but meet grit with grit, and pray for the end.

The end is far, and the monotony extreme on
most journeys. For from sea-coast to Andes the
country is flat as a slate ; not a hill to be seen,
barely a ripple in the ground. North, south, west
you may travel for four and twenty hours from
Buenos Aires and see only the same endless plain.
There are leagues and leagues of rough grass and
alfalfa : there are fields of corn ; some swamp,
occasionally a sheet of water ; numbers of cattle
and horses ; wire fences ; very few trees ; the sky-
line only broken by ricks, and by the hideous metal
windmills which automatically supply the drinking
troughs with water. Some people say that you can
get water anywhere in the Argentine by boring a
few feet ; but the experience of those who have
tried does not seem to bear this out. Often you
have to go very deep to get any. When you do you
may find it brackish and useless. Or you may even
have all your trouble for nothing and find none at
all. The artesian well for some reason does not
seem to find much favour here ; I think owing to
the geological formation. And so here and there it
has been found impossible to raise cattle. Taking

52 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

the country as a whole, however, neither this nor
any other drawback seem to matter in the face of
the extraordinary fertility of the soil. By all the
laws of farming much of it ought long ago to have
shown signs of exhaustion, so hardly has it been
worked. But exhaustion is the last thing the Argen-
tine farmer ever thinks about. Year after year he
puts the same crops into the same land, and can be
sure of getting the same yield. Wheat is laid down
for unthinkable periods in succession — I know of a
case of twenty-eight years and believe thirty-five
and forty to be nothing unusual — and the last crop
under equal conditions is quite as good as the first.
To see a country like this is to realise how hopeless
it is for England to grow her own corn. Meat and
milk, the very best cattle and horses, and a big
Navy to guard our food supplies— that is plainly our
policy, and always will be.

The Argentine seems to flourish rather in spite of
than because of its land system or tradition, such as
it is. In many cases, for example, a man buys an
estaftcia simply with the idea of selling again at a
profit when he has spent a few years improving it.
There is, too, a law of succession which decrees
that when a man dies his land shall go, whether he
like it or not, to his sons in equal shares ; so that
the general tendency is towards perpetual change
of ownership, breaking up of big estates, and lack
of continuity. In practice, however, this is usually
got over by the formation of syndicates. Every
year sees more and more of the country cultivated
by groups of men rather than by individual farmers :
and so in spite of the law the big estate does con-
tinue : and a very good thing too, since this is
emphatically a country for the big farmer and not

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 53

for the small. It is worth while observing by the
way that it is by selling their land at enormous
prices rather than by actually cultivating it that
the Argentines have made most of their wealth.
Take, for example, the half-acre of ground on which
a friend of ours built his house at Hurlingham, the
principal English suburb of Buenos Aires. It cost
him £1000.

In speed, comfort and general management, the
railways seem fairly near the European standard.
On a long journey the trains consist almost entirely
of sleeping and restaurant carriages. You are
allotted your berth, in a compartment with one or
possibly three companions. By day the berths are
turned into seats ; and in this compartment you
can enjoy a privacy as complete as in a cabin at sea ;
a great boon even for men, who, especially if they
have been in the East, will not relish travelling
cheek by jowl with some of the Argentine native
population ; but an absolute essential for ladies,
for it is not considered advisable for them ever to
travel alone, and if they do they will be wise to
remain in their cabins throughout the journey, not
even going to the restaurant-car for their meals,
lest they be given cause to regret it.

The engines in these days are fired with quebracho,
an intensely hard, heavy wood which grows in great
profusion in the northern part of the Republic;
sinks in water; gives out almost as much heat as
coal ; and now that the latter and its freightage have
become prohibitive forms the principal fuel of the
country, both for the railways and often for private
purposes too. You see it heaped on every available
inch of locomotive and tender, on trucks at every
station, and in huge reserves at the principal places.

54 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

Until all the engines are equipped with oil furnaces
quebracho will reign. Then comes oil ; and if there
be any sense in the country, it will be native oil ;
for there is plenty of it in the southern part of the
Republic, and given private management it could
undoubtedly be made to pay. But as it is most of
the wells are under Government control : and when
you have said that of anything in the Argentine you
have said the last word on the subject ; the Lime-
house of the world could produce no more blistering
anathema.

There are numerous small stations to be seen as
you cross the eternal plain ; all alike ; a few flat-
roofed houses, one of which if not more is sure to sell
drinks — anyone can do this in South America by
merely paying for a licence. You see a few trees, a
few horses tied up to a railing, a few people lounging
about ; and always a few tracks, dignified by the
name of roads, leading away straight as a die to the
horizon, where presumably they find some object
for their existence, for there is never any in sight.
Roads, in our sense of the word, there are practically
none outside the towns ; for there is no stone nearer
the sea than the Cordoba hills, and the cost of using
it for roads would be much too great. When
Buenos Aires wants stone for this purpose or for
building, it often sends to Norway or Sweden—
though of late this supply too has been rendered
almost prohibitive by the rise in freights. These
tracks, of course, become swamps in wet weather
and dust-storms in dry. They will carry a motor
under the latter conditions ; but under the former
you risk complete sepulture, and it is always
necessary to carry a rope for 'hauling out.' Wiser
is he who drives a dog-cart or the farm-cart of the

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 55

country, a huge two-wheeled affair with enormous
wheels, drawn as a rule by six or eight mules of
various sizes — it always looks as if the owner had
decided to take out his whole stable for a treat, or
else to show the world about him how rich he is in
mules.

Across this dreary plain for a night and a day we
travelled, in grilling heat and a great blanket of
dust. Then we saw in the blue distance the hills
of Cordoba ; we saw houses and gardens and a
made road and other signs of civilisation; and in
due time we arrived at Cordoba itself, one of the
biggest towns in the Argentine. These hills are a
great resort for Buenos Aires people in summer
heat, and possess plenty of hotels and boarding-
houses ; otherwise they are nothing remarkable.
On we went, another night, the dust still with us,
and awoke to — what do you suppose ? The roar
of an aeroplane close to the railway. There the
thing was, pirouetting round a field before the
admiring populace— a wanton and astounding thing
to happen in the central wilds of the Argentine
Republic. It belonged probably to an Interna-
tional Aviation Commission (sent, I believe, by
France, England and Italy) which was then camping
near Buenos Aires and endeavouring to persuade
the inhabitants to go about their business by
aeroplane. The Argentine is no doubt a good
country for the purpose ; huge distances and
uniform flatness ; a good country too for buying
our disused machines, so rich ; but one doubts
the commercial success. How many people, even
Argentines, can afford to keep a staff of trained
mechanics at their estaricias ? How many will relish
a break-down hundreds of miles from anywhere ?

56 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

And how are huge petrol supplies to be maintained
at great distances from a railway ?

We travelled a few hours longer, now through
great fields of sugar-cane, with factories at frequent
intervals, then at last arrived at our destination,
Concepcion, a small town south of Tucuman, near
to which was La Corona, the sugar plantation where
the Half was to be dumped. We were met by one
of the managers with a car and a luggage-cart and
a wagon-load of kindness ; were driven through the
chaotic streets of the town at break-neck speed ;
and after a mile or so came to the factory, a vast,
irregular building with a huge chimney and crane
outside it, the latter for handling the cane. Like all
factories it was very plain in itself ; but unlike ours
in England it was redeemed from hideousness by
its environment ; huge eucalyptus-trees, an avenue
of weeping willows, a lot of dense tropical foliage ;
and behind it — a marvel of grandeur and beauty -
the Aconquija, a vast wall of mountains twelve to
fifteen thousand feet high, bright pink and purple
in the morning sun, gleaming here and there with
snow, and looking at first like a scene-painter's
work, so stagy and unreal was their colour, but
convincing you slowly that they were all the more
beautiful for that, since for once an artist's dream
of impossible loveliness had come true and the real
and the ideal marched together hand in hand. That
was the back-ground, perhaps ten miles away. The
fore-ground was a vast expanse of dust, a corral or
field packed with mules, waiting to be used and
not even eating, for there was nothing to eat ; and
opposite the factory, bowered in trees and flowers,
three or four white- walled one- storied houses
with thatched roofs coming low down over wide

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 57

verandahs. " Baths," we whispered to each other,
" baths ! " And the spirits that were in us, choked
and laid low by dust, arose and shouted. Baths
were soon at our service ; and I will wager that in
the whole history of the world's ablutions they were
never more urgently needed.

Now La Corona was the home of the Half for
nearly two months ; but it was mine for only four
days ; so I can but give scattered notes upon it,
mainly provided by her. To me the memorable
things are the intense heat and the intense kindness
of our hosts ; and the latter, look you, is the more
memorable for the former. For anywhere in the
sugar country at this time of year the heat is often so
grilling, fever and dysentery so common, and insect
pests so exasperating that the strongest will feel little
more than half alive, and the slightest extra strain
on the nerves is apt to be strongly resented by those
long-suffering organs. The more grateful then are
we for the infinite trouble they took to make our stay
enjoyable. Strictly speaking, the company owning
the factory was our host ; but in its unavoidable
absence its duties were undertaken by the half-
dozen Englishmen and their wives who actually
or metaphorically cause the wheels to go round ;
and it is largely due to their unfailing kindness
that the Half enjoyed her stay in South America
so much.

At the time we arrived there was little work going
on ; for between November and April is the ' slack '
season (so called) when the sugar-cane is growing.
During ' crop,5 however, when it is being cut and
brought in — a period beginning as a rule in April or
May and lasting from two to five months— these
men have terrifically hard work ; for the delivery

58 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

and crushing of the cane proceed continuously night
and day, and even the smallest stoppage throws
everything out of gear. There must, for example,
always be one or other of the engineers in the
factory to repair any mechanical defect ; and the
work of the office staff is apparently little less
exacting. One does not quite see when they sleep.
Possibly they put off doing so till December, when
the crop is all disposed of. But even then the
engineers have their hands pretty full ; for the
crushing and refining machinery is complex, elabor-
ate and on a tremendous scale ; and the need of
renewals and repairs keeps them busy during a
great part of the ' slack ' season as well as the
other.

Up till a short sime ago the financial crop must
have been very heavy in fat years, and quite desir-
able in lean. But the immense rise in wages which
has taken place recently here as elsewhere, and the
immense increase in the cost of machinery must
make it difficult now to produce a good balance-
sheet ; and till these items become normal again
this difficulty will continue. Lean years are,
roughly speaking, years of frost. Five degrees (F.)
below freezing-point will do much damage to the
cane ; and anything much more than that coming
early in the season spells utter disaster. Fortun-
ately it does not often come ; but this district is
quite as far south as it ought to be for sugar ; too
near, that is, to the South Pole for strict safety ;
and until the critical time has passed there is always
a good deal of anxiety.

As for disposing of the sugar when refined, this
until three or four years ago was simple enough ;
for supply in the Republic was not equal to demand.

A HOUSE AND GARDEN AT LA CORONA

SCENE NEAR MENDO/A

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 59

Recently, however, the reverse condition has
obtained ; and when we were there there was
plenteous trouble on this point, mainly owing to
Government intervention. With one eye the
Premier (who has the full use of both) beheld a
surplus of sugar clamorously demanded by Europe.
With the other he beheld the votes of the Argentine
people already querulous of high prices, and wept
for them. At all cost they must be comforted — do
not Premiers live by votes ? So he decreed that
sugar might be exported, but only on condition
that it was sold to the Argentine people at a
figure which the growers alleged to be below the
cost of production. Hence arose a devastating
controversy : and while people in England were
unable at times to get their full ration of sugar,
people in the Argentine were wondering if it would
not be better to burn their surplus or bury it
in the ground. I do not say that they actually
did either ; but this is quite a fair example of
the delights of doing business in South America,
and of the attitude to the world of Argentine
politicians.

These gentlemen are, of course, among the most
honeyed and accomplished diplomatists of the
human race. A book might be filled with the stories
about them. Let me quote just one — that of The
Tucuman Plague. Eighty of the nominal sup-
porters of the c In ' party were suspected just before
an election of infirmity of purpose. Infirmity of
another kind was therefore alleged against them—
namely, bubonic plague ; and they were duly in-
terned in a compound at a safe distance from
the town, and inoculated with a preventative
virus. Whatever the medical properties of this

60 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

virus, it certainly prevented their voting ; for it
produced in them symptoms so like those of
the plague that they could not possibly be allowed
to go about infecting other people ; nor if they
had would they have had the strength to get
to the poll. So there they remained till the
voting was over ; and the ' Ins ' sailed in once
more.

There is much riding at La Corona : no one indeed
in South America ever dreams of walking if a horse
or mule is procurable. A deal of polo is played,
except in the hot season. There is always tennis,
fishing in the rivers, and guanaco shooting in the
hills, the guanaco being a near relation of the llama.
Ponies and mules abound. And there is also a
Ford car of venerable antiquity which amidst
unheard-of conditions has never been known to fail :
the conditions being that the ' roads ' suggest a rough
sea which has been suddenly frozen in mid-air, and
that its normal load was considered to be eight :
ten was regarded as a slight strain on the springs,
but ' nothing to write home about till you got to
twelve.' So here as in any other part of the world
the English race manage to enjoy themselves very
thoroughly when off duty. A sugar-growing dis-
trict is not a health resort ; there is no doubt about
that. Sugar needs an orchid-house atmosphere.
The human frame does not. And so there is a good
deal of fever and dysentery here, and at times
frightful mortality among the natives, especially the
children. But not a whit is the Englishman dis-
mayed. He does his work and plays his games as
though there were no climate to be considered.
Those at La Corona at any rate regarded it as one of
the best places in the world to live in and infinitely

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 61

preferable to anything they could have had in
England. To each one his taste. To the visitor
fresh from that sunless country the conditions at
this time of year certainly suggested those awaiting
the majority of us elsewhere.

VIII

I TOOK train from La Corona on a grilling day of
December, with the Half and others who designed
to do Christmas shopping in the town of Tucuman.
We passed through leagues and leagues of sugar-
cane, with factories at frequent intervals ; and at
midday reached the town, which is the capital of
the province of Tucuman, one of the richest tracts
of country in the world. That the houses were not
built of sugar and the streets paved with it seemed
to us surprising, but was true. Like many other
rich cities it is entirely plain and commonplace ;
streets laid out on the American plan, houses all
white, a plaza, a church that must surely be the
ugliest in all the world, trams everywhere — except
where you want to go — and noise indescribable. It
also possesses, as I was to find to my cost, four
stations.

From one of these which we will call ' Euston ' to
sharpen my story, I was to go on that evening ;
expecting to reach La Quiaca, on the northern
boundary of the Argentine Republic, within thirty-
six hours, and thence travel by motor diligenzia to
the nearest station of the Bolivian railway, which
was nominally a matter of only two more days.
Thus if all went well I should reach Oruro in time
to keep my appointment with the brothers Martin
on Christmas Day. And in my fatuous ignorance of
South America I actually assumed that all would go
well, and that having planned a time-table I should
have no difficulty in keeping to it.

62

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 63

Thus demented then I drove to Euston, and asked
as a matter of course for a berth in that night's
train.

"There will be no train to-night," was the answer
in Spanish. " Huelga [strike]."

"But " I simply gasped.

" Huelga. Would you like to see the manager ? "

"I would."

"You cannot, he is at breakfast."

" But "

"Come back in an hour's time."

"But "

My ' but ' was answered by a slam- to of the
shutter, and I was left gaping outside, struck dumb
by the disaster that had suddenly descended upon
me.

Disaster it was indeed. For huelga means very
much more in the Argentine than it does in England.
Here a railway strike is a thing that can hardly hope
to succeed, and at worst is not likely to last more
than a week. There the duration may be six or
seven weeks or even more ; and the accompaniment
a general orgy of violence and rebellion. As things
stood even a week would be serious for me, for I
should be by that much late at Oruro and should
put out all the Martins' plans, for they would have
no idea when I was likely to appear. If it were
much more than a week, I might even have to give
up all idea of going by this route at all, and might
have to return to Buenos Aires, cross by the Trans-
andine Railway to Valparaiso, steam up the coast
to Antofogasta, and thence go by rail to Oruro; a
matter of at least a fortnight, and much more likely
a month, for at this time of year the Transandine
Railway is apt to be interrumpido by snow, land-

64 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

slip or flood, and I should probably have to wait a
week or two in Buenos Aires till it was open for
traffic. Was it my fate, I wondered, after travelling
for six weeks and all these thousands of miles, to be
held up when within thirty- six hours of the Bolivian
frontier for a period that would make it almost
useless for me to have come at all ? It was by
no means impossible. And the little that I could
find out, with my fragmentary Spanish, was not
encouraging. The strike had apparently been
threatened for a long time, and was probably quite
justified ; for while the English-managed railways
in the Argentine treat their employees very reason-
ably and well, the Government railways impose very
harsh conditions, exacting everything and giving
nothing ; and even at a moment like this, if one
knew the rights of the case, one's sympathies would
probably be with the men.

I left my heavy luggage at ' Euston,' took my two
bags to the restaurant where our party was to have
lunch, and there on their advice decided to go back
to La Corona, at any rate for a few days, to see what
happened. After lunch I returned to c Euston,'
leaving my bags at the restaurant, and was able to
see the English manager of the railway, which by
the way was not the railway on which the strike
had begun, though in ordinary times the train to
the north did start from his station. He knew no
more than anyone else if the strike would go on or
not, though in view of the men's grievances it was
extremely probable that it would. But he thought
it just possible that a train would run on the follow-
ing morning. Would I telephone him then ? I
clutched at the straw, decided to stay the night in
Tucuman, and went back to the restaurant for my

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 65

bags. Alas, alas, they were gone. My party had
not only left to catch their train back to La Corona—
I was to have gone back by a later one — but in their
zeal they had also taken my light luggage, con-
taining everything I most needed for the journey—
clothes, passport, papers, maps, money, things with-
out which it was impossible to move. If a train
did run on the morrow, possibly the last for many
weeks, I could not go in it !

Frantically I took a coche ; there might be just time
to catch the party at their station, which we will
call ' Vauxhall.' Knowing the possibility of error,
I pronounced its name — I think it was Centrale —
and also the name of the railway, Cordoba Central,
three times over to the cocker o, as man never pro-
nounced a name before. Three times over he
repeated it, nodding and grinning from ear to ear.
We started. We galloped, scattering the populace
right and left. We lurched in and out of tram-lines.
We skidded, and skirted the brink of death — we
and others. If, thought I watch in hand, the train
were as late as most things are in South America we
might just catch it. And in my flurry and ignor-
ance of the town's geography I never noticed where
we were going, trusting blindly to the cochero's
knowledge. He drove then and drove ; and lo,
when we were still within a minute of train-time,
and I had made up my mind that all was well and
I should yet recover my bags, he pulled up with a
flourish and a grin of satisfaction— at the wrong
station ! This was, say, ' Paddington.' ' Vauxhall '
was a thousand miles away. He had done me
after all.

Alas, I could not tell him what I thought of him ;
for that would have needed a deal more Spanish

66 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

than I possessed, or am ever likely to. I could but
invoke the wrath of heaven upon his head, and set
about telegraphing to La Corona. There was, I
knew, a train running from Concepcion to Tucumaii
very early in the morning ; and it was just possible
that my bags might be sent by this in time for me
to catch the train which might or might not run
to the north. I returned to c Euston ' therefore ; to
get more advice before telegraphing ; and soon had
reason to thank my stars that I had done so. For
when I had drafted the telegram in English and
shown it to the manager — whom may the gods
reward — he told me that in that language and by
the line I had chosen it would cost two pesos (five
shillings), and possibly take two days en route.
" They don't take much notice of a telegram out
here, you know," he added, as though it were quite
a matter of course : " and none at all of a letter."
If, however, I put it in Spanish it would cost about
tenpence ; and if I sent it by the railway telegraph
line, which is apparently allowed to compete with
the ' Nacional,' it might possibly reach La Corona
before the end of the present day. Still more im-
portant, if it were sent in his name it would almost
certainly arrive within an hour, for then it would
be taken notice of. Such are the ways of South
America !

He very kindly translated the message and sent
it in his own name ; then told me that there seemed
to be quite a chance of my getting on next day if
only the train from La Corona brought my bags
in time. With all my heart I thanked him, and
the gods for having created him, and sought my
' hotel ' in the town.

On the way thither the heavens opened like a tank

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 67

of which the bottom has fallen out, and their con-
tents came down in solid pillars of rain which con-
tinued for well over an hour. With this came
thunder and lightning such as I had never heard or
seen before ; and I began to think that there was
some truth in a rumour which had been prevalent
in the district for some time past — and I have since
heard in other countries also— namely, that the world
was going to bring its existence to a close on this
particular date. It did not oblige the prophets
by doing this so far as the general public was con-
cerned ; but it certainly came to an end for three or
four people that day, killed by lightning; and so
the prophets might claim that they ' also ran.'
Damage, too, was done to property which will not
readily be forgotten.

My 6 hotel ' will not be readily forgotten either.
In South America the hotel-keeper seems to think
of the human being as an animal that feeds and
sleeps but does nothing in the interval. There is
always a big dining-room, very public, with a bar
at one end ; probably a couple of billiard-tables, a
piano and a gramophone. There is a courtyard
round which the bedrooms are grouped. There are
generally one or two bath-rooms, which though
dirty are cleaner than the rest of the establishment
for the reason that they are less frequented. The
bedrooms Rave stone or earth floors, bare dis-
tempered walls, no furniture except a bed (usually
good), a washing-stand and a chair. There are no
windows ; only doors, of which the upper half is
glass, opening directly on to the courtyard. So if
you want air you have to open your door to get it ;
and if you want it at night you risk the visita-
tion of any beasts, four-footed or otherwise, who

68 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

may have a fancy to call on you— and your posses-
sions. There is practically never a sitting-room of
any kind ; nowhere in fact to go to when you are
not eating or sleeping : and I suppose the idea is
that if you are doing neither of these things you will
be drinking ; at any rate that is what the landlord
wants you to do, and that is the beginning and end
of his concern for you.

I managed to get a bedroom and a filthy meal. I
even got a good and non-verminous night, which
was surprising under the circumstances ; and when
morning came I was at ' Euston ' long before seven,
the appointed hour, and had to wait half-an-hour
for the manager to appear. At last he came. He
telephoned. And he learned that a train would
probably run, though not from his station. It would
go from another, say ' Brixton, ' and none could
tell at what hour it would go nor how far it would
get. " Had I better go by it ? " I asked. " Surely ;
there may not be another for several weeks." So I
decided to go if the gods permitted. But would
they ? Would my bags arrive from La Corona
in time ? The position was nerve-racking ; and
far worse for the fact that I had practically no
Spanish, and so might easily miss any chance there
was of catching the train through sheer inability to
make myself understood. In a moment of benevo-
lence for which no thanks of mine can ever repay
him that manager asked one of his assistants to go
with me and see me through ; and off we started.

First we drove, miles and miles, with my
heavy luggage to ' Brixton,' and put it in what
passed for a cloak-room. The station and ap-
proaches were packed with soldiers to keep order ;
and we learned that the train would probably start

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 69

at nine ; but it might be earlier—or later— it
depended on whether trouble arose or not. Then
we drove more miles, two at least I suppose, to
' Vauxhall ' to see if my bags had come. They had
not. The train, due at eight, was already twenty
minutes behind time ; and we learned on making
inquiries that it would be at least an hour late.
That seemed the final blow ; for if my train to the
north really started at nine there was plainly no hope
for me. Again, however, to lighten my despair,
my invaluable Ally pointed out that there was
still a chance of success. If he or better still his
chief asked them to keep the train waiting for me
at * Brixton ' he had little doubt that they would.
(Imagine that in England !) So back we pelted to
interview c them ' ; and there the Ally interceded
for me and secured a promise that unless there was
trouble they would wait a little time for me, how
long they would not say. Back then we went once
more to ' Vauxhall,' where we watched the clock-
hand creep slowly on to nine, and after nine ; and
still there was no sign of a train. At length at
twenty minutes past nine it dawdled in as though
no one in the world cared whether it arrived that
day or next ; and there in the van I saw my precious
bags and rejoiced. But do you suppose that I could
be allowed to touch them either that moment or
that day, or indeed on any day in the calendar
without a guia (consignment note), which, according
to the regulations, must come by post and could not
come with the things themselves ? Not I, alone.
South America does not approve of such direct-
ness. And but for the Ally I should certainly
have had to wait at least till next day and probably
longer. Mercifully, however, as a railwayman he

70 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

could exercise the mysterious power of his craft,
and summon other railwaymen to deliver regardless
of all regulations. They did deliver without the
faintest hesitation, or justification ; and back once
more we drove to * Brixton,' hoping against
hope that the train might still be there, though
already half-an-hour behind its stated time. It was
there, fuming to be off. Into it I was thrown
without ticket or registration ticket, but with my
precious bags, and off we went. For a whole forty
minutes, I was told, it had been kept waiting ex-
pressly for me ; and that at a time when every
moment might bring trouble. Such is the power
of English railwaymen in the Argentine ; and never
shall I forget what I owe them, for I afterwards
learned that this was the last train that ran on that
line for several weeks.

IX

THE train was crammed ; no sleeping carriages, no
comedor (restaurant), no seats ; barely a corner in
which to perch on my suit-case. Why ? Partly no
doubt because many people believed— rightly— that
this might be the last train for a very long time ;
but also because, as I discovered later, the native
Argentine thinks nothing of taking one seat for
himself and four more for his luggage, leaving you
to think that the latter are taken and will sooner or
later be occupied. Room for himself and his traps
and room in which to spit, that is all he asks ; and
the rest of us may go— to another place. How he
found room to spit in this train I do not know, for
even the corridor was packed as well as the seats.
But he did. Oh yes, he managed it ; and so far as
I could tell there was no moment of the journey
when this need of his nature went unsatisfied.

There were armed men, two of them with loaded
rifles at either end of each carriage ; two also on the
engine ; and perhaps half-a-dozen at every station,
showing what the Government expected of the
strikers. Bombs, de-railing of trains, threatening
the engine- hands with knife or revolver — these are
some of the things they expect. I gathered that it
was a question at every station whether we should
ever get to the next ; and recalled— without relish
this time — the tale of the trainful of Argentine
magnates which was held up once for a whole fort-
night at a tiny wayside station, hundreds of miles
from anywhere, with only a day's supply of food —
7*

72 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

and drink. At most stations in the Argentine you
have only to go out on to the nearest estaftcia and
exercise a little strategy to secure as much beef-
belonging to someone else — as you want. But it is
not by beef alone that magnates live— or indeed
anyone else in the Argentine — and without drinks !
The situation is unthinkable.

As for us it did not look as if we should even get
enough beef judging by the country through which
we were passing ; for it was all small trees and scrub.
Nor, when I at length discovered the only English-
man who was on the train — namely, one ' M. R.,'
chief engineer of a big group of mines in Bolivia,
to which he was returning from a holiday in
England — did I gather any comfort from him. He
said that the train would certainly not run at night
for fear of displaced rails ; and he was very doubtful
if it would be allowed to run even by day to any
point that would be of the smallest use to us.
What insanity had possessed him to come by this
route when he might as easily have gone by
Antofogasta he could not imagine ; he who had
been in South America for twenty years and knew
every trick that Beelzebub can play upon the
unwary : and roundly he reviled himself for his
folly and appealed to the high gods to know why it
had happened. I could tell him easily enough, and
still more easily a few days later when difficulties
multiplied — namely that a guide, philosopher,
friend, interpreter, Bradshaw and general courier
had been needed to help me on my way, and it was
he to whom had been paid the honour of selection.
I did not tell him this at the moment, but I hope
he will appreciate it now and be consoled. At any
rate I appreciate very deeply the kindness, patience

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 73

and invaluable help he bestowed upon me. Without
him I should still be drifting about on the borders
of the Argentine and Bolivia, betwixt the upper
and the nether worlds, like Tomlinson of Berkeley
Square, and should never have got to the latter
country at all. Which of the two is heaven I must
leave you to judge.

The line rose sharply through wooded country
of extraordinary beauty straight up a range of
hills ; and presently I realised that we were running
on rack and pinion, so steep was the gradient. This
method came into use more than once during the
journey to La Quiaca ; and might have done so
more frequently with advantage to our progress, the
engine proving quite unequal to Sir Martin Con way
—that spider — in the task of scaling the Andes. We
passed through leagues of wooded, hilly country
covered with low scrub, but yielding very little
herbage ; which accounts no doubt for the rarity
and poverty of the farms we passed from time to
time, and the poor appearance of the cattle, a great
contrast to those we had seen on the plains. The
earth has been tossed here into an incredible variety
of shapes and knolls : and what with the delight of
watching their changing lines and the semi-tropical
foliage that covered them, the rivers that were
almost always with or near us, the big mountains
in the background, and the constant sunshine — its
heat, however, now tempered by our altitude— the
journey had its charms ; the only question being,
how long would it last ?

It did last as a matter of fact without trouble of
any kind right through this day ; and even, despite
the prophets, far into the night. Somewhere about
one A.M. we saw ahead of us the lights of a town.

74 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

M. R. declared them to be those of Jujuy— pro-
nounced, if you can, Hoo Hwee — where we were to
stop for the night : and as though to confirm his
words we did stop promptly; not at the station
indeed, but on a hill a mile or so outside it, where we
remained for nearly half-an-hour while the engine
got up steam for the climb. That was a pleasant
half-hour at the end of a sixteen hours' journey.
But it was almost as pleasant as the remainder of
the night. We were driven to a c hotel,' and I give
in parallel columns two impressions of it, so as to be
fair to all parties.

1. From its note-
paper : " Establecimi-
ento moderno. Departa-
mentos para Familias.
Cuartos de Bano con
Agua Fria y Caliente.
Casa especial para via-
jeros. Buen confort.
Rigurosa Higiene. Pre-
cios Economicos."
T— - DE M— - E Huos
(sons)

2. From a letter of
mine written on that
paper : " First let me
consign to the place
where, among other in-
conveniences, c the fire
is not quenched ' T—
de M— e Hijos, e
padre, e abuelo (grand-
father), e padrino e ma-
drina (godfather and god-
mother), e esposa, e hijas,
e parientes (relatives) e
amigos to the fourth and
fifth generation : for a
filthier spot than his
' hotel ' I have not struck
even in South America,
nor more nauseating
food. The only buen
confort that I have
found is that I have not

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 75

been eaten alive, as M. R.
has even during the five
or six hours that we spent
in bed. Another night,
and there will be nothing
of him left ; for he is a
very thin man."

There was only one bedroom for the two of us,
and that with three beds ; so that if we had not been
well treated by Fate we might have had the company
of another viajero (traveller), and he perhaps of
native race —and habits. However, we were at
least spared this calamity, and only had to put up
with the other ' company ' of whom I have spoken.
The hotel was, as usual in South America, a one-
storied building consisting of a few windowless
bedrooms ranged round a courtyard, and a big
billiard-room-restaurant with a bar. In the latter,
during the evening we spent there, and no doubt
every evening, the greater part of the population
seemed to gather together; partly to eat the
unspeakable food ; partly to drink ; partly to play
billiards ; partly to stare at us or any other hapless
viajeros who might be detained here ; partly to
listen to an insufferable trio of piano, mandolin
and fiddle which probably played the same music
there every night ; and partly to smoke unhallowed
cigars and cigarettes. (c Pour la Noblesse ' is the
tone in cigarettes in all remote places of the
Argentine ; in fact you can hardly get any other ;
and one is always wondering if the maker has ever
found one of those for whom he makes.) There
really was a bath-room ; but dirty as we were we
shrank in terror from that, and returned to our

76 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

basins. One of the few advantages of a South-
American hotel is that either there is no carpet
at all in your bedroom, or else it is so far gone that
nothing can make it worse ; and so you can sluice
yourself to your heart's content from the basin with-
out thinking of any possible damage.

Jujuy is a small but very prosperous town
tucked in under big hills to the north and west ;
and on the other sides surrounded by small hills,
thickly wooded, of an infinite and most lovely
variety of shapes. It is the centre of a very rich
district producing a number of different crops. It
has a good bit of history behind it—' wars and
rumours of wars.' It has an asphalted street, a
thing almost unique in provincial South America ;
a military depot ; and a bridge of enormous length
over its river. This bridge is a noteworthy pos-
session for this part of the world ; for if you want to
cross a river among the Andes you expect as a rule
to have to wade it or else ride on a mule ; at once if
the river is low ; in two or three hours or days or
weeks or months if it is high. And here perhaps
I had better explain what is meant by a c river '
among these mountains — I had ample opportunity
of finding out ! In the course of ages the water has
hollowed out from the soft and crumbling hills a
valley of great width, almost flat from side to side.
Down this tumbled expanse of mud and rocks and
gravel and sand, perhaps thirty yards broad, perhaps
as much as a mile, the stream flows where it pleases ;
sometimes a mere trickle, sometimes ' not even
that,' sometimes a gigantic torrent. Day by day it
carves new ways for itself, now in one part of the
valley, now in another. In dry times it is bone-dry ;
in wet it may rise in less than half-an-hour to a

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 77

torrent of tremendous volume, coming at you like a
great wall of water, rolling boulders over and over
in its bed, sweeping everything before it, and making
short work of any men or animals it may find in its
path. Many are the cases of drowning recorded
here and in Bolivia every year. Wherever the
ground on either side of the valley is even a few
inches above the average water-level you will see
fields, so-called, at any rate some attempt at cultiva-
tion ; and when these are as much as a few feet
above it they are quite a success, bearing splendid
crops of barley, maize or oats. But at any lower
level their existence is very precarious. The owner
is always trying with rough barriers of stone to keep
the river in its place ; but with so fickle an adversary
he cannot always succeed ; and at any moment it
may transport a great part of his soil with the crop
that is growing on it down to his next-door neighbour,
leaving him like a bankrupt testator, with ' gross
real property so many acres, net real property nil.9
That he should continue to ' farm ' under such
conditions is a wonderful testimony to the tenacity
of the human race.

There was one other feature of Jujuy which is
perhaps worthy of mention, and that because it is
so typical of South America. Being the centre of a
province, it must obviously have a big Government
building : and there in a corner of the town entirely
deserted by mankind you may see such a thing, or
rather about one-fifth of it : the beginnings, that is,
of a huge structure built mainly of stone, without
roof, doors or windows ; quite unfrequented by
human beings, either workmen or others ; and
looking for all the world as if someone had ' begun
to build and was not able to finish.' And that is

T8 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

literally what it is. In this country directly some-
one desires to commemorate his term of office— the
veil of silence were usually more fitting, and in
England would be deemed an orgy of charity — he
arranges if possible to do so by erecting a Govern-
ment building, whether needed or not. Perhaps his
generation has money enough to build the founda-
tions and one storey ; or else an imposing frontage
and nothing behind it. Then probably for ten or
twenty years the building remains untouched, and
the weather deals with it as it pleases. Another
generation may provide a second storey or a court-
yard or a flight of stairs ; the next after that the
third storey and some of the wood- work ; and
finally, in about three parts of a century the roof is
clapped on and the building completed : by which
date if there is any mercy in the breast of Time
the founder's name (and peculations) will probably
have been forgotten, and another hero of equal
achievements will get the credit.

We had to spend a whole day at Jujuy, uncertain
all the time whether the train would go on on the
morrow or not. Fortunately it did, the strike not
having broken as yet into full flame ; and at six
o'clock on the second morning off we went again,
still with our armed escort, and for hours climbed,
largely on rack and pinion, up into the mountains ;
the vegetation growing more and more scanty the
higher we went, and the animals and the attempts
at cultivation more and more wretched. Late in
the evening we reached what seemed to be the top
of the world, a huge plateau eleven thousand feet
above sea-level ; which with intervals extends, so I
was told, right away to La Paz in the northern part
of Bolivia, separating the eastern and western ranges

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 79

of the Andes from each other. Noticing the altitude
at a station I was delighted to find myself unaffected
thereby except for a slight sense of splitting in the
ears ; and there could hardly be a severer test than
this, for if we had not come here at express speed —
twelve miles an hour was probably our average— we
had at least come as fast as human means could
bring us. So siroche I thought was not for me.

In pitch darkness we arrived at length at La
Quiaca, the frontier station and terminus of the
Argentine railway ; where I discovered that Fate
was already awaiting me with a big stick, fully alive
to what I had come for. The motor diligenzia on
which I had been relying to carry me through to
the Bolivian railway system was broken down or
stuck in a swamp dozens of miles away, and
might not be running again for several days or even
weeks. To my amazement and disgust there was
nothing whatever to take its place. Though the
route was in constant use by travellers to and from
Bolivia there was neither horse, mule, nor any form
of transport in the village. I had been told cer-
tainly that at this time of year the ' road ' was apt
to be bad and the diligenzia might be delayed ; but
I had never dreamed that there would be no sub-
stitute of any kind. Once more it looked as
though my arrival at Oruro might be indefinitely
delayed, and that I might only reach it in time to
find that the Martins had given me up and gone on
their journeys alone. I certainly could not have
blamed them if they had.

M. R. spoke winged words ; for he also was in
trouble. He had to go nearly as far as I by road,
and there was no sign either of his men, his carriage
or his mules. But though he spoke like a machine-

80 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

gun, ten thousand words to the minute — and he
tells me that he speaks Spanish now better than
English and in England is accused of having a
foreign accent —no words could bring him mules;
and we went to our bedroom in the ' hotel ' very sore
and hopeless as to the morrow. I was beginning to
realise what ' travel ' means in South America.

HE who wakes in La Quiaca can have but one
aspiration in his mind. He sees around him a few
one - storied buildings made of mud : he sees the
railway station, the aduana (custom-house), one or
two more rows of mud huts ; and beyond them the
bare, flat desert — stone and sand, with a sparse
coating of herbage. What can he think of but how
to get away ?

For our part we seemed unlikely ever to get away,
so hopelessly had mules and motors failed us : and
we awoke in dire discontent ; I almost in despair
of reaching Oruro in time to be of any use, and
M. R. full of wrath against his men for having failed
him. We dressed ; ate sour rolls and butter—
tinned butter now, and continuously for the re-
mainder of my trip— drank coffee ; and went out to
see if things were any better.

They were. M. R. 's carriage and mules had already
appeared, having as a matter of fact been waiting for
him nearly a week at a farm close by. And as for
me, I escaped disaster once more by a hair's-breadth.
For by a lucky chance M. R. discovered that there
was after all a coche in the village waiting to convey
an Austrian priest to Atocha, which as the nearest
point of the Bolivian railway system was also my
destination; and in it was a vacant seat which I
could have — if I cared to travel with the priest.
The landlord, a very decent fellow, seemed to be
much perturbed on this point— whether because he

F Si

82 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

was an Austrian or because he was a priest I did not
make out, but believe it was the latter — and ex-
pressed his doubts with great deference to M. R.,
and so to me. I replied that I would travel with
the priest's Principal Adversary if necessary, but at
all costs I would travel. M. R. very kindly made
all my arrangements for me. I was to pay 115
bolivianos, (about £12) for myself and my luggage ;
was to start at ten o'clock ; and in three days,
according to the cochero and owner of the mules,
I should be in Atocha.

This gentleman, Mr Segobia, gave me to think at
first that the Bolivian peasant could show the way
to any Hebrew in the matter of a deal, and to any
Irishman in the matter of fair promises. For if a
motor under the best conditions could only cover
the distance in two days, and under the existing
conditions could not cover it at all, how could a
coche hope to do it in three ? I expressed doubts ;
and M. R. made inquiries. In vain, however.
Every one assured us that Mr Segobia was a man
of the very highest principles, and would certainly
carry out any promise he had made. " He is a
good man," said one old gentleman with solemn
finality and not without a touch of indignation.
" He is a good man. He feeds his mules." All
agreed. And after a testimony so tremendous — and
indeed unique I believe for South America— I felt
that my doubts were altogether unworthy, and that
so rare a man might be trusted to carry the Bank
of England to Atocha— supposing the Bank ever
wanted to go.

Presently the coche appeared : and I must admit
that I was moved to prayer at the sight of it ;
prayer that the priest might be a man of modest

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 83

proportions, since I am not. Imagine a small dray
on wheels, the kind of thing you would give to a
large child to play with ; two small garden- seats
superimposed ; and over all a light canopy of
canvas. On the front seat I reckoned there was
about room for Mr Segobia and a suit-case, and on
the back room for about 1-25 of me. If the priest
were more than the merest wraith of a man where
was he going to go ? Or worse still— for he would
get first turn —where was I, even the decimal part
of me, to go ? Involuntarily the mind recalled all
the tales it had read and the songs it had heard of
the merry lives enjoyed by some members of the
Roman hierarchy— '/I Jovial Monk am /,' '/ am
a Friar of Orders Grey,' and the like. And as I
thought of the miles between me and Atocha my
heart became as water within me. Surely, surely,
I thought, such people could not exist now; they
must be more austere. But there was no knowing ;
and M. R. did not make things better by telling me
that the * road ' lay almost entirely up the beds of
rivers and that these rivers were only too likely to
be in flood just now. You may ask, as I did, why
it lay up the beds of rivers, and whether there were
no alternative route. But the answer was quite
simple and convincing. There are no roads in
Bolivia ; and in this part of it that which is not
river-bed is nearly all steep mountain : so if you
do not travel by river-bed you cannot travel
at all

I was ready for Mr Segobia at ten o'clock ; and
punctually at half-past twelve he appeared, strenu-
ously belabouring the three mules who drew his
coche. In it sat the priest, whose proportions I
scanned with a quick and jealous eye— and found,

84 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

alas, to be anything but modest. No; it was all
as bad as could be. He was big ; even ' unjustly
big,' like De Quincey's fellow-traveller in the stage-
coach. Not fat ; that would have been a ' bull '
point in more senses than one, for fat gives and
may be a good neighbour ; but tall, broad, dignified
and decidedly muscular. If we jostled, as jostle we
must, there would be no comfortable upholstery-
work on him. But on the other hand his face was
far the finest I had seen since I left England, and
one of the finest I have ever seen anywhere. And
as he shook hands and spoke to me with a smile of
our being ' enemicos ' I knew that we should be very
good friends— so far, that is, as friendship is possible
between sardines.

Mr Segobia was little inferior to the priest in
point of size, a considerable man both in height and
girth, with a pleasant burnt- sienna face, a big felt hat,
a khaki coat, blue trousers, and gaiters. He smiled
genially upon us, evidently pleased at having kept
to his time so well. Then, as though he were not
already late enough — and large enough — he pro-
ceeded, instead of taking any steps towards be-
ginning the journey, to dismount from his perch,
make his way into the restaurant of the hotel,
and settle himself down comfortably to a gigantic
meal. Had I been set to eat that meal I should
have taken at least an hour over it, and if alive
at the end should have had enough to carry me
not only to Atocha but to the North Pole. To
Mr Segobia, however, there appeared to have been
granted the powers of a dog in assimilation, so
unequally do the gods bestow their gifts ; and in
less than five minutes he was outside his disgusting
collection of stew and leathery cheese, and ready

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 85

for the road. What would I not give for his
talent !

Then it appeared that some of his pack - mules
had strayed ; and another quarter - of - an - hour
passed before they reappeared, driven with earnest
blasphemy by a ragged sixteen-year-old boy on a
pony. Then came the process of loading up. My
portmanteau and my camp-bed, weighing about
180 Ib. in. all, were lashed with goatskin thongs on
to one mule. Various equipajes (luggage) belonging
to various parties known and unknown were lashed
on to others. And my suit-case and the priest's
were tied on behind the coche. All this with a care
and a superfluity of thongs as though we were going
by aeroplane to the moon and were going to loop the
loop on the way. Then at last, some three hours
late, we actually started, with great cracking of
whips and "Hoo-la! Hoo-la!" "A—a— y!" to the
mules ; and we jolted and tumbled rather than
drove down into a deep gully and out again on the
other side.

After all this and after the meticulous care that
had been taken to make our luggage almost a part
of the mules' anatomy it was certainly a little dis-
appointing to find that even yet we had not really
started. We stopped. Mr Segobia descended from
his perch, detached every morsel of luggage from the
coche and the mules as carefully as he had put it on,
and laid everything down in a row on the ground
before a white house. It was then that I beheld
the word ' Aduana ' above the house and under-
stood. Though only an hour or two had passed and
only three hundred yards had been covered since we
had had our baggage ruthlessly inspected by an
Argentine official because we were leaving Argentina,

86 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

yet now we must once more have it inspected by a
Bolivian official because we were entering Bolivia—
as crazy a waste of time and trouble as even South
America can show. However, the Bolivian official
was at least quick and superficial ; and it was
probably not much more than three-quarters of
an hour later that we took the road once more, this
time not to be detained.

The way — I cannot call it a road — lay over a
plain of sand, shale, boulders and mud, very
sparsely covered with a kind of large heather.

Mr Segobia sat in front plying word and whip
unceasingly upon the mules. The priest and I sat
behind, feeling though possibly not looking like
flowers pressed between the pages of a book ; con-
versing very lamely though amicably in English
(which he did not understand) and Spanish (which
I did not) ; laughing immoderately over our efforts ;
and trying in vain not to behave like billiard-balls
to each other as the ' road ' played us from side to
side. I suppose you will say that nobody can feel
like a pressed flower and also like a billiard-ball in
the same sentence ; but I can assure you it is only
too easy in the same coche. Luckily the pace was
not severe ; more often a shamble than a trot, and
more often a crawl than either ; so ' cannons ' were
not too frequent ; and quite often the way led in
and out of a river at the bottom of a gully, so that
we were able to walk for a time and so relieve the
pressure.

The plain was entirely uninteresting save for one
feature, which must surely be unique— namely, a
railway- track without any rails on it. For miles
north of La Quiaca this track was built several years
ago with a view to linking up the Argentine and

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 87

Bolivian railway systems. Then the builders' re-
sources came to an end ; and now wherever you
go on this plain you see it winding about, with its
embankments, cuttings, culverts, signals, station
buildings, water- tanks and everything complete—
except rails. In the ordinary fashion of South
America one rail would have been laid by the
generation succeeding ours and the other by the one
after that ; engines and rolling stock would have
been collected by their seed after them ; and so in
a century or two the line would have been triumph-
antly set to work. As it is, I am told that at last
the Bolivian Government has decided to take over
what has been built and complete the link between
the two systems. It will be an expensive luxury ;
for the country hereabouts is practically all desert ;
the engineering difficulties will be immense ; and
the running costs terrific— I am told they already
amount to eleven times those prevalent in the
Argentine. But no doubt it will prove good policy
in the long run. There is much in the Argentine that
Bolivia wants ; much too to be gained by increased
trade and closer relations between the two countries.
And surely any expenditure must be well worth
undertaking which will make it easier to get out of
Bolivia. Others may differ on this point. For my
part I did not take long to make up my mind.

For hours we bumped and jostled over this plain.
Then about half-past-five we came into the midst
of a tremendous thunder-storm, which had been
booming and flashing round us for some time. I
had been told — and now of course recalled — some
fearful stories about thunder in Bolivia : how the
lightning bursts and crackles round you like a
barrage of shells ; how the whole ground becomes

88 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

a sheet of blue flame ; and how the only thing to
do is to crouch in a hollow of the rock or the earth
and pray that the current may not come your way.
Awful indeed are the effects of lightning at this
altitude with its rarefied atmosphere ; and in some
regions hardly a day passes without its storm, almost
always in the afternoon ; you can reckon almost
infallibly on a fine morning and thunder about four
o'clock. Luckily our storm, but for the rain, proved
a very mild affair after all ; but this came down as
though a great sea had been raised to heaven and
then dropped. We happened luckily to be close to
a native village ; and there in a ' farm-house ' with
some friends of Mr Segobia we took shelter. The
farm-house was not extensive, consisting in fact of
but one big room built of mud, floored with mud,
and lined with newspapers mainly of the Victorian
era. Among the latter, however, was a large
coloured portrait of the present Queen of Spain ;
and I was told by the priest that you will hardly find
a native house in Bolivia without a similar portrait,
such is their respect for the idea of royalty.

I cannot say that their respect for cleanliness was
quite on the same level. Nor given an invitation
to ' dine and sleep,' would I accept it without demur.
For there was in fact but one bed, and in that, so
far as I could gather, at least seven people must lie
—father, mother, grandmother, grown-up daughter
and three children, not to mention that which
is smaller than children. They all looked well
and thriving, however ; wonderful testimony to
the conditions under which the human race can
flourish.

Other individuals of various colours and nation-
alities, Spanish, Portuguese or Bolivian, drifted in

^> THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 89

to this farm while we took shelter, all on mules ;
and I gathered that all were more or less under
Mr Segobia's chaperonage, and all were going to
Atocha : but as none could speak English I could
not converse with them much, and we simply stood
and looked at each other till the rain stopped.
Then on we went, and drove for another hour or so
to the edge of the plateau. There the formation of
the ground suddenly changed ; and we looked down
on a gigantic expanse of gullies, ravines, water-
courses, and hillocks, the red earth tossed into a
fantastic and bewildering variety of cones, spikes,
and upstanding knives and pillars— a most remark-
able sight. Heavy rain and darkness soon blotted
this out ; and we began to descend into the valley.
Mr Segobia plied the whip unceasingly. For the
first time the mules rose to a continuous trot ; and
the priest and I began to make discoveries hitherto
unsuspected about each other's anatomy. Some
three hours of this ensued ; we had expected one,
and they seemed a dozen. Then about nine-thirty
we arrived at the collection of mud huts known
as Nazarenos ; and pulling up at what seemed the
smallest and muddiest of all, beheld over the door
"Grand Hotel de Milan" or "Naples," I forget
which. Here we were to sleep — if we could.

The Grand Hotel was in the Italian style, and
kept by Italians. It had an immense porch ; a tiny
courtyard with a bed of flowers in the middle ; a
dining-' saloon ' (about twelve feet by eight), and
three bedrooms. Mine, and I suppose the others,
had a dirty stone floor, two beds, a chair and a
basin, and that was all. At least I hoped that was
all ; but did not spare insect-powder. Our recep-
tion was all smiles and courtesy ; and we were duly

90 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

provided with food — a medley, which I can still
taste and smell, of tough meat, macaroni, grease,
rice and onions. Landlord and all his family-
there seemed to be at least twelve — crowded into
the room to watch us eat ; and there remained and
stood in stony silence save for an occasional whisper
and a much more than occasional c spit.' Then Mr
Segobia came in ; and, so far as I could gather,
began to speak of going on on the morrow. At any
rate the entire company set up a shriek of laughter ;
pointed to their throats as though to indicate the level
of the river (Rio Grande) through which we must pass ;
and generally behaved as though a joke worth having
had come their way. They seemed indeed to have
only too good reason for their mirth, judging by the
weather ; and once more my heart became as water,
and I began to have visions of being kept at the
Grand Hotel not only for days but for weeks or
months together, unable to go either forward or back.
If I got to Oruro within a week of the appointed
time I felt now that I should be exceedingly lucky.
And so to bed for the fifth night in succession
thoroughly anxious and depressed.

XI

THE morning once more brought a slightly better
outlook. Mr Segobia had been down to see the
river, found that it was going down, and thought
that in a couple of hours it might be worth while
starting, though he could not say how far we should
get. I gathered from the priest that we had at
least eight or nine crossings to make during the
day, all difficult and some perhaps impossible ;
so it was useless to think of hurrying. We were
entirely in the hands of " Rio Grande."

We waited therefore till about half-past nine ;
then shambled down to the river- side and crossed
several small channels without difficulty. The
main channel proved more serious, the water rising
well above the floor of the coche, and the priest and
I only keeping dry by holding our legs high above
it against the front seat. The mules, in the nature
of mules, felt that they must stop ; and did so
half-way through the stream, if for nothing else
pour se faire valoir. But the only result was that
they had an extra allowance of whip to remind them
of the beauty of obedience, and thus stimulated had
no difficulty in reaching the opposite shore. If
there were nothing worse than this, thought I, why
so much fuss ? And when a little later we came
to a group of huts and Mr Segobia, who stopped
here for refreshments, proposed that we should
take on as an additional escort one of the dusky
gentlemen there resident, Andres by name, at the
91

92 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

price of 20 bolivianos (about 30s.). I felt that
this was going too far altogether, and demurred
strongly to the extra expense : had he not con-
tracted, he and no other, to convey us, our souls,
bodies and equipajes, to Atocha at a fee already
sufficient ?

The priest seconded. Mr Segobia argued ; and so
far as I could make out from his shrugging shoulders
and upturned hands and eyes argued that this
was now impossible, owing to the height of the
river ; he must have extra help. We in our turn
argued ; the priest, that is, as ' leader,' and I
ready behind him with points. But neither leader
nor junior produced the least effect. Mr Segobia
continued to gesticulate and gaze at the heavens
with the eye of a dying saint, or 3uck. And we
might have been arguing still had not M. R. most
opportunely appeared at this moment — on a mule
now, he had abandoned his cache—and settled the
case for, or rather against, us in the twinkling of
an eye. Most certainly, he held, we must have an
extra man. The crossings would be very difficult
if not impassable for a coche ; and Mr Segobia was
quite right to insist on extra help. We took his
advice therefore ; set to work to bargain with Mr
Andres for a lower fee— Mr Segobia apparently
more on his side than ours — and managed to reduce
it to 9 bolivianos (about 15s.), which seemed to
s quite enough for a short day's work. We were
to be only- too glad when we came to paying him
to raise this to twelve.

We left the river now ; and for an hour or so went
up and down ridges of shaly rock on a road which
for once did not suggest a railway with sleepers but
without rails. Then we came down a steep hill to

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 93

the second crossing; and I realised at once why
Mr Segobia had asked for help. Here instead of
wandering down a space about half-a-mile broad the
river was concentrated into a channel not more
than thirty yards in width, down which it was
tearing at a furious pace ; swirling into waves,
roaring as it set the boulders rolling in its bed and
measuring, one guessed, at least three feet deep in
the middle, little less anywhere except at the edges.
The bed, I gathered, was possibly alive with quick-
sands ; but no one knew if they were there or not, or,
if so, where. No wonder Mr Segobia had asked for
help ! And no wonder he and Andres spent some
time gazing at the water and debating whether to
attempt it or not.

This debate was presently joined by a peon whose
house lay close by, and whose income was derived
presumably from fishing people out of the river, for
barring a small hut he seemed to have no other
means of subsistence.

For hours, as it seemed, they talked and gesticu-
lated wildly towards the river. Then suddenly
they ceased talking and took action. Andres
mounted his mule and forced it into the river. Inch
by inch it began to feel its way across. The water
rose to the saddle. The mule halted. The rider
kicked. The mule went on. Now they were in the
full force of the current. At any moment they
might disappear floundering in a quicksand. But
on they went without mishap, and soon were safe
on the opposite bank— a matter of no small relief
to us who looked on and realised something of the
difficulties. Andres then rode back. The three
engaged in further debate ; then decided apparently
to make the attempt with the coche ; and we took

94 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

our seats, raised our feet as high as possible nursing
our hand-bags on our knees, and started.

We seemed to drop rather than drive into the
water, so steep was the bank ; and at once found
ourselves in the full force of the current, racing and
swirling through the coche just below our seats, and
seeming likely every moment to snatch us away
like jetsam, ourselves, the mules, the coche and all.
Andres started riding slightly ahead of us, but
soon had to come back and join with Mr Segobia in
a furious assault upon the mules. (This may sound
very cruel, but I do not think it really was ; for it
takes a great deal to hurt a mule, and if they had
been really hurt they could and would have moved
very much quicker than they did.) Cruelty or no,
they seemed to expect the whip, for they would not
stir without it, and when they did it was so slowly
that we could hardly tell we were moving. Inch
by inch they were lashed into mid- stream. Then
where the current seemed deeper and stronger than
ever they came to a dead stop, thoroughly scared no
doubt and convinced that they were being asked to
do more than they possibly could— at any rate far
more than they would. Whack — whack — whack
went the whips again ; and at length they seemed
to conclude that anything would be better than
remaining in situ, and bestirred themselves to
struggle forward a few more yards. Then, however,
the point seemed to arrive when anything would be
better than going on ; and they stopped finally, still
in mid- stream, and looked as plainly as speech
could have made it the word ' Na-poo.' In vain
did the men search them with whip and word. They
would not stir ; no, not an inch, even to escape
punishment ; and the question arose, what next ?

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 95

Were I and the priest— in his hat and cassock—
to wade ashore swathed in red slime, carrying
our hand-bags ? Or were we to remain there, an
island— and decidedly a desert island— till the
waters abated ?

We did not know. Nor did Mr Segobia appar-
ently ; at any rate he looked and no doubt was
entirely flummoxed. But fortunately for us a more
resourceful gentleman was at hand, a friend of
Sophocles, ^Eschylus, Euripides, and many other
tragedians— namely deus ex machina. Out of the
water beside us as it seemed there arose a dusky
form, that of the peon who lived on the bank —
and did not need to cultivate it. Fiercely he
pointed to his shoulders. From the priest and
Mr Segobia I gathered amid the roar of the river
that he designed to carry us ashore— a scheme laugh-
able in my eyes, for it looked quite a big enough job
to carry oneself ashore in that raging water. How-
ever, he was plainly serious. Indeed before I had
finished laughing he had actually persuaded the priest
to embark ; and I found myself alone in my seat
wondering if reft of that sheet-anchor, his weight,
the coche would remain where it was. To my relief
it did, and I was able to watch the progress of
c deus ' and his load. With one hand on the priest
and the other on the bristly mane of Andres' mule,
which was ridden very carefully beside him, he
staggered forward. He stopped. He moved again.
Plainly the strain was terrific, and but for the mule
he must have gone under. As it was, he stopped
every two or three paces to get breath. But despite
the torrent, and the stony, irregular footing and the
top-heavy load above him he did struggle on ; and
ultimately delivered his goods untouched by water

96 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

on the farther bank, truly a wonderful feat of
strength.

Then he came back for me ; and I will wager that
no man living to-day knows as well as he the
number of pounds there are in fourteen stone. I
felt like a ton of potatoes on stilts made of straw,
and shall never cease to wonder why ' The Lord
delighteth not in any man's legs.' Then he re-
turned for our luggage. Then he and Andres went
for the mules, in more senses than one. And either
their renewed efforts or the diminished load soon
produced their effect, and the beasts drew the coche
and Mr Segobia light-heartedly out of the river,
proving to their own satisfaction if not to ours
that they had previously been asked to achieve the
impossible.

That was one crossing. There were eight more
like it during the day. None quite so bad, for at no
other was there danger of quicksands. But at all
it was a toss-up if we should get over or not, even on
mules— we did not make the attempt in the coche
again. And at one we saw a pack-mule go down in
mid-stream and fail to get up again. Gradually
its head sank to the water-level, then below it,
and failed to reappear. " West," we thought, and
wondered whose luggage lay under it. But we did
not know Bolivia. ' Deus ' seems always present :
what a country for dramatists ! At any rate out
of the ground beside us — I will swear that no one
was in sight before— arose another peon. In a
flash he shed what had once been trousers— though
why I do not know ; it could hardly have been to
secure greater freedom of movement — and in a
shirt that barely reached his middle went hot-
foot to the rescue. He grasped the mule's head,

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 97

held it aloft till it had got some air instead of water
into its lungs, and so enabled it to struggle up again
and make the farther bank. There it stood for a
while meditating on Death and Resurrection, and
whether the latter is worth while, and generally
upon the hard case of mules in South America.
Then on again sulky as before, as if nothing out of
the way had happened.

Fortunately my own baggage-mule like almost
all the others had made it plain two days ago that
it had no intention of keeping up with the main
convoy. Baggage-mules never do in Bolivia : it is
not done. And they know as well as you or I that
no one cares. To-morrow or next day or the week
after, it is all the same in South America — except to
the man who comes from another country. As it
happened, I was rather relieved than otherwise at
their non-appearance ; for the worry of getting
myself and— far more important— my paper money
through eight or nine fords unsoused would have
been nothing to that of seeing my goods and chattels
go over on the back of a mule who would not trouble
to lift up his feet. A ducking would have done me
no harm, and perhaps only made my bank-notes a
shade filthier than they were before. But a stay of
some minutes under water with a strong mixture
of red slime would have worked ruin on my bed,
clothes, papers and other things on which I de-
pended for the next few months.

All along the river there were weeping willows at
intervals on both sides, most beautiful to see ; and
whenever there was room between the channel and
the bare red hills there were little fields of maize
or barley flashing green amid the desert. At one
place we went through a passage only a few yards

98 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

wide between precipitous rocks ; and here there
was a tablet cut in the cliff which we were in-
vited to stop and inspect. We did so, thinking
that here must have been the Armageddon of
Bolivia and on this tablet would be engraved the
names of heroes who had fallen at this historic pass.
We, at any rate I, could make nothing of it at the
time. But I heard afterwards that far from being
what we thought it was simply the effort of a local
' prefect ' or something of that sort to commemorate
his term of office. He was inspected or visited
during this term by a brighter star whose orbit
included this district ; and thinking to add re-
flected glory to his own rays he recorded the event
magnificently in stone. Rumour adds that he
subsequently sent in the bill to the brighter star,
but does not say who paid.

Not long after leaving this advertisement we
found the valley growing broader, the fields more
spacious and the borders of weeping willow more
and more continuous ; and knew that we were
approaching our next stopping-place, the town of
Tupiza. Soon it showed up white and lovely
among the willows; and I thought: " What a jolly
place to stay at." The gods were to punish me
shrewdly for that thought.

XII

THE streets of Tupiza, we found, were paved with
boulders rather more than less loosely set together
than those in the bed of the river. Over these we
jolted and bumped with more ' cannons ' than we
had visited on each other throughout our journey ;
and finally arrived at the Plaza, a thing as essential
to a Spanish American town as a * bar y billaresS and
far more important in the public eye than such
details as sanitation and good water, from lack of
which people die by the thousand every year. Before
a ' hotel ' in or about this Plaza, which we will call
' de la Buena Vista ' — for that was not its name—
Mr Segobia drew up with a flourish, as though his
mules were good for another hundred miles instead
of being, or at any rate appearing on the brink of
dissolution ; and right gladly we left his coche.

This ' hotel ' consisted as usual of a dining-room,
a bar, and six or eight bedrooms ranged round
a yard ; all built of mud, roofed with iron, and
papered and carpeted with— I was going to say dirt,
but presumably there was a subsoil of some kind
beneath it, and if you dug deep enough you would
find it. As, usual there was nowhere to sit except
in the bedrooms ; and as usual these bedrooms
had no light except through the upper half of the
folding doors, nor air except when these doors were
open. That they had ever been open since the
house was built was difficult to believe. Mine at
any rate recalled so sharply the presence of previous
occupants— whether men or poultry I cannot say,
99

100 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

and it really does not seem to matter in Bolivia
—that I had perforce to hurry out and buy-
what do you think ? Why, a bottle of scent. I
suppose you will say that I am the only man c as
calls hisself a man ' who has ever bought a bottle
of scent ; and in ordinary circumstances I should
certainly agree with you. But before you damn
me to eternity I do ask you just to go to Tupiza ; see
or rather smell what my bedroom was like ; and
judge how long you could have sat in it, let alone
slept without external aid. Not five minutes, I
assure you. And just as a very gallant officer once
told me that the best friend he ever had in his life
was an umbrella which he carried and slept under
from end to end of the Boer War, so now I declare
to you that no one, man or woman, has ever been
to me what that bottle was in Bolivia. I really
believe it saved my life.

To be strictly impartial once more and show you
that there were two sides to the question, I quote
again the heading of the hotel note-paper, which
will indicate what was no doubt the fact, that the
landlord sincerely believed himself to be in charge
of the Ritz of South America. He certainly did
his best to ' make it so ' ; but happy are those who
do not know his best.

SERVICIO DE BAR Y BILLARES
VINOS Y LICORES DE LAS MEJORES MARCAS

DEPARTMENTOS
ESPECIALES PARA FAMILIAS

PIEZAS CONFORTABLES DE T Y 2* CLASE

SERVICIO ESMERADO
COMODIDAD E HlGIENE

THK RIVER AT TUPIZA

ON THK WAY TO ATOCHA

THREE ASSES IN BOT'TVIA mi

Before I had enjoyed tins ' higiene ' ten minutes
there arose in an acute form that question which
must always be the first to occur to anyone arriving
at a small town in South America—namely how to
get out of it again. Mr Segobia appeared to dis-
cuss the matter ; and the priest having left me now
for the more cleanly and comfortable quarters of a
fellow-priest I had to deal with our cochero alone.
For a long time he addressed me fluently in the
Spanish tongue, gesticulating freely to the north;
and I kept repeating " Si, si, si " (Yes, yes, yes),
with no less fluency, but with no glimmering of what
he meant. After a time it began to dawn upon him
that we were not making much progress; and he
went and fetched the innkeeper, who addressed me
in the same tongue, with the same fluency, and
result. Then realising that I was one of the im-
beciles who cannot be made to understand the
language of human beings, they and others who had
now collected round us indicated that they would
fetch the one man in Tupiza who could speak
4 Ingles ' ; and before I knew what had happened I
was in close converse with a short, bristly-haired,
well-drilled man wearing pince-nez, who spoke
English with an ingratiating smile and a guttural
accent— and did not mention the war. I am bound
to say he was a good specimen of his breed if such
there be — an engineer who had been employed on
the Bolivian railway until c Der Tag,' and then had
been cast off to starve. At any rate he did his
utmost to help me ; and I could not but accept his
services with gratitude and give him to drink.

What he had to tell me was that Mr Segobia
could not transport me any farther in the coche,
the conditions were too bad ; and I should have to

102 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

do the rest of the journey by mule. Moreover, there
had been so much rain of late that it was very
doubtful if even on mules we could tackle the river
on the morrow. And in any case it seemed we
should have tough work to catch the Wednesday's
train from Atocha ; for that this was Monday ; we
had to ride eight hours on Tuesday and about eleven
on Wednesday ; and even if we started at two A.M.
of the latter day we should have a big job to get
to Atocha by three P.M., when the train was due to
start.

This was another c crash ' ; for among the hazy
impressions which my ignorance of Spanish had
allowed me to gather about my journey I had formed
a very clear impression that Atocha was only a
short day's journey from Tupiza, and that I ought
to reach it quite easily on the morrow. Now it
seemed I should not only not do that, but I might
easily be too late for Wednesday's train. That
meant waiting till Sunday's, for there were only
two trains a week : and that meant that I should be
at any rate a week late at Oruro, and cause a great
deal of inconvenience to the brothers Martin not
to mention infinite exasperation to myself. Most
emphatically therefore I insisted that we must go
on on the morrow whatever the conditions. Mr
Segobia answered by shrugging his shoulders to the
point where they seemed likely to engulf his head,
turning up the palms of his hands in mute appeal to
Providence, and viewing the heavens with the eyes
of a martyr. No doubt also he breathed a silent
prayer for deliverance from the mentally deficient
of all countries especially England, though this I
was not privileged to hear. However, after some
argument I did get an assurance through our inter-

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 103

preter that he would make the attempt on the
morrow ; if there were no more rain it might be
just possible for us to get through ; and with this,
whether he meant it or not, I had to be content.

After a supper which I can still remember — gutta-
percha mutton stewed in rice with foul sauce and
reeking onions— I went to bed more depressed than
ever; but not forgetting you may be sure to be
lavish with insect powder and scent. I read. I
tried to sleep. I failed, partly through worry,
partly through sheer stink. I listened anxiously
for the sound of rain, for if any fell to-night our
chances were nil on the morrow ; and till midnight
heard not a whisper. Then, however, there began
a gentle murmur, not even audible on the iron roof ;
and I looked out and found that there was a sort
of Scotch mist going on, hardly to be called rain.
' No harm,' thought I and returned to bed, where
I lay awake perhaps another half-an-hour or so,
listening though hardly fearing lest it should become
more serious. It did. About one o'clock it gradu-
ally grew louder and louder, and finally became a
deluge which destroyed all chance of starting on the
morrow. I do not know how long it lasted ; prob-
ably all night. What I heard before going to sleep
was enough for me. It meant three extra days on
the journey, either in this hen-house of Tupiza or
else if they existed in still murkier quarters. No
wonder South America has no saints of her own,
but has had to borrow them from the Old World.

As though to mock us next morning was brilliantly
fine, but the river of course quite impassable, and
I had to resign myself to spending the day either in
the hen-house or else in the streets. There were two
of the latter, I found, running from end to end of

104 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

the town, about half-a-mile in length, and several
short ones at right angles thereto. All the latter
ran at one end into the river, which here makes a
considerable bend, and at the other into the bare
hills which wedge the town in from behind.
Tupiza cannot grow, for there is nowhere for it to
grow to. Nor does it want to, apparently. There
are shops, it is true ; Government offices ; a large
and hideous church ; the Plaza ; a bank ; two or
three ' hotels ' ; and most important of all the
offices of the Aramayo-Francke Mining Company
which has mines in the district. There is also a
rail way- station. But I need hardly add that there
are no rails ; no, nor even a promise of their coming
as there was on the plateau we had travelled. As
far as Nazarenos we had traced the ambitions of this
railway ; but in the Tupiza valley there were not
even these, so that the station seems likely to have
a very long engagement before it acquires its natural
mate, a train. Till it does the town will remain
what it is, sleepy, inactive, filthy and most lovely
to see, with its white houses, wide expanse of river-
bed, green corn-fields, sharp hills and crowd of
weeping willows. One may safely add that it will
also remain like that after the railway comes, and
also for ever and ever.

There is no difficulty about seeing its life, such as
it is. The tailor, the carpenter, the harness- maker,
each plies his craft in a single room opening on to
the street, which is probably his bedroom too. The
mules of the Aramayo Company and other traffickers
wander along the streets. At the Government offices
there are sentinels who wake with a start when you
approach and prevent you from exploring the
exceedingly picturesque old courtyard round which

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 105

the offices are grouped. In the Plaza, a tiny square
of eucalyptus- trees, there are shrubs and plants kept
alive by constant watering in the dry season ; there
is a band-stand ; and there are seats, so constantly
occupied that you feel they must be taken like
boxes at the opera at a certain figure for the
season — the season being the entire year. The
mails between Bolivia and the Argentine pass
through here — when the river permits — and also
telegrams— when the operators remember them.
But, as I have indicated, neither method of com-
munication is regarded very seriously in South
America : if they happen to be noticed they go ; if
not, not. And in the case of telegrams this does
not matter nearly so much as you might think;
for if they ever reach their destination, it is usually
in so mutilated a form that no one can make head
or tail of them ; and so the matter of their dispatch
or arrival is relatively speaking unimportant.

Having explored the town you may go a little
way outside it and there see Balbus building a wall.
He makes a great mud-pie of shale and such clay as
he can find ; brings a frame-work of boards some
four feet by two by two deep, and fills it in with the
mud-pie ; gives it a few days in which to dry, and
then takes the boards away. On top of this pie he
makes another, and another as high as he needs,
and so his wall is built. Mutatis mutandis he builds
his house in much the same way ; and very good
houses they are too, though not popular with
insurance companies, because they will not burn
and so need no insurance.

Then if you go down to the river when it is in
spate you will perceive that here is Blackpool. One
by one men come out to take what is presumably

106 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

their annual dip. The water is mainly red slime,
and hardly reaches up to their middles, so that the
gain is not large ; but presumably they emerge a
trifle cleaner than they went in— at any rate one
hopes so. The ladies do not bathe, but any day
you may see some of them fording the river. They
take off their boots — they do not possess stockings.
They hoist their garments— garment, perhaps I
should say, for they all seem to be 4 widows without
encumbrances '—hoist them, I say, to the waist-
line if need be, trusting to the water to clothe them.
They wade. And lo, in a moment they are through
it and the curtain is dropped, and they nod and
smile at you, " Buenas dias, Senor," " Buenas
dias, Senora," and pass on.

Throughout that first day the sun blazed with
tropical heat, and though there was a constant
threat of rain in the north none fell, and I thought
contentedly ' To-morrow at any rate we really shall
get on.' Nor, please to observe, did I do so without
due precaution. On the contrary, I am a man so
humbled by experience that I never venture even
to think hopefully without a firm grasp of wood ;
nine times out of ten you will find it by my bed-side
lest I wake in the night with a boastful thought.
And when I hoped this hope you may be sure there
was wood in either hand. But alas, it availed me
nothing. That night, as on the previous night, I
listened, and worried, and listened ; and again
worried ; and again till midnight heard no sound of
rain. And then as before there came a whisper and
a patter, and gradually but only too surely a roar
of falling waters. The sky had been rent apart ; the
river would again be impassable ; and yet another
day must be spent in Tupiza.

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 107

That was the moment, I think, when I first began
to realise what ' travel ' means in South America.
Never for one instant— that is what it means— can
you be sure of getting anywhere within an appointed
time, or indeed any time whatever. Strikes, floods,
revolutions, landslips, earthquakes — any or all of
these may descend upon you at any moment and
scatter to the wind your most carefully laid plans.
It is useless to fight ; they are part of your fate,
and you must submit with what patience you can.
No one of course who lives on this continent ever
expects anything else : manana is part of their
existence. But to one coming fresh from England
it is impossible at first to realise how suddenly and
completely his journey may be upset ; and until he
does so and makes up his mind to philosophise he
will furnish inexhaustible laughter to the gods. I,
for example, with my ideas of getting to Oruro
within a certain time must have seemed to them
a perfect * scream.' I was learning now. But they
had not done with me yet.

The second day was like unto the first, and so
was the night. I need say no more.

On the morning of the third, there being by now
some half-dozen of us waiting to go on, we per-
suaded Mr Segobia with some difficulty to make an
effort ; and we all packed food, mounted mules,
and started off at dawn up the river-bed, hoping
against hope that we might be able to pull through.
We hoped in vain. Hardly had we travelled a mile
before the water began to rise, suddenly and so
considerably that there could be no question of
going on. We had indeed to seek the bank for
safety and there remain some two hours before the
torrent went down. Even then we did not get

108 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

home without some difficulty. And gruesome in-
deed were the hours that followed. For I now
learned that on occasion people had been kept
waiting here not less than six weeks by persistent
floods, and this was just the beginning of the rainy
season ! If it went on I really might be kept here
all that time ; and in that case I might just as well
not have left England at all. I had something to
say, I can assure you, about the river and the
elements just then. But far more freely did I
revile the incompetence and fecklessness of Man,
who in all the centuries he has lived at Tupiza
has never taken the trouble, though liable at any
moment thus to be cut off from the world, to find
or make an alternative route. Could his flabbiness
I wondered be matched in any other corner of
that world?

A third day then I spent in Tupiza, whose lure in
my eyes had not survived the first ; and though I
did not go mad I could not help thinking of the
number of people who must have done so in the
history of South America. There was nothing
whatever to do except to read, which I could not do
indoors -the hen-house was too full of reminiscences
—and to walk, and worry about the river. It went
down considerably during this day ; and again the
sun blazed and there was no drop of rain. But I
was without illusions now ; I knew what would
happen during the night, and should not have been
surprised if it happened every night for a couple of
years. As it chanced the evening was quite dry :
and both it and the early night showed promise,
though both were rendered even more insufferable
than usual by the performance of the town band,
which in honour of Christmas Eve paraded the

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 109

streets from an early till an incalculably late hour,
playing the one tune it knew— namely,

This phrase it repeated in unison and without
cessation as long as I remained awake on every kind
of instrument capable of producing a shrill noise.
And if you say, ' Why not close your window and
shut out the noise ? ' I ask you once more to go to
Tupiza and see what I should have had to shut in.
In the end I did shut it out, being by nature
distraught by the slightest noise, but compara-
tively inured by now to the most terrestrial smell.
I cannot say that having shut one devil in I
managed to shut the other out, but there was some
respite at any rate from the latter. And there
was too one other good point about this night,
namely that as long as I lay awake, till after mid-
night, there was no rain not even a whisper or
a drop. I nourished no hopes, knowing what pre-
vious nights had done. But even a few hours of
abstention were something; and I prayed most
earnestly that they might be prolonged.

They were prolonged. Yes. Even to one who
waits in Tupiza the end must come some day. I
woke at five to find Mr Segobia and his staff already
in the courtyard ; yes and even the baggage-mules,
which had appeared mysteriously from nowhere;
and there was a great stir of packing and loading
and buying food. The latter, I was told, was most
essential ; for our first night's sojourn would be at a
hut where nothing but water was procurable. So I
laid in such tinned food as I could get— all at gigantic

110 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

cost, because of the distance of Tupiza from the
haunts of men — and revelling in the bright sun
and the glory of leaving that adhesive town I took
the saddle without a care, little thinking how
frightful were the uses to which that instrument
might be put by the hand of Fate.

XIII

THE process of saddling and loading and girthing
and re-girthing the mules till they looked like hour-
glasses—and then needed ' pinching ' again half-
an-hour later — came to an end about six o'clock,
and one by one a company of some three dozen—
men and animals— trickled out on to the road
and began the journey. There were six or seven
Bolivians or Spaniards of the better sort ; I do not
know which, and anyhow their sort was not super-
lative. There were Mr Segobia, his satellites and
his friends to the number of three or four. And
there were baggage-mules and spare mules and a
lot of other mules not apparently of his company,
but making the journey as parcel -vans under his
command.

The river was lower than I had yet seen it but in
places still up to our mules' bellies, and little less
swift than on the previous day ; so that they had
always to feel their way inch by inch across a
channel, and even then stumbled frequently in mid-
stream. If there be a more precarious and mad-
dening vehicle on the earth than a small mule— and
all Mr Segobia's mules were small— I have yet to
meet it ; but I cannot believe that such a thing
exists. Never even on the flat do they seem equal
to their work — any work, that is, not only the work
of conveying fourteen stone. Never for an instant
will they look where they are going, or take the
least trouble to lift up their feet. Never as a result
do they get through five minutes without a ' peck.'
in

112 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

And when it comes to fording a river, say even two
to three feet deep, you feel about as secure on them
as you would on the back of a small goat. Whack-
whack— whack is the only thing to do. And even
that is of very little use. In South America you are
equipped with a whip-lash as part of your reins-
one rein, that is, is continued in the form of a thong—
and with this you are supposed to be able to achieve
any results that can be achieved by whacking.
But in practice a wand of paper would be about as
much use. There is no form of ill-treatment to be
devised with it which has not long ago been dis-
counted and rendered laughable in the eyes of a
mule by the constant ill-treatment to which he has
been subjected from birth. And unless you have a
stick, as I luckily had, and use it persistently he will
crawl along just at the pace he chooses, sulky, feeble,
idle, unwilling, and constantly stumbling. Sure-
footed he may be on a mountain- side, where care is
necessary ; but on the flat— may the gods forgive
him, for I will not. Charity never travelled upon a
mule.

Our way led as a matter of course up the bed of
the river ; and this bed was as usual flat, broad and
uninteresting, bounded by hills of bare red earth,
and only varied by a hut now and then or a rare
flash of green corn where someone had filched a
little land from the river. The sun blazed with
merciless vigour upon the head and back. The gait
of the mule, short, trivial, shuffling, slow, became
more and more exasperating. And not to conceal
that which he only confesses with shame and disgust,
the Chief Ass became aware, when barely two hours
had passed, that he was already cooked and ready
to be served up before any who wished to consume

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 113

him. His saddle appeared to be made of specially
hardened wood shaped like the letter v set fore
and aft. Not knowing what was in store for him,
he had not, like others, taken the precaution of fill-
ing up the lower part of this crevice with blankets.
His stirrups, great wooden clogs, were yet not great
enough to admit more than one or two of his toes.
His knees, which had more than a nodding acquaint-
ance with arthritis, seemed as though they had taken
a permanent crook, and ached aloud except where
they were completely numb. His back, in which he
had been wont to repose confidence, sagged like that
of Age itself. His efforts to escape one set of aches
or sores by varying his position only seemed to
introduce him to another set. And to gain relief
by walking was practically impossible ; for in order
to make the best of the river's curves the route lay
constantly through channels of water, and it would
have been necessary either to get off and on again
at each — a great weariness to the flesh — or else to
risk a very wet seat, a drawback of more complex
possibilities. It is well that some scribe has written
of the journey from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso be-
fore the Transandine railway was built : " Travellers
who are not accustomed to it may find the long
mule-ride rather a painful process." They did ; I
can vouch for that. And this was Christmas Day !
Not the best I have spent.

I suppose I must have sagged rather seriously,
for I noticed that my fellow-travellers were thor-
oughly amused ; and I cannot believe that they
would have smiled so freely except at the misfortune
of others. You may think this very cynical ; but
the fact is that South American ideas of humour
are not the same as ours. Try chaff on them, for

114 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

example, and there is quite a chance you will get a
knife between your ribs ; you have insulted them,
and that is all about it. I sagged then, and the
others smiled ; and so hour after hour we went on,
without any halt except now and then to tighten a
girth. It was half-past two, eight and a half hours
after starting, when we at length arrived at a farm
very near the source of the river, and I learned that
here we were to sleep. There was a mud hut about
fifteen feet by ten ; a ' store ' ; one or two cattle
sheds ; and something that seemed once to have
been a church, for it possessed a sort of rack, also
built of mud, on which a bell might once have
hung.

We set to work to eat such food as we had, and
to drink— the gods be praised— such quantities of
lager beer (from La Paz) as I could hardly describe
in one book. How much we drank I do not know ;
but I do know that I alone could have consumed
the whole output of that brewery for a year and
should still have been thirsty. When at last we
had done eating and drinking my fellow-travellers
(whether Spanish or Bolivian) took possession of
the flat oblong banks of earth inside the hut which
were to form their beds ; undid and spread out such
bedding as they had with them, and lay down. I
also put out my camp-bed, for whose presence I shall
never cease to be grateful ; and given a chance
would have slept the sleep of exhaustion. But my
friends were too much for me. When they were not
talking and laughing like children all at once, they
were spitting and investigating their bronchial
tubes with unremitting energy ; and cooked as I
was I could not stay in the same room with them,
and had to go out and gain such rest as I could on

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 115

the hill- side or the bank of the river, which I can
assure them was quite a different thing.

This lasted till dusk. Then we gathered round a
diminutive table in the hut, the whole eight of us,
and consumed another meal, at which I had an
opportunity of studying my companions a little
more closely. First there was a doctor, of minute
stature, who had a few words of English; then
there was a seedy -looking youth with orange-
coloured hair ; and thirdly, another youth. There
was a vast, broad man who never ceased talking
except to spit. Five and six were a couple of
tradesmen, and seven was a small dark man who
made himself exceedingly pleasant and useful to me
—why I did not make out till next day. He in
particular ; but all were very polite and did what
they could to help me, even offering to rig up a
separate table for me with bags and boxes if I liked ;
but of course I did not like, or at any rate said so.
There then round the table, by the light of one
candle in a bottle, we ate and drank, conversed in
broken fragments of English, French and Spanish,
and laughed consumedly over our efforts. They
were immensely struck by my camp-bed ; and kept
on repeating how ' jolie ' it was — a sentiment I
could cordially endorse, for without it I should
have had to sleep beside one or possibly two of them
on a bank of earth and in such proximity as only a
sardine can know. As it was, I slept very badly,
partly from being over-tired and partly owing to
the altitude, some twelve thousand feet ; and when-
ever I was awake I heard the sound of solemn
spitting still going on, as though the faculty were
one which like breathing did not slumber with the
brain, but continued as regularly as by day, though

116 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

with diminished force. I did not know — did you ? —
that the Latin -American kept it up all night as well
as all day. But he does ; and it just shows how
much some of us have yet to learn.

We were roused at five o'clock in the morning ;
and this time I took care to have two blankets
placed in the niche of my saddle, so that it looked
and felt a little more like a U than a V. Even so
it remained a penance, and I did not look forward
to a further twelve hours on— or rather in— it, sore
and aching as I still was from yesterday's ride.
We followed the river for another two hours ; then
fortunately left it for sloping plains and low hills ;
and I was able to walk a great part of the way —no
fiesta under the grilling sun, but at any rate prefer-
able to riding. Hour after hour we rode or walked,
and only at,, one o'clock stopped for a quarter of an
hour for food. Then on again, mainly over endless
plains of loose sand. The walking muscles and the
riding muscles each kept saying to the other, "Na-poo,
you must do the rest," and only the Mind replied,
"Seven more hours to go," "Six more hours," or
whatever it might be. My spine protested gravely
that it was forty- six years old that day, as indeed
it was, and could not through eternity maintain the
alignment of a ramrod. The desert over which we
plodded was but a trifle to the desert in my throat.
And when we stopped for a few moments at a
* farm,' and each of us had a cup of earthy and
disgusting tea, the thirst it generated was rather
worse than the thirst that had gone before. After
leaving this I learned that there were yet three
hours between us and Atocha ; and if it were in
nature for a man of forty- six years to cry I should
promptly have done so and mad.e green a little oasis

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 117

in the desert. As it was, I tried walking fast till I
was a long way ahead of the main party, then lying
down till they caught me up, then riding again for
a time, and then repeating the process— a method
which had its merits, though it was not c jolie '
walking fast in that loose sand.

At length, about half-past six in the evening, we
turned the corner of a hill and beheld on an opposite
hill only a mile away some rows of mud huts.
" Atocha ! " called Mr Segobia, pointing thereto, and
such spirit as remained in me leapt at the name.
I suppose there are few less attractive places in the
world — just the huts aforesaid, the station, a lot of
native ' stores ' by the railway, and round them the
bare brown hills without a trace of vegetation.
But no one either in dreams or Art has ever con-
ceived a place more delectable than I found it then
—a bower, a glade, a hanging garden, a vision of
loveliness and peace. You must ride from Tupiza
to Atocha to know what true beauty is.

In sober fact it presented to us first a large mud-
walled enclosure on the flat, within which was a
hotel ; and beside the gate of that enclosure there
stood, smiling genially, the dark-haired gentleman
who had been so obliging to me on the way, and who
had somehow managed to get in miles ahead of us.
I regret to say that I did not reward him by turning
into his hotel as the others did, for Mr Segobia had
other views for me, and still pointed to the hill.
Slowly, very slowly, we climbed nearly to the top
of this, and there among other huts discovered one
which we will call El Hotel Magnifico. Before it I
fell rather than dismounted from my mule, dizzy,
sore and aching from head to foot, and drank and
drank and drank cerveza negra (which is the Spanish

118 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

for stout, and very good stout too) ; drank, I say,
till I was sated, but I dare not tell you how long' that
took. I learned that we had come nearly fifty miles
since daybreak, and of these I must have walked
about thirty, so even a temperance reformer might
have forgiven me just then. As it happened no
temperance reformer was present — I hope for their
own sake that none exist in South America.

XIV

IF you can believe it El Hotel Magnifieo was less
pretentious than any I had seen in Bolivia and
also — may I say it — more atrocious. Partly built
of mud, partly carved out of the side of the hill it
resembled nothing so much as a large dug-out,
divided into compartments by walls of earth ; and
only in two points did it excel over those other
' hotels ' of which I have spoken. Firstly no one
appeared to want to sleep in it ; and so though
there were as usual two beds in my compartment
which measured some eight feet by eight, no one else
competed for the second ; and but for the beds I
and my baggage had all this space to ourselves.
Secondly it had apparently the most considerate
landlord who has ever kept an inn on this planet.
Never before at any rate have I seen or heard of so
delicate an attention as that which graced my bed-
room— namely, a metal comb resting in a hank or
c mare's-tail ' of greasy hair hung upon the wall.
It was plainly intended for the use of visitors and
plainly too, from the number of missing teeth,
was in constant use. Yes ; but say what you
will I do like the spirit of that man. " Out here
in the wilds," he seems to say, "I cannot give
you all that you would get in the palaces of Oruro
or La Paz. Admittedly my hotel is not all that
I could wish. But this at least I can do for you
and I will." And thereby no doubt he earned
the gratitude of thousands of his fellow- men —and
women — and which of us can say as much ? Think
119

120 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

of the knots that comb has dealt with, the scalps
to which it has been a comfort, the delight of
dusky travellers on finding such a luxury within
their reach ! No small thing for a man in that
position to feel that he is in advance, even in
one detail, of such places as the Ritz or the
Savoy.

To my surprise there was yet another refinement
in my room which I had ceased to look for in South
America, namely a window apart from the door.
This window gave upon a yard containing various
fowl-houses — and other things. And when I saw
the number of fowls there resident I could not but
think of the number of companions to which each
must be c G.H.Q.'. Even if their leading elements
were not already in my dug-out — and for all its
kindness I could not help suspecting the hank of
hair — they must be gathering for a general advance
early in the night. So I set myself at once to
organise my defences — lines and parapets of insect-
powder — wherewith to discourage if not decimate
the advancing horde. But strange to say no attack
arrived, no not even a solitary sniper much less the
whole division I had expected. And if I may here
and now dispose once for all of a subject which,
believe me, is the most enthralling that can engage
the attention of Man in these climes, I would add
that not only here but at no place throughout my
sojourn in Bolivia did I ever find myself giving
hospitality to these unbidden guests. They cannot
live here, that is the astonishing and memorable
truth ; not from any lack of encouragement by the
inhabitants— hens in their hen-house were a cleanlier
brood — but because above a certain altitude they
can hardly ever stand the rarefied atmosphere.

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 121

Pop go their hearts, yea, even his whom we know ;
and even as he goes out to luncheon one day he
is taken, and wafted still hungry to that higher
sphere where he may be a Hun or a hornet for all I

know, but may not be a Bolivian .* I think it very

marvellous and comforting that this should be so :
marvellous to find a corner of the world where
Man needs no insect-powder ; comforting to think
that here if nowhere else we can mock at that
which we have previously reckoned among the
Immortals.

I spent two nights and a day in this dug-out;
and if I did not thereby earn a whole week's leave
from the next world I shall be very much dis-
appointed. I slept profoundly ; ached gradually a
little less ; began to grow a little skin where it was
urgently needed ; and comparing notes with M. R.
over the telephone was delighted to find that he
ached no less, though far more inured to the mule
than I and equipped with a kindlier saddle. You
may be surprised to hear of the telephone in such a
place as Atocha, and still more surprised when I tell
you that he was at least five-and-twenty miles away.
But the explanation is quite simple. To this
station comes most of the tin and silver ore exported
by the Aramayo Company ; and all their mines, to
the number of five or six, are connected by telephone
with each other and with this station. The railway
brought here for their purposes will ultimately be
extended to join that which reaches out from
La Quiaca as yet unequipped with rails. And
then, O fortunati nimium sua si bona norint, those
who travel will do so on seats, sweet seats with

1 We have been reminded not long ago by the incomparable A. P. H.
that the word is not used in the highest circles.

122 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

cushioned backs ; and in after years when they
look back they will no longer ache in certain
quarters at the memory of their journey, nor twist
in dreams upon the saddle to find some unabraded
skin.

On Saturday evening the train duly arrived,
and on Sunday I had in the ' Comedor ' the first
food since leaving La Corona which was plainly
intended for the human as opposed to the animal
stomach. At two o'clock in the afternoon we
started, carrying a big load of Bolivian youths
going for their first military training. Service is
compulsory here; and they are said to enjoy it,
which does not argue a very high standard of
happiness in their home life. However, tastes
differ. Enjoy it or not, they made noise enough to
suggest that they were going to heaven, and grew
more and more cheerful at every station. We
stopped everywhere as a matter of course ; and
might almost as well have stopped in between too,
so slow was our progress. First we crawled along
the side of a dry river-bed. Then we climbed an
immense range of sandy hills. And it was there
that on looking out I beheld what I have never
beheld before — and without luck cannot hope to
behold again — namely one of the engine -hands
half running half walking beside his engine pouring
in oil, and then jogging round very slowly in front
of it to do the same on the other side ! Such are
trains in Bolivia.

Having surmounted the hills we crawled for a
long time over an enormous flat desert with the
thunder and lightning crackling all round us. Then
we crossed another ridge and more plains, and
finally about six o'clock we arrived at Uyuni, a

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 123

junction on the main line between Antofogasta and
Oruro, where I was to change trains.

I do not know if Uyuni is really the beastliest
place on earth. It is usually said to be ; but no
doubt there are competitors. Anyhow it is just a
small mining town set out in the middle of a flat,
desolate plain, built of earth and mostly roofed
with iron. It has railway workshops, drinking
shops, sidings for dealing with ore, and very little
else, certainly no ' char-r-m.' What gives it so
high a rank of beastliness in the eyes of all who
know it is that during the winter the prevailing
wind comes to it over a gigantic expanse of salt
desert, whereon and wherewith the snow makes the
best freezing mixture you can possibly imagine ;
and so the cold is such as can hardly be equalled in
the temperate zone. Coal being about £25 to £80
a ton in Bolivia, and wood not too easy to get— for
over the greater part of the southern districts not
a stick of anything will grow— you will understand
that Uyuni is not to be recommended for winter
residence. By day, of course, you always have the
tropical sun. By night — but it is better not to
think of it.

Whatever its drawbacks this place was to me as
the land to a swimmer long buffeted by the waves.
For now at last I had crossed successfully the track-
less ocean between the two railway systems : only
a night's journey separated me from Oruro; and my
only remaining anxiety was lest the other two Asses,
who had left England some time before I did, should
after waiting some days and only getting a tele-
gram from Tupiza— if indeed they ever did get it,
which was doubtful — have felt that it was im-
possible to wait longer and gone off as was but

124 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

natural to inspect some mining property without
me. If so, when I got to Oruro I should in my
ignorance of the country and the language be once
more in the position of the swimmer aforesaid ;
though not quite so badly off, as there must of
course be other English in the town. However, as it
proved, there was no need for anxiety. No sooner
had I arranged my things in a sleeping-compartment
and strolled along the corridor to the door of the
carriage than I beheld coming across the platform
from the Antofogasta train a vast figure followed
by a slighter one, both making for my door. I
looked again, and, dark as it was, knew I could
not be mistaken. It was Roger Martin himself, and
behind him was Cecil.

" But, but, what — what — in heaven's name are
you doing here ? ': I gasped when greetings were
over. " Have you been wrecked or what ? ':

" Yes, wrecked at Antofogasta by a railway
strike, three weeks," was the answer — though not
all of it. " And if ever I have a chance of cutting
the soul out of the body of the [descriptive] brute
who ran that [descriptive] strike— But here

the ticket collector intervened.

Think of it, please. We had come across the world
in different ships by different routes starting at
different times, and here we were going up from
Uyuni in the same sleeping-carriage. Of course from
my point of view nothing could be better ; I had
worried myself to shreds lest I should be too late,
and here I was exactly in time. But for them—
The mind quails at the thought of it. Three
weeks of what had nearly driven me mad in three
days ! And what made it worse was that half the
English and Americans in Antofogasta had been

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 125

rejoicing over the strike, because the cessation of
railway traffic meant something like a holiday for
them, at any rate much lighter work. Yes, and
a certain amount of amusement withal. For the
town authority fearing disturbance had intimated
to the colonel of the local garrison that they ex-
pected him to keep order. Whereto the colonel
replied that all his force except thirteen were
volunteers, who if there were looting would prefer
to loot ; while any invitation to the thirteen to
stop them would infallibly result in their putting
him to death. As it happened there were no dis-
turbances, and he survived. If there are ? Well,
one hopes they still remember the story of the first
big strike which took place in Chile many years ago.
The strikers were invited to send a deputation to
state their demands. About sixty arrived. The
employers heard what they had to say. Then,
having the rifles on their side, they replied : " The
first part of our answer is that we will not give you
the tiniest fraction of what you ask ; and the
second is, * Go and line up against that wall.' "
There were no more strikes for some time.

Roger, to our surprise— and his — was by no means
well ; quite sharply affected by the altitude-
sickness, headache, ears splitting, tightness across
the chest, utter inability to sleep. Cecil and I felt
nothing ; and this, we were told, is one of the peculi-
arities of siroche. New-comers may be immune :
those who have, been in the country for years and
come back to it after an absence are apt to feel it
acutely. Oxygen is carried on some of the trains
that go up to Bolivia from the coast, so grave some-
times are the effects ; but of course Roger's was
quite an every-day case ; and he was more disgusted

126 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

with himself than anything else, never having had
a touch of it before. " I don't believe it is siroche"
he kept insisting ; and we could but reply that in
our hearts we did not believe it either ; it was
probably drink.

XV

* SWAPPING lies,' I found that the brothers Martin
had travelled without event as far as Antofogasta ;
where if there were only one event, and that only
describable by a hiatus, it was enough to last them
for the rest of their lives. You may demur to the
hiatus and talk, as the priest talked to me once at
Tupiza— but not twice— of Resignation ; but if you
had been gambling, as these two were, with your
time and money, and had lost three precious weeks
at the very outset of your trip— with corresponding
loss of money — you would possibly have something
to say, not necessarily beginning with * R,' as to
the character of the men who had stopped you.
There did not appear to be any reason for this
strike; there seldom is in South America, apart
from the work of agitators. But it had come just
at the wrong moment for them ; the precious weeks
had been wasted ; and once more had been proved,
what I have so often emphasised, that never for
a moment on this continent can the traveller be
certain of getting to his destination, either within
the time appointed or within any time that can be
reckoned by human means. * The morrow is as
good as the day.'

We did actually get to our destination about six
on the following morning, and at once had proof
that it was not the centre of civilisation. Firstly,
though we were only a minute or two late in leaving
our sleeping-compartment, the carriage was shunted
into a distant siding before we had a chance of getting
127

128 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

out of it. Secondly, when we did get out we found
ourselves surrounded by a mob of yelling natives
all fighting for the chance of carrying our bags.

We had gathered from Roger that among the
many good points of Bolivia was the English
management of the State railways ; and if he had
been in a condition to defend himself we should
certainly have had something to say to him — even
at six A.M. — about the beauties of this management.
As it was, we had to content ourselves with a wink
and a grin ; and I, being according to my domestic
circle more obstinate and pig-headed than any off-
spring of the donkey tribe, was moved to confute
the mob by carrying my own bag regardless of its
weight.

Roger, however, would have none of this.

" No, no. You can't do that here," he cried.
" Infra dig. Never done. Really, it's quite im-
possible."

" But how do I know these imps won't run off
with my stuff ? "

" They won't ; they are perfectly honest. Every-
one is in Bolivia."

Again we winked — though certainly we had had
no reason to believe otherwise ; nor indeed did we
ever have any throughout our journeys in this
country. But of course we had to accede ; and
two beings were selected from the mob and en-
trusted with our bags. A little later our registered
luggage was secured ; and when two other creatures
had been chosen we had an opportunity of seeing
what immense loads the native Bolivian can carry ;
they are all tremendously strong, both men and
women. My portmanteau for example, and my
camp-bed, each weighing some eighty or ninety

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 129

pounds, had been deemed together a fitting load for
one mule. But to the small, filthy, hairy individual
who had secured them they seemed apparently to
be nothing unusual for one man. He lashed them
together carefully with a rope, got himself somehow
underneath them, and with his head almost touching
his toes walked away with them slowly but steadily
towards our hotel, holding them on his back by the
rope over one shoulder as though they were quite
an ordinary burden. I suppose they were from his
point of view ; but I know a good many people
whom I should like to see getting off the mark with
that load on their backs — and myself as driver. A
hundred and seventy pounds, where seventy are
usually regarded as ample for one man !

We walked to our hotel, and persuaded the owner
with great difficulty to let us have a room each—
though why he should have done so I do not know,
most people being content to sleep two or three in a
room and thereby double or treble his receipts. We
also proceeded to order hot baths. I do not know
if anyone has ever had a hot bath before in Bolivia ; if
so he must be one who, like ourselves, had not counted
the cost. Six shillings a head was what we had sub-
sequently to pay ; and if we had known that at the
time we should have been in those baths still, some
eighteen months later. The reason is the colossal
price and scarcity of fuel, which I have already
indicated. And the only solution, except for million-
aires, is to wash in your basin and still further
disregard the already disregarded carpet.

Not only because it owned a bath, but for other
reasons, our hotel was a palace beside those I had
hitherto encountered. It had two storeys built
round a central courtyard, which had been roofed

130 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

with glass and turned into a dining-hall. It had a
large drinking-room ; bedrooms of quite sufficient
size for one — though they were always equipped
with two beds ; and not only this, but it even had
creatures who waited on you, and quite efficiently
too. You called " Mozo " in any part of the house,
and a dusky and grinning but quite intelligent
6 boy ' appeared, who, if you could not tell him what
you wanted, seemed usually able to guess.

Now for a glance at Oruro. It cannot be de-
scribed as an attractive town. Indeed one does not
like to think of that hard case in which a man would
find it pleasing either to eye or nose. But in one
respect at any rate it has some claim to distinction—
namely that it is a mining town existing originally
for that purpose and no other, which yet has
managed to stay where it is for more than three
hundred years. As a rule of course towns of this
type spring up like mushrooms and die as quickly,
bringing no permanent benefit to the country in
which they grow. Oruro, however, dates back as
far as 1600, when the Spaniards realised the wealth
of tin and silver ore in the hills about it and made
it one of their principal settlements. Some eighty
years later it was reputed to have a population of
37,000 people in addition to 75,000 Indians, who
apparently were not regarded— they certainly were
not treated — as human beings. But whether this
statement can be accepted or not is more than
doubtful. If true it means that Spain migrated
to South America in the seventeenth century on an
immensely bigger scale in proportion than England
did to South Africa during the gold boom ; and
this, when one considers the relative facilities—
steamer and train for us, for them an endless journey

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 131

via the Horn and then weeks or months by mule
over the Andes—is not easy so believe. There
is too the obvious difficulty if not impossibility
of feeding and watering such vast numbers in
the midst of an utterly unproductive country ; and
there is also the fact that to-day the general
aspect of the town, with its population of about
25,000, in no way suggests that it could ever
have been four or five times as large. Credat
Judaeus.

Beneath these hills, which are lined and scarred
and tunnelled in every direction by the mining of
generations of men, the modern town lies on an
eastward slope facing a great breadth of desert, all
twelve thousand feet above sea-level. Beyond this
desert are other hills, all barren : there is scarcely
any vegetation in this part of Bolivia. The streets
are for the most part laid out at right angles, and
perfectly straight. The houses are mainly built of
earth though some are of stone ; and all alike are
covered with stucco painted white, yellow, pink,
grey, blue, etc. Many of them are old, built in the
time of the Spanish occupation— which lasted from
1535 to 1825 — and equipped with courtyards and
barred windows just as in Spain of to-day. It looks
as if there must be a great waste of space as a result
of this ; and presumably space is of high value in the
midst of so flourishing a town. Method, however, is
in the madness ; for a house of this type, it seems,
is often the home not only of a whole family but of
a whole clan. Father and mother perhaps occupy
one set of rooms; their parents and grandparents
and any odd uncles or aunts another ; the children
as they marry are given separate quarters ; their
children follow ; and so it goes on till the mind

132 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

quails at the arithmetic needed — and the over-
crowding produced. Luckily there are no regula-
tions about ' minimum cubic space ' in Bolivia ; if
there were the bulk of the people of all classes would
live in the street.

The centre of the town is as usual the Plaza— a
big square paved with cobble-stones, and relieved
by little beds of shrubs and small trees kept alive
by constant watering. There is a bandstand and,
alas, a band. There are hotels, kinema - halls,
restaurants, a huge and hideous bank, and a big
block of Government offices. This Plaza is of
course the centre of the city's life. Here on fiesta
days you will see the entire population showing
themselves off. Here take place the elections, of
which I shall have something to tell you later.
Here the male inhabitants native and foreign
assemble in various taverns before lunch and dinner
for talk and cocktails. And here anyone, male or
female, who has nothing else to do comes to stroll
about or sit in the sun and talk, flirt, idle, or, in the
evening— so strange is the world we live in— listen to
the band. There are unfortunately no indigenous
amusements. The score or two of English people
who are here for business or railway manage-
ment have made one or two tennis-courts; and
there is a golf-links just distinguishable from the
desert : apart from these nothing but the kinema
and the cocktail. This part of Bolivia is as
destitute of animal as of plant life ; and there is
practically speaking no sport ; so after his work a
man has little or nothing to do except to talk and
drink, and it is a marvel that he does not do more
of the latter than he does. No part of South
America can be described so far as exactly ' dry ' :

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 133

and one cannot say that Bolivia is giving a very
definite lead in that direction.

When you have seen the Plaza you have seen all.
There is just one other small square and a church
or two ; for the rest nothing but the streets, straight,
narrow, filthy and malodorous, and all paved with
cobble-stones which have assumed the configuration
of the country and gone into majestic hills and
valleys. In the central streets there are good shops
selling English and American goods with a catho-
licity which I have not seen elsewhere. At your
grocer's, for example; you find such things as saws,
china, air-guns, perambulators and tobacco ; at a
saddler's there will be tweed, gramophones, petti-
coats and note-paper ; at a chemist's, cameras and
English chocolates ; at the confectioner's; cham-
pagne— so-called; I never met anyone who had
ventured on it— and at almost every shop beer and
calico. And when you get away from the central
streets and look in at the doors of the ' native '
shops— which is enough for most noses—you will
find them selling all these things promiscuously.
Beer is their stand-by ; but in addition they can
usually supply you with axes, tomatoes, false teeth,
string, flannel, furniture, meat, soda-water, mining
tools, bread or women's hats, according to your
need. These outlying streets descend rapidly in
quality of houses till they end abruptly in the
desert or the hills- and there is only one street in
all Oruro, the Avenida, which has any sort of
breadth or dignity. That runs for about a mile
north and south ; and at the northern end of it
there is even an attempt at a residential suburb, the
houses being larger than most of those in the town ;
though perhaps more hideous, and that is saying a

134 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

great deal. Thereafter, a little way out, come the
barracks ; and after that the desert. There are big
railway workshops too at the northern end, and at
the southern a cemetery that revolts the eye even
more than anything else in Oruro. The ground
being too rocky to receive the bodies, they are placed
in niches in great walls of earth built up ten or
twelve feet above the ground. There are curious
little chapels here and there, all built of mud ; and
there is a large central building resembling nothing
so much as the sort of monstrosity you see on the
end of a pier at such places as Brighton or Black-
pool, all glass and bright blue paint and gaudiness ;
so that you think, " Here is the White City or Earl's
Court of Oruro," and are quite surprised when you
are told what it really is.

The inhabitants retire to this cemetery far more
frequently and at an earlier age than we should
approve of in England— the death-rate must be
very high — but not more frequently, it must be
owned, than they deserve to. For sanitation is
not the strong point of Oruro ; nor in view of the
native's ideas on that subject would any attempt
at improving it be of the faintest use ; they just do
as seems good to them. There is as a result a great
deal of typhoid always present and frequently
epidemic. Pneumonia carries off immense numbers
of natives ; the cold (in winter), the rarefied atmos-
phere and the extra work placed on the heart by
the altitude making it a very dangerous enemy.
Enteric and dysentery also take their toll. And
though Europeans with their stronger constitutions
and cleanlier habits stand the conditions better
than natives, they too have far more illness and
death among them than they would at home. For

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 135

my part, I am not ashamed to confess that I
always drenched my handkerchief in scent before
I went out ; and so by breaking the edge of the at-
tack believe that I saved myself from unthinkable
penalties of disease.

XVI

THE aim of the Three Asses being to inspect and
acquire options on ore-bearing properties their first
business was to make themselves known and seek
out those who might be of use to them. This they
did in two ways : partly through the good offices of
the British Consul at Oruro, who must surely be the
best Consul in the world ; and partly through friends
and acquaintances of Roger's whom he had known
during his earlier residence here. I have no doubt
that you will say that here at any rate we had
an easy and agreeable task leading to various new
friendships and pleasant meetings, and involving
little or nothing of the ' ardua ' in that fine motto,
' Per ardua ad astral But if you think this I would
just ask you one question. " Have you or have you
not known what it is to live, unwont and unwilling,
in a state of more or less complete inebriation for
nearly two weeks ? !! If not, I cannot allow that
your opinion is of any value. You do not know.

Doubtless this is an exaggeration, and we had our
intervals of sobriety ; but looking back upon the
period I cannot but feel that there is truth in the
description. No man, so far as I can gather, ever
talks to another in South America without offering
him a drink. No man refuses. No bargain can be
struck, no business even broached without broach-
ing of another kind. It is hard to refuse, especially
with Latin- Americans, who are almost sure to think
you unfriendly or even insulting; harder still of
course not to offer when an offer is due. Either

136

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 137

way you almost have to drink. And when half-
a-dozen people happen to meet at a bar or kinema
the amount consumed is more or less in ratio to the
number of people present. c Per ardua.' I should
think it was!

A drink in Bolivia, and for that matter any-
where in South America, nearly always means a
cocktail. Bolivian beer there is : blanca (lager
beer) and negra (stout), both excellent ; also
Bolivian wine very far from excellent ; in fact what
you buy is probably the sourest, sharpest, thinnest
liquid ever conjured from the grape ; though what
you may be given by a wine-grower is usually
excellent showing what he could do for everyone
if he took a little trouble. Chilean wines you can
always buy, and usually enjoy, but owing to the
enormous import duties you will not enjoy paying
for them. Port, so-called, is obtainable at all the bars
and restaurants; but here as everywhere in South
America it is a terrible concoction, apparently made
of treacle and raspberry vinegar with a dash of
brandy thrown in. And so one is practically con-
fined to spirits or cocktails, both of which in Oruro
are apt to be terrible stuff ; for everything here is
either made, watered, adulterated or counterfeited
in Chile. The bottle of Scotch whisky for example,
for which you give a gigantic price, will have been
half -emptied there and filled up with raw spirit and
water. The ravishing flask of Benedictine glowing
and globular which you covet in the shop window,
and which has all the finery and apparel of the
real thing, will contain a substitute certainly quite
passable brewed in the same land of tolerance
and liberty. A mystery which I never was able to
solve is that in La Paz you can buy good brands of

138 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

Scotch whisky whose corks have never been
broached ; but in Oruro you are lucky ever to get
a drop of liquor that has not been tampered with.
Drink it you must, for there is nothing else. But
it is not unmingled joy. Alas that a country like
South America which has the grape, the sun, the
Latin temperament and everything that should
make it a wine-drinking country should descend to
this lower plane of taste, and absorb its spirits and
cocktails like Scotland or Canada or any other
country that has never had a chance.

To drink in Oruro is to talk. And to talk is to
talk mines. There is no other topic. You take
your seat opposite a man and wonder which mine
he will talk about ; that is all the variety you must
expect. Everyone is here to make money, directly
or indirectly, out of the mines.

There are a few well-known firms such as Duncan
& Fox, Graham Rowe, Balfour Williamson, etc.,
who for the most part keep to the narrow path of
trade, buying and exporting ore, importing every-
thing from a tractor to a tooth-pick, and leaving
the mines to those who care to speculate. But even
they are dependent on these mines for their pros-
perity ; for the more money dug out of the earth
the more naturally there is to be spent on their
goods. And as for the Bolivian part of the com-
munity, the lawyers, doctors, tradesmen, ' travellers,'
clerks, officials and gentlemen of independent
means, you will hardly find one among them who
has not an interest of some kind in some mining
property. Everyone gambles. Everyone is cin
it.' Everyone hopes some day to bring off a big
coup. And everyone talks, as is only to be ex-
pected, of other people's mining business. What

A PORTER ix ORURO

A BOLIVIAN MARKET

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 139

this man spent and that man gained ; how So-and-
so turned down a reef and A. N. Other made it an
Eldorado ; what option A desired and B allowed ;
what figure was given here and what resulted there
-that is the talk throughout Oruro. The atmos-
phere is — or was when we were there — one of tre-
mendous excitement, tremendous schemes and deals,
tremendous speculations, successes and failures.
There is always a boom coming or a slump feared.
And even if you are not interested in these personally
you cannot escape the feeling of excitement and
speculation in the air. (Not much of that left in
1922 I am told ; the only speculation is as to who
will go c broke ' next.)

For two reasons the moment of our visit to
Bolivia was one of rather more excitement than
usual. Firstly the price of tin, which had in old
days been something like £90 to £120 a ton, had
risen to the fabulous figure of nearly £400, and was
expected to go higher — it is about £160 at the
moment of writing. Secondly, the huge American
firm of Guggenheim had recently been launching
some tremendous schemes for the purchase and
development of Bolivian properties. It seems that
until recently England had to a great extent con-
trolled the principal sources of tin in the world,
mainly those in the Malay Peninsula; and the
American firms had had to buy their raw material
through England, more or less at England's price.
With gigantic smelting works to keep going near
New York the Guggenheims did not relish this;
and set themselves to acquire their own sources of
supply, their method being roughly to purchase
ranges of mountains in Bolivia and move them to
New York. The result is—or was at the time of our

140 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

visit— that in one or two districts they were buying
up almost every claim, good, bad or indifferent
within certain areas, so as to gain full control of
those areas. And hence there had arisen a sort of
feeling that they would buy anything or everything
at unprecedented prices; and everyone was asking
unheard-of figures for properties which a few years
before they had despaired of selling at any price.
Needless to say they did not always get them ; for
there are few firms better able to protect themselves
than Messrs Guggenheim. But the presence of the
latter and their gigantic schemes had undoubtedly
stimulated mining enterprises ; and the Chileans,
who have been responsible for most of the mining
development of Bolivia, were also launching out
here even more vigorously than before. In Chile,
it is said, you do not need a mine at all to start a
gamble on the Stock Exchange, only a ' skeleton '
company and a name that sounds like a mine or a
nitrate-field. However that may be it is certainly
a country with a natural bent towards mining ; it
has many enormously rich mines of its own; and
its money and enterprise are behind most of those
in Bolivia.

Naturally we soon had a swarm of property-
owners about our ears, many of them with obvi-
ously inflated accounts of their property, and still
more inflated ideas of its value ; and there we sat
day after day in various temples of Alcohol and
listened politely to their fiction, while ladling
deleterious drinks into their bodies. Some were
English, some American, some Spanish, some
Italian, some plain Bolivian ; and all, you will
instantly conclude, were something else too. But
it would not be fair to say that. Many of them

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 141

seemed to be genuine fellows, who told us quite
truthfully, so far as we could gather, what their
properties amounted to; and being very anxious
to sell them did not ask an unwieldy price. These,
if their accounts seemed sufficiently promising, we
would invite into one of our bedrooms — you must
know that in Bolivia all business is conducted in
bedrooms, for the excellent reason that in a hotel
there is nowhere else to conduct it — and there in
conference we would search the man like a board
of examiners with hard questions; and endeavour
to decide if his property were worth a visit or
not.

Take the Widow's Cruse, for example.
The Widow was a Brazilian lady who had some-
how become possessed of an excellent little tin
mine. As might be expected of anyone in the
world but a native Bolivian her chief ambition in
life was to get out of the country at the first possible
moment and at almost any price. Twenty thousand
pounds, however, was the minimum price recom-
mended by her adviser, a thoroughly honest mining
engineer hailing from New Zealand, whom we will
call Mr F. ; and till she got that she could not go.

Mr F. came to explain how matters stood ; and
there in Roger's bedroom we talked, the three of us
sitting quite normally on beds, and Roger as usual
tilting on the back of an arm-chair which seemed
likely to collapse at any moment beneath his weight.

" Well, what shall it be, Mr F. ? " began Roger,
host on this occasion. Most conversations begin
this way in Bolivia.

" Martini, please."

" Stout."

" Whisky Saurre."

142 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

44 Mozo ! "

Mozo appeared and received orders.

44 Now, what about this old crack in the earth of
yours ? When did you say you put the tin in ? '

44 Just before the war," said Mr F. solemnly,
knowing his man. " Wouldn't pay since. Tin's
too high."

44 H'm— and how much ? "

44 Oh, a good few tons. I made four seams—
roughly, 2 ft. ; 3 ft. 6 in. ; 1 ft. 6 in., and 2 ft. 4 in."

44 Expensive, then ? "

44 Yes, but they look nice. You'll find a tidy lot of
stuff in there." *

44 But Mr F.," put in Cecil, who cannot stand
waiting a second for anything ; 44 do you mean
really that there are four seams being worked and
they are all really good stuff ? "

44 First-rate — eight to twelve per cent, pure tin."

44 By Jove ! "

I saw Roger scowl. We were plainly showing
much too much interest, and I intervened.

" What is the history of it all ? Who is working
it?"

44 Pedro Langle now, a Bolivian johnny. It is
like this. For years and years Mrs - - has been
swindled right and left by her managers. Now at
last she has got an ace; a real good 'un ; and he is
turning out about ten or twelve thousand quintals a
month— grand stuff, too; I can tell you— and getting
thirty dollars a quintal for the expenses."

44 Not much left for the Widow then," growled
Roger.

44 But indeed there is."

44 Why; she is getting between four and five
thousand a year out of it," cried Cecil, who lias the

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 143

powers of a freak in reckoning figures — " four or
five thousand a year ; and she is asking ? ?:

" Only twenty thousand."

" Ah, but how long is it going to last ? '

"Can't tell you."

" Fortnight ? " asked Roger.

" Oh, scarcely so long as that," said Mr F.

" No, but really ? How much ore in sight ? "

" Ah, that is rather difficult to say."

Down to c brass tacks ' now, thought I ; and we
all held our peace till Cecil desired to know what
machinery the mine possessed and how many men
were employed.

" About thirty-five men," was the answer. " No
machinery."

" But— but I don't understand," gasped Cecil.
"I thought you said it was a going concern — a

mine.'!

" So it is."

" But without machinery— I don't see— How
on earth do you run it ? '

" That is one of the things you have got to learn,
my son," said Roger, with the smile of the wise.
" Bolivians don't go much on machinery ; they
haven't the capital, that is the fact of the matter.
When a Bolivian finds a good thing he just prods
his nose into the best part of it and digs away with
tools made by Tubal Cain till he has got back his
original outlay and perhaps doubled it and made,
say two or three thousand pounds. Then he'll
strut about for a bit telling everybody, ' I've got a
mine worth three thousand pounds.' Then perhaps
he will go back and have another dig and take out
another thousand or so, and another ; but he
never dreams of getting any machinery or testing

144 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

or developing the rest of his property— he just pegs
away at the best part and leaves the rest to look
after itself. I'll wager that has happened in this

case."

"Oh well, I don't know about that," said
Mr F. tentatively.

" Oh yes, you do, you old Ananias ; you know it
as well as I do. What does the property amount
to anyway ? '

" It is a thousand metres by two hundred."

"And untouched bar this one little dig at one
end."

" Well-

" Of course it is. I knew that well enough.
Anything in it ? ':

" We don't know. Ought to be, judging by the
land all round it."

"Ah, I've heard of that land before," sighed
Roger.

" Don't take any notice of him, Mr F.," said
Cecil. " If he has once proved himself right, which
isn't once a year, he is not fit to speak to for a
week. Tell me, how deep have you gone on this
reef?"

" Nothing to speak of. Say a hundred and
eighty feet.

"Then if you have got no machinery, how do
you get the ore up ? 3:

" Hand windlass."

Cecil seemed to me to shudder, but preserved
his courtesy.

"I suppose that cannot go on much longer,"
he suggested quietly.

"Very little longer."

" No wonder she wants to sell them."

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 145

" Yes, but mind you it is a grand little show for
anyone who has the money to spend. Very rich
stuff ; near rail ; cheap to run. Should be worth
at least five thousand a year to a man who has
proper plant, and always the chance of finding
something Al on the rest of the property."

fc' Five thousand. That includes your fees ? ''

" I don't charge the lady anything at present ;
just go and have a squint when I am passing."

Cecil gasped again.

" Well, this is a rum country if ever there was

one."

' You'll find rummier things than that here, I can
tell you."

Altogether we liked the account of the Widow's
Cruse and mentally decided that it was worth a
visit, though we did not encourage Mr F. by telling
him so. That was that.

XVII

THAT was that : and there were innumerable inter-
views like it ; many conducted by Roger in the
Spanish tongue, at which Cecil and I were not only
useless but, as he gently but firmly informed us,
worse than useless because he had constantly to be
interpreting to us and telling us what was going on.
Solemn swarthy gentlemen would arrive at our
hotel with bundles of papers and plans under their
arms. They would be shown up to Roger's bed-
room and there, after much bowing and scraping
on both sides, would slowly reveal to us that they
had ore-bearing property of immense importance
and value to dispose of. As soon as possible Cecil
and I would bow ourselves out of the room, Roger
explaining that we had important business else-
where ; and while we attended to our business he
attended to his, which consisted in delving out of
the Bolivian mind such truth as it was willing to
impart — and a little more.

This was an accomplishment which he had given
us to understand demanded no little respect on
our part ; for few people were so well qualified as he
to understand and earn the confidence of the Bolivian
race, and fewer still so good at meeting and counter-
acting their wiles. Needless to say we ragged him
unmercifully on this point, but in secret we were
bound to confess that he showed some intelligence.
Take the case, for example, which we called ' Legend
One- thousand- and-One. '

In the old days Roger and a partner agreed with a

146

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 147

Bolivian to buy a certain area of land containing
alluvial gold for a thousand pounds. A month
later when they returned to pay and to begin work
on it they were calmly informed that the price was
fifteen hundred. That would have been the end of
the matter for many people, or else led to an
interminable wrangle. But knowing the Bolivian
mind these two had taken the precaution to bring
the money in gold ; and when the Bolivian played
his new card they brought in their saddle-bags and
emptied a thousand English sovereigns on the bed —
the celestial things were plentiful enough in those
days. At sight of them the Bolivian relapsed into
the condition of the Queen of Sheba, and took them
without a murmur ; with the result that Roger and
his partner made a net profit of two thousand on
the transaction. You may doubt in these lean days
if anyone in the world Bolivian or otherwise could
resist the sight of a thousand bright new sovereigns
rolling and chinking about on his bed— I am sure I
couldn't — but those were not lean days, at any rate
so far as the coinage was concerned ; and the
Bolivian if a knave was also a considerable part
of a fool.

These preliminary talks were nearly always of
interminable length. In the first place all business
has to be conducted in a slow and stately manner
in South America — failure to realise which is one
reason why the Yankees are so intensely disliked
throughout the Southern continent. In the second
place the amount of detail needed to decide whether
a property merited a visit or not was considerable :
not only the extent of the land had to be considered,
but the distance from a railway, the nature of the
ore— if at all complex its value was greatly lessened

148 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

—the width of the seams, the possibilities of timber
and water supply, the amount of labour available,
the validity of the title, and the possible difficulties
of transport and treatment. All these things Roger
had to ferret out of our Bolivian friends by long and
devious questioning ; and though he did it well and
we had to admit that he had great qualities as a
ferret we chid him unmercifully as to the amount
of time he spent on it, and longed to have some
arrangement by which we could pull him out with
a piece of string, as a keeper does his envoy after
it has been too long in a rabbit-hole.

For our part when off duty like this we could but
spend our time in exploring the city and environs of
Oruro, and making the most of such amenities as
it afforded. Mercifully there was a good book- shop
and we could buy no end of English novels, mostly
reprints, but quite a few of the most recent date,
such as the latest productions of Wells, Galsworthy,
McKenna or Compton Mackenzie. And still more
mercifully there was a club, largely Bolivian but
partially English, whereon like manna from heaven
there descended sometimes, though it was im-
possible to reckon when, English and Argentine
papers such as The Graphic, The Bystander, La
Nacion (of B.A.) and one or two English journals
published in Chile. The sight of an English paper
in a country like Bolivia is something so ravishing
that you can but fly to Omar Khayyam and wonder
what the owners ' find to buy,' etc. In England,
as we know, one's speculation is of just the opposite
kind ; but if it should ever occur to a newspaper
proprietor to question his utility in the scheme of
things — you need not faint at the hypothesis, it is
but for the sake of argument— he might do worse

THE PLAZA, ORURO

THE SMALLER ' PLAZA '

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 149

than take a journey to Bolivia, where he will find
that the distance from home, as well as the fact of
Spanish being the language of the country, gives his
most fatuous productions a value he could hardly
give them himself.

This club, of which we were most hospitably
made honorary members, presented so pointed a
contrast to an English club that I really must tell
you about it. The major part of it was nothing
more nor less than a vast ballroom, a huge expanse
of carpet surrounded by gilt chairs and settees and
evidently used only on state occasions. We were
present on one of these occasions, as it happened,
on New Year's Day. About four o'clock the whole
rank and fashion of Oruro assembled — the men in
black tail-coats and the women in their best after-
noon dresses — and very fine dresses they were too
—and after drinking to each other in Moe't and
Chandon we all sat or stood round the room while
the chief dignitaries of the place and their wives went
through a solemn quadrille. Then followed the
usual dances of the day, tango, jazz and two-step, all
excellently danced ; and in the evening a dinner at
which there were quite as many ladies present as
men. All seemed natural and normal enough out
there ; but I do ask you to think of it in England—
a jazz-band and ladies footing it till dawn in the
Conservative, the * Senior,' the Reform, or that club
which ' always feels as though there were a dead
duke upstairs.'

Apart from this scene of revelry there was
another huge room with a bar at one end, a number
of small billiard-tables, small tables galore for your
drinks, no books or papers, but much vociferous
talk. In this room too— it sounds almost like

150 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

blasphemy to mention it — there was a piano — yes,
and it was a player-piano too — on which at any
moment of the day you might hear some member
grinding out the latest dance-music. Away from the
big capitals there is practically no other music in
South America. And leading off this room was
a skittle-alley — O shade of St James's — wherein
nightly members gathered together and made an
earth-shaking clatter with the bowls and skittles,
and I must add with their voices too : you have to
hear a Latin race excited to know what noise can be.
One small room with a single table sufficed to pro-
vide reading matter. There were four or five
Bolivian dailies, in which Europe might any day
discover how unimportant she is. There were the
English papers I have mentioned ; a few Spanish,
French, Portuguese and American weeklies; and
some cupboards full of English and Spanish books.
There was a small dining-room where you could
have either lunch or dinner if you wanted to. But
no one apparently ever did want to ; at any rate I
seldom saw it used. And but for offices and out-
buildings, all on the same floor — which indeed was
the only one — that was all ; there was no further
accommodation. A small and curious club you
will think it. But it filled its place, and it was very
much what people wanted in Oruro. The English
do not mix much with the Bolivians ; and yet they
cannot apparently get on without each other, the
English being too few to run a club of their own,
and the Bolivians not seeming to understand the
idea of a club at all— it would simply be a bar and
little else. Whatever its idiosyncrasies, to strangers
like ourselves it was of indescribable value ; and
never shall we forget the joy of lighting upon a new

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 151

Bystander or Taller, or spelling out from the
Argentine La Nacion — only a fortnight old — some
of the news of Europe which otherwise had entirely
escaped us.

Needless to say, the English and Americans in
Oruro, being English and American, overwhelmed
us with hospitality ; and our evenings were as full
as they might be in England. Apart from this,
however, and apart from reading there was little to
do but walk. And walking in Oruro meant in the
first place deciding which set of smells you could
bring yourself to face, and then facing them with
set teeth and a scented handkerchief. There were
roughly three directions in which you could walk :
north through the Avenida into the desert; south
along the railway into the desert ; and west up the
barren hills behind the town. The eastern route—
also into the desert — had to be ruled out at once as
impassable ; for that led through the lowest part of
the town, and any drains there might be either on
the surface or below it seemed to finish their career
here, with a result that need not and anyhow cannot
be described. Any day you might have seen Cecil
and me starting off with an heroic sense of duty and
the need for exercise, Cecil with two or three packets
of Bolivian cigarettes in his pocket — the only ones
he could get— and me with the bottle of scent in my
hand.

' Better have some to-day," I would urge.
" Baccy 's no good."

' No, thanks," he would answer, a little c sniffy.'
" I will back a Bolivian cigarette to floor any
Bolivian smell."

" H'm, I don't know which is worst. You didn't
find it so yesterday, that is all I can say."

152 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

More than once he had yielded somewhat shame-
facedly to the scent-bottle.

" That is because nothing but a gas-mask could
be of any use then. It may be better to-day.
Anyhow even you with your boudoirful of bottles
could hardly breathe."

" I breathed a deal better than you did going
uphill, although I am twelve years older."

"Not you."

" I did ; simply because I don't smoke and you
do. You are like a refuse-destructor, always alight.
And when you die they will find your inside coated
with oil of nicotine, like the inside of an exhaust-
pipe."

6 You won't be there to see, anyhow."

' Well then death will have one compensation at
any rate. Now which way do you want to go ?
Avenida ? "

" No, I'm fed."

" Railway ? "

" O that belt of smells just outside the station ! "

" Up the hill at the back then ? "

" Worse still. That was where we had to run,
wasn't it ? "

" Yes I believe it was, and then couldn't get away
from them. What about going farther along the
hill where the rail- track runs up to that mine ? '

" Oh, well-
Say he agreed and we took that route. The first
part of the way lay through streets where it was
not necessary to hold the nose quite continuously.
Cecil would pretend to ignore such smells as there
were, puffing hard at his cigarette and talking all
the time about the filth of the native Bolivian
and the superiority of the Kafir. He was right no

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 153

doubt : the latter does wash himself whenever he
can, and the lower-class South American never.
But there were moments when I felt that his com-
ments and the stentorian voice in which he made
them must penetrate even the understanding of the
Spanish- speaking folk about us; and that some day
they would come surging about us with their knives,
and reduce us to the mince-meat we doubtless de-
served to be. As it was the comments— and the
attendant anxiety — would last probably till we came
to a hill and he ran short of breath, and words ; or
else till we were assailed — as we frequently were—
by some devastating smell, and had to clap hand-
kerchiefs to noses and run to get into a more toler-
able atmosphere. It was here as a rule that I was
able to score ; for he who has scent can at any rate
breathe that, while he who has none hardly dares
to breathe at all. And it was here sometimes as we
panted uphill, struggling for breath because of the
altitude, but afraid to stop because of the smells ; it
was here, I say, that Pride would sometimes falter,
and side-slip and come to earth with a crash ; and
as I opened the scent-bottle to replenish my own
handkerchief another would be held out before me,
and there would be a murmur of " Just a drop, will
you ? "

And without comment the drop would be given.

XVIII

To know what scorn is, watch the face of a well-
trained mining engineer like Cecil when he looks
upon the plant and arrangements of a Bolivian
mine. There is never much difficulty about looking
at them. At those close to Oruro at any rate we
wandered about just as we pleased, no one seeming
to care whether we were there or not, no one indeed,
appearing to be in charge ; and we were able at our
leisure to inspect the venerable contrivances which
there did duty for ' plant.' We beheld an ancient
steam-engine for example, whose function it was
with infinite slowness to haul up ore from the depths
of the mine, and whose fuel was that which a llama
had done with. We beheld rows of women sitting
on the ground and sorting by hand the ore brought
to them from the mine. We beheld apparatus that
in Europe would long ago have been treasured by a
museum. On every side we beheld litter and waste.
And never shall I forget the look of horror I beheld
one day on Cecil's face when, standing together by
the mouth of a shaft, we saw the shutters open and
out of the depths appear a load of ore conveyed in—
what do you think ? Why, the hide of a cow with
all the hair on it !

Such a shock might well have proved fatal to a
man like Cecil, who had spent more than twelve
years on the Rand— we came away wondering if
the men were hauled up in the same receptacle too.
However, he survived it and even worse things
before he left the country. After all one can hardly

154

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 155

expect Bolivia to be the herald of the dawn in
mining any more than she is in other matters— e.g.
sanitation. For though mining has no doubt been
carried on here for centuries before we have any
history —that is, for centuries before the Incas
ruled ; and though it is likely that throughout that
time, as now, almost every man in the country has
been a ' miner ' by instinct and heredity, working
in or interested in some vein of ore, yet the remote-
ness of the territory and its distance from the world
have kept its people very far behind that of other
countries, even those of South America. Look at
its position : on the west side cut off from all access
to the sea by the almost impassable wall of the
Andes ; on the east blocked by the measureless
swamp and jungle of Brazil. Men would need a
big temptation to bring them through such obstacles
as these. And though they had one, it is true ; and
though the Spaniards came, and stayed nearly three
centuries there was never any prospect of their
founding a permanent community based, as every
healthy community must be in the end, on agri-
cultural prosperity. They only took away what
gold and silver they could find, and left a tradition
of frightful cruelty and oppression. There was
indeed nothing else to come for in those days ; a
great part of the country being desert, and all of it
so difficult of access. So there could never be any
stream of immigration ; and till the railways came,
about twenty years ago, Bolivia had no chance of
becoming other than what she always no doubt had
been, slothful, inefficient, uneducated and incredibly
backward. Now, with railways, she has a chance.
For though as has been said, about one-third of her
territory is pure desert, offering neither timber, fuel,

156 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

vegetation, nor any hope to farmer, stockman or
gardener, yet over the remainder — a tract about
the size of Spain and Germany put together — the
soil is as fertile as any in the world ; there are vast
tracts of land suitable for cattle raising ; and the
climate — climates rather, for there are about a
dozen, corresponding to different altitudes — is, or
are, suitable for growing any crop you like to name,
from fur-bearing animals to rubber or cotton.1

In centuries to come this territory should be a
mass of thriving ranches, wheat-fields, rubber, rice,
tobacco, cotton, coffee and sugar plantations; and
then Bolivia may become something more than what
she is to-day — namely, a country to which men
come simply to fill their coffers and go away again.
But will she ? Who knows ? We must remember
where we are — in the continent of * maHana.'

As a result of this remoteness the Bolivians are
a very primitive race, very poor, very humble and
very unenlightened ; a condition of things which is
certainly a gain to those who come here for purposes
of mining development, and even from the people's
own point of view has great advantages. For think
what it means in these days to have a labouring
class which is as a rule submissive, hard-working,
content with its lot, and unperverted by agitators
and artificial 'movements.' Where will you find

1 It is worth while quoting on this point the description given by a
writer for the League of Nations : " One may stand in a tropical valley
of this country of great contrasts, under a palm with monkeys, parrots
and brilliant-plumed birds chattering and screaming about, where all
the products of the equatorial region grow rampant, and look from the
torrid zone up past the temperate zone above the clouds past the pine
and habitat of the lichen, past the region of snow-moving glaciers to the
abode of perpetual snow, where glaciers are born and where no living
thing save man has ever been. Mount Sorata, for example, has an
altitude of 21,703 feet."

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 157

its like to-day ? Strikes there have been no doubt
during the last few years ; but never of the frivol-
ous, petty, unjustified kind which we have come to
regard as the only kind in England now : they have
only arisen wrhcn wages were well below the cost
of living ; and there has never been any of the
organised, universal 4 strike-movement ' going right
through the country which is so common with us.
Were it to be attempted it could not succeed, with
the mining settlements so far from each other and
so isolated ; and for a few years to come one may
safely say that Bolivia will be one of the best
countries in the world so far as the Labour situation
is concerned. But we are already beginning to hear
of the agitator there, and it is not for ever that it
will remain so quiet. At present it is a wonderful
contrast to its neighbours, Peru, Chile and the
Argentine ; which have troubles quite as serious as
our own, and in most cases far more violent and
revolutionary.

Here then is one advantage of ' non-civilisation '
—yes, even from the point of view of the people
themselves ; they are probably far more contented
and better off in their primitive state than they
would be in any other. A second, which Chadband
himself would not profess to be an advantage to the
indigenous people, is that no Bolivian who finds or
acquires a mineral deposit ever has the least idea
how to make a big thing out of it. He cannot
* part,' that is the truth of the matter ; cannot bear,
if he has any money, to spend it that money may
come. Only two Bolivians, so far as I could hear,
have ever achieved any big success in this respect ;
and even they have had very limited ideas about
necessary outlay. No, the Bolivian sets to work

158 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

much in the way that has been described, goes for
the c fat ' on his property and never develops the
' lean ' ; so that sooner or later he gets beaten by a
difficulty of some sort and has to give the whole
thing up, or else sell it or a share to someone better
equipped with brains and money. That is where
the Chilean, American or Englishman has his
chance ; and so far as the two former are concerned
they are not slow to take it. But the Englishman,
alas, lags far behind the other two. He has never
been able to believe in Bolivia ; never can think of
it except as a comic- opera country where revolutions
take place every day ; and never can be persuaded
that his money is quite as safe there as in most
countries. To Chile therefore and the United States
goes most of the wealth of these mines ; as is quite
right ; for they, especially the former, have done
most to develop them. The Bolivians put heavy
taxes on the exported ore, and are doubtless
richer as a nation for having so much foreign money
spent in their midst. But that is about all they get
out of their mines, and all they deserve to. Need-
less to say, they do not love the foreigner any better
for having done what they could not, and brought
them so much prosperity.

Touching the subject of strikes, the impression
which seems to prevail in England that Bolivia, like
some other South American republics, lives in a
ferment of rebellion and anarchy is quite incorrect.
There have been revolutions it is true both in
1920 and 1921 ; and in the latter case there was
pretty serious fighting in the streets of La Paz. But
before the former of these you have to go back to
1904 to find another ; and in point of fact the word
6 revolution ' is a very big word to describe very

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 159

small happenings. c Change of government ' is as a
rule a more suitable description ; and there is seldom
any bloodshed to speak of. If there is it is as a
rule confined to La Paz, and has not the least effect
on the prosperity of the mines. The huge extent of
the country, the sparsity of population, and the vast
distances between settlement and settlement, quite
apart from the question of food-supply in so barren
a country, make combined action impossible ; and
the only result, paradoxical as it may sound, of the
usual ' revolution ' is an access of Labour to the
mines; everyone flocking there to demand work,
because so and so alone may they be sure of getting
their victuals. When you read then as you may
sometimes, that there has been another c revolution '
in Bolivia, do not suppose that it means slaughter,
destruction of property and wholesale rebellion, as
it might in some highly organised country like
England or France of to-day. On the contrary it
just means a little street fighting between small
political factions in one town, while the rest of the
nation goes about its business, mining, just as usual.
This is not to say that politics are conducted there
with the same urbanity as in our House of Lords.
Of the contrary indeed there was proof at Oruro
just before we arrived. The 'Ins'— it was some
sort of local or municipal election— were a little
afraid of being turned out ; and disliking the
prospect extremely set armed men at each entrance
to the Plaza, where the polling was to take place,
with instructions to dissuade any suspected of
' Out ' views from entering to record their votes.
This was to be done with the bayonet if necessary ;
but if even that failed they were to use really strong
arguments— England you see has no monopoly of

160 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

6 peaceful picketing. ' The bayonet did not fail as a
rule ; and the majority of the voters proved fairly
easy to convince. But a few were so obstinate as to
maintain that they too had a right to record their
views ; and of these three had to be shot at sight
and several others wounded ; which just shows
how pig-headed some people can be. Even in
Bolivia, however, this seemed to be regarded as
rather an unconventional proceeding : and instead
of dismissing it— as one would have expected in
South America — as though it were about equal in
importance to the killing of a goose for Christmas,
the papers talked of little else for several days, and
represented the community as being bowed to earth
by the gravity of the occasion.

We did not observe much of this gravity ourselves
at any period of our stay in Oruro. And certainly
there was none on New Year's Day. This is one of
the great fiesta days of the year, far more important
than Christmas; and from morning till night the
entire population of all classes seemed to collect in
the Plaza and show themselves off to each other in
their choicest clothes. Those who had motors of
their own appeared in them ; those who had not
hired them ; and you might see whole families — of
several generations — wedged into shining limousines,
driving slowly round and round this one square,
apparently for the single purpose of being looked at.
A few officers appeared on horses and also rode
round the square in great solemnity, except that at
each corner they incited the said horses with gratify-
ing regularity to prance and caper about on their
hind legs, to the greater glory of their riders. And
most remarkable of all was a man, said to be a
Chilean spy, who, on a big chestnut — far the best

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 161

horse we saw in Bolivia, but meek and peaceful as
a cow — seemed to spend the whole day showing the
populace, with his spurs, how a fine rider could
bestride an almost uncontrollable steed. Those
who could not show off their horses or their motor
cars showed off themselves and their clothes from
morn till dewy eve. And at eve — oh, unforgettable
torment — there arrived what purported to be a
band ; and settled down in the midst of the Plaza,
and far into the night wrung from unoffending
instruments of the finest English make the most ex-
cruciating series of noises that ever mounted from
the imagination of Satan. One could smile at those
who kept horses or motors mainly for the purpose
of showing them off once or twice a year — we all
have different ideas of spending a holiday. But for
the people who organised, applauded, conducted
and played in that vicious band there should be no
forgiveness in this world or the next.

We had ample opportunity on this day of study-
ing the fashions in Bolivia. Those followed by the
upper classes I need not— and indeed dare not—
attempt to describe ; they were simply those of
Paris or London a few months late, and exceedingly
fine. But the others— no, the other, for the peasant
class has but one — I must endeavour to grapple
with ; for here was something characteristic of the
country. First — I am sure I am right so far — you
had of rigour to have a very full accordion-pleated
skirt of ancient tweed, worn with an exceedingly
low waist ; so low, indeed, that it always looked as
if this skirt were on the point of coming off, and I was
astounded that it never did. Secondly, whatever
else you wore on the upper part of your body— I
suppose it was some kind of a blouse— you had to

L

162 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

have a large shawl with lace edges draped round
your shoulders ; and in this if you owned a baby
you carried it on your back, and presumably if you
owned twins or triplets you carried the whole com-
munity. Thirdly — and nothing was more Mede-ish
and Persian than this— you wore on your head a
white hat made, I think, of straw ; like a panama
in texture, but shaped like a plum-pudding or high
pork-pie ; varnished ; fitted with a narrow rigid
brim ; and, needless to say, incredibly hard and
hideous. This hat, I was told, changes neither
with the seasons, the lapse of years, the movements
of the heavenly bodies, nor even with the Paris
fashions ; and may be regarded as a thing as fixed
and immutable in human life as igneous rock, iron
rations, the solar system or the proximity of the
poor. Fourthly, and this also was of profound
importance, your feet were encased in high-heeled
boots with white ' uppers ' reaching some way up
the leg : and whatever else had to go by the board,
you must have these boots ; your whole social
position as well as the framework of your body had
them for base. I think that is all there is for me to
describe, though it is not all that exists. Rumour
whispers indeed that on feast-days a lady will don
all the petticoats she possesses, as many perhaps as a
dozen or so ; and be careful that their edges all show
too, to the confusion and shame of her neighbour
who has perhaps but ten or eleven. But I cannot
say that I had any ocular evidence of this.

On the whole the general amenities of Oruro were
not, I am bound to say, of a nature to tempt one
to permanent residence. The ear was apt to be
tortured by such sounds as have been described.
The nose learned by dire experience to be always on

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 163

guard— never more so, by the way, than in our hotel,
which appeared to be connected with some chaotic
system of underground drainage whose existence
we had had good reason to believe impossible. The
eye quailed before the ugliness of many of the
buildings. The palate shrank in dread from most
of the provender set before it. And the stomach —
O Jupiter Tonans !--will it ever forget being poisoned
three separate times in a fortnight's sojourn at that
hotel ? Yet despite all these drawbacks there was
always one warm, consoling, magnificent compen-
sation—namely the sun, which blazed unfailingly
upon us from dawn till dusk, and was always hot
enough and never too hot : we had an English
summer in fact in December, January and February.
And there was too another compensation for the
mind as opposed to the body — or rather perhaps I
should say for both — namely, the unfailing sun of
hospitality that shone upon us from our English and
American friends. You have to be in a foreign town
like that to see how closely they stick to each other,
and how kind they can be to the visitor of their own
race.

XIX

AFTER about a fortnight of ferreting and question-
ing and cross-questioning and higgling and haggling
and listening to gentlemen of dark complexion and
yet darker designs upon mankind it was announced
by Roger that there was nothing more to be gained
by talking. We had plenty of mines on paper, and
might now go and see what some of them amounted
to in fact. There were some half-dozen properties
which we thought might be worth a visit ; and of
them the one we liked best was an abandoned gold
mine whose management had confessedly been
defective, but whose ore was reported to be very
promising. We will call this Santa Maria.

A day or two had to be spent in collecting and
packing hammers and chisels, food and beds,
candles, tobacco, whisky and other details such as
blankets, changes of raiment and cooking things.
The majority of these Roger pronounced to be
absolutely unnecessary, and for his part would
probably have set out with nothing except a
panning-shovel, a Colt pistol and a pipe. Cecil and
I, however, declined — and, as it proved, wisely — to
budge from Oruro without some provision for the
elementary needs of the human frame.

" An extra mule for your cigarettes, that means,
I know," said Roger resignedly.

" A bite of something to eat after a day under-
ground," retorted Cecil. "We can't eat grass."

" Very well, send home for a chef from the Ritz—
I dare say you will get one for a thousand a month."

164

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 165

' If we did he wouldn't be much good without
pots and pans."

" We can borrow them."

fc I hate borrowing."

"Oh, I thought you hated paying back."

" So I do, and all the more reason, you old bison,
for taking our own things and not cadging on other
people."

" All right. Only I'm not going to ride about
the country like the White Knight with festoons of
pots and kettles hung on to me."

" Nobody axed you. Knife, table, one ; fork,
one ; spoon, one ; cup, service, one ; plate, dinner,
one ; and there you are."

So it went on, and I thought we should never
stop discussing what might be left behind and what
must be taken. But at last we really were ready,
and at screech of dawn one day we repaired to the
station and took our seats for the first stage of our
journey.

This began with an hour or so on the main line.
Then we changed to a small branch line privately
owned by one of the great mining houses, and
meandered slowly up a dry river valley to a mining
town known as Huanuni.

This lies at the base of a vast mountain scarred
and disfigured from head to foot with iron huts,
cable- ways and heaps of waste— one of the largest
mines in Bolivia. Then for hours and hours our
train took us at snail's pace up into the mountains,
the only feature of interest being that almost all the
way there was another track, without rails, running
parallel to ours but about two hundred feet above
it. You may suppose from this that it is one of
the whims of Bolivia to own and collect railways

166 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

without rails, just as an antiquarian may collect
pottery or old furniture. But the circumstances
were different in this case. When this line was
first planned the surveying was done by Germans ;
and they laid it out and built a great part of it, with
cuttings, embankments, masonry for the bridges
and everything complete. But when at the out-
break of war the contract with their firm was
annulled the English firm which took it over found
that in spite of the immense amount of work already
done it would be cheaper in the long run to build
a fresh track at a lower level and so avoid a great
deal of heavy embankment and bridge work. (One
likes to think of the heavy commission wrhich those
German engineers did not earn for totally unnecessary
bridges.) Up and up we crawled, doubling time
after time on our tracks, and seeming as though we
should never reach the little cleft in the crest of the
hill which we were told was the summit. At last,
however, with monstrous puffing and blowing, the
engine managed to reach this crest ; and im-
mediately afterwards we reached rail- head.

This was at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet,
one of the three highest railways in the world ; and
it consisted of one or two small buildings forming
the station, two or three stores and some sidings.
The continuation of the track to Uncia, the enor-
mous mine five and twenty miles away, to serve
which the line has been built, was approaching com-
pletion; but like other railways of which we have
spoken, it was as yet unequipped with rails ; and as
we could not wait a year, by which time they were
expected to be laid, we had to complete our journey
to this mine, our first stopping-place, on mule-back.

Five mules and their owner were duly waiting for

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 167

us ; and had we been able to start at once, two
o'clock, as we expected, this journey— some six
hours' ride — might not have proved so unpleasant
as it did. As it was, Fate selected this moment to
remind us once more that we were in South America.
Our bags and bed-rolls, we found, were buried deep
in one of four big vans. These were conveying
not only passengers' luggage, but also potatoes, hay,
flour, vegetables and miscellaneous provisions for
the thousands of animals, human and otherwise,
employed at Llalluagua and Uncia mines. And as
a matter of course no one knew in which van they
might be. About twenty minutes passed before
the station staff began to think of unloading them.
When they did, their pace was about one package
to every five minutes. Our luggage, as might have
been expected, was not to be found in any of the first
three vans ; and when at last we did catch sight of
it sepulchred in potatoes at the bottom of the fourth,
we found that we had been kept waiting for more
than two hours ; it would be four- thirty before we
got away, and all the last half of our journey would
have to be covered in darkness. I suppose that a
man with a properly trained soul would have found
recompense for all this in the majestic panorama of
mountains which lay about us. But our souls, I
regret to say, did not rise to the occasion as they
ought to have : our bodies showed resentment of
the altitude with shooting pains in the head and
splitting ears; and our tempers assumed the con-
dition of rusty saws. It was not a good hour,
even in the history of South American mules, when
at length the process of loading up was finished and
we began to urge our feeble, careless beasts down
that wet hill- side.

168 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

The ' road ' consisted of an extraordinary number
of more or less parallel wheel-tracks where convoy
after convoy of carts had sought to find passable
ground anywhere but on the ' road ' itself. We saw
some of these carts, huge two- wheeled things with
eight to a dozen mules harnessed to each, and the
whole dozen frequently unequal to the task of
dragging them out of a morass or over the big
boulders with which the road was strewn. Before
and behind each boulder a hole naturally forms,
whose depth is increased as wheel after wheel falls
into it ; and the result is that three mules are
needed to do what one could easily do if repairs
were ever attempted. They are not, and never will
be, now that the railway is coming. Nor have they
been at any time, one would judge, except when
some vast piece of machinery has had to be trans-
ported to the mines. Then a special four-wheeled
cart is used ; some thirty or forty mules are attached
to it, and a gang of men travels with it to render
first aid to the road. How even then they manage
to convey the loads they do up and down the hills
and gorges we travelled remains a mystery. But
they do it somehow in the course of two or three
days ; and it was going to be done very shortly
after we passed too ; for there were the cylinders of
a huge Diesel engine and some halves of gigantic
fly-wheels — about ten feet in diameter — waiting at
rail-head to be taken to Uncia.

On and on we rode ; Cecil reviling in picturesque
phrases the shape and ancestry of the South
American saddle : I assuring him for his comfort
that the first few hours of a ride were nothing to
compare with the last few ; and Roger, totally
callous both in mind and body, telling us time after

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 169

time that we must hurry up, otherwise we should
lose any chance we possessed of securing beds at
the ' hotel ' at Uncia. I do not know whether the
saddles we bestrode were relics of the Spanish
Inquisition or not, but I do know that, so far as I was
concerned— and I think I may speak for Cecil too—
no more convincing argument could possibly have
been found to turn us to the right faith ; and as we
went on and the iron entered farther and farther
into our souls— let us call it that— I felt that I would
embrace the creed of a Mohammedan or a Manichee
or anything that anybody pleased rather than sit
another moment in that V-shaped crevice of un-
yielding wood.

When darkness fell the mules had harder and
harder work to find and keep their footing among
the rocks ; the pace diminished, and the way seemed
longer than ever. I shall not forget one paralysing
moment when, seeing above us on a hill a row of
bright lights, Cecil and I shouted as with one voice,
' Is that Uncia ? " and from Roger the answer came
back as though to children complaining without
a cause, "Uncia? No. Llalluagua. Another two
hours yet." Whether it was really two hours later
or two days that we ached up the chaotic streets of
Uncia I cannot say, but I do know that when at
last I got out of my crevice my knees refused to
perform their office and I had to sit down promptly.
Cecil, to my great relief, was almost as bad ; Roger,
of course, unaffected and silently contemptuous of
our murmur ings.

The ' hotel ' was kept by an Italian, and we had
been told that it was quite a toss-up whether he
would care to take us in or not ; he did not take in
everybody who came along. Added to this it was

170 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

half-past ten at night, and his closed doors and
shutters made it only too plain that he and his
family had gone to bed. However, we managed to
arouse him ; and after Roger had soothed him with
honeyed words he was kind enough to say that we
might have beds and even meat and drink before
long, a concession for which we were not a little
grateful, having tasted nothing since twelve o'clock
midday. The ' hotel ' consisted of a dining-room,
a bar, a bedroom, and a kind of lobby in which were
a pianola and a few chairs. Luckily we had the
bedroom to ourselves ; yes, and even the three beds,
which was more than we had ever expected. Having
eaten and drunk, we slept the sleep of the gods-
Cecil and I, that is ; not, alas, Roger, who had fared
exceedingly badly in this respect ever since he came
into the country and now did worse than ever. It
seems strange that having spent so many years here
he alone of us should have been affected by the
altitude ; but that is how siroche descends, upon the
just and upon the unjust. You never know how,
when or where it will hit you ; and a curious feature
of the malady is that in some districts it occurs
unmistakably in patches : in one part, for example,
of a range of hills everybody is affected by it ; in
another, possibly lower, practically no one. This is
a fact well recognised by the natives, who will tell
you, "Siroche there," or "No siroche/' and make
their plans accordingly. In the Argentine they
fight it, and very effectively, with a tea made of
coca leaves which, so long as you take it, tides you
over the worst of the symptoms. But we never
heard of this in Bolivia, nor if we had would Roger
ever have touched it. For he is one of those people
who despise all minor ailments and, still more, all

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 171

remedies. The former are trifles unworthy of
notice, and the latter are ' muck,' or, still worse,
4 doctors' muck.' And there is no emotion in
human nature so strong as the determination on
the part of those who take this view not to be
' mucked up by a lot of beastly doctors.'

XX

OUR c hotel,' we found on waking, was quite in the
chic and fashionable quarter of Uncia. It stood,
that is, some three hundred feet above the town, at
the top of a barren and rocky slope which formed the
big toe of the mountain above. It was next door to
the works and offices of the mine, as also to a large
4 store ' much frequented by the miners. It was
within a stone's-throw of the hospital. And I soon
had reason to know that it was no farther from
the matadero (slaughter-house) ; for the first thing I
did on going out of doors was to run full tilt round a
corner into a smiling native damsel laden with the
bleeding, dripping and gigantic head of a freshly
slain bullock ; and when I had disentangled myself,
not without casualty, from the happy pair I saw
that the place of execution was but a few yards
from the back of our hotel— and fewer still from
the hospital.

Rising far above these buildings —with their
varied charms — was a mountain some four thousand
feet high (about fifteen thousand aggregate), whose
side was marked and gashed at intervals with
roads, openings, cable-ways, heaps of refuse and all
the paraphernalia of a gigantic mine. Right to
the top and over it these activities extended ; the
mountain, in fact, is the mine and the mine the
mountain. It is so large that we were told it would
take at least a week to go over it, and so rich— in
tin principally, though fourteen different ores are
found here— that no one seems to care a straw

172

I.'NCIA: A TYPICAL INDIAN

UNCIA: OUTSIDE OUR HOTEL

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 173

whether it is run at maximum profit or not. The

principal owner, a Bolivian, lives in France, and

has made so much out of it that he does not need

to worry about such questions as output per man—

does anyone in South America ? He has but to

j burrow farther and farther into the mountain ; and

! out comes fortune after fortune, destined appar-

| entry to go on till the mountain itself is no more.

I We were told that many years ago a celebrated

j engineer ' turned down ' the ore deposits here as

! unworthy of attention. One would like to know in

what asylum the poor fellow is harboured now, and

what he would think if he knew the profits which

arc supposed to have come out of it— actual figures

are not disclosed. Such errors, however, are not to

be taken too seriously in a country like Bolivia,

where life is one long gamble with the earth, and the

whole atmosphere is one of colossal enterprises, hits

and misses.

At Uncia we stayed for two days collecting
further provender — and skin — and receiving very
kind treatment from the deputy manager, an
American engineer, who in the absence of the
manager did everything he could to help us. He
was even good enough to lend us mules for half our
journey to Santa Maria ; and on these mules — very
much better than anything we had seen in Bolivia
as yet— we duly started early on the third morning,
and made our way once more through the cobbled
streets and varied smells of Uncia to the plain below.
There were some three miles of plain. Then came
a river to be forded, and then a long climb up a big
range of hills. After about three hours' riding in all
we came to the top of this, and then beheld what I
had not previously seen in Bolivia and could hardly

174 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

believe to be real — namely, a broad, flat fertile valley
covered with young corn of the most intense and
vivid green. In many parts of the country this
would be quite common ; for as I have said some
two-thirds of Bolivia's territory lies at a com-
paratively low altitude, and with a tropical sun
overhead you can grow almost anything you like
to plant. But I had seen nothing of all this on my
journey, only the mountains and the desert ; and
my first view of this great ' weald ' of corn-land,
with its dazzling colour and its impression of fer-
tility and plenty, was wonderfully striking; giving
ocular demonstration as it did that the country as
a whole is not so arid a wilderness as my experience
of it had suggested.

To get to this land of promise the way led down
a sort of step-ladder of slippery boulders, so steep
that it looked as if once started we should not
need to trouble about foothold till we touched
bottom some four hundred feet below. Even our
chaperon (a magnificent Chilean gentleman with
huge and richly adorned leather riding-boots arid
sumptuous bridle and reins) gave us the somewhat
unnecessary advice that we had better not try to
ride down. And we didn't. For my part I began
the descent with a quite unnecessary fall off my
mule through not getting my leg clear of the letter
V when dismounting ; and I descended on my back
with such a thud that Roger and Cecil declared that
the mountains shook and changed their shape at the
impact, and begged me not to do it again lest I
disturb the formation of the country and perhaps
spoil a promising vein of ore. When I had carried
out repairs and finished expressing my opinion of
them we duly started down the step-ladder, leading

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 175

our mules; and in course of time managed to fall
and slither safely to the bottom. Then we had
about two miles along the valley, passing a small
mud village on our way ; and then we arrived at
the big village of Chayanta.

This though also compact of mud is distinguished
among its fellows by the possession of a huge
church and a good- sized cobbled plaza; and speaks
aloud of the Spanish occupation, which began about
1535 and lasted nearly three centuries. The church
itself is built of the usual material, but it has some-
how managed to remain standing since it was built,
possibly two or three hundred years ago; and its
size — far more imposing than my poor photograph
will suggest —indicates that a very big community
must have grown up around it. No doubt the
place was a great centre of mining enterprise in its
day, and was also rendered important by the big
stretch of fertile land amidst which it lies. The
province of Chayanta is said to have produced
many thousand ounces of gold for the Spaniards ;
and we may be sure that the town of the same name
was an active centre, seeing much of the gold stored
and some of it spent before it went over the moun-
tains and the sea to Spain. Now the glory is de-
parted : nothing is left to mine except a little alluvial
tin which is taken out of the local streams ; and the
' town ' is just a collection of mud huts in straight
lines, rich in dirt, smells and decay and nothing else.

Of these huts the only one possessed of two storeys
was to be our abode for the night. This belonged
to a Bolivian gentleman who was apparently the
principal citizen of the place and, one would judge,
the only prosperous one ; and it consisted of a small
shop on the ground floor which seemed to be the

176 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

Whiteley's of Chayanta, and a small single room
above it which was the ' hotel.' Even for Bolivia
this room did not come up to one's ordinary idea of
a hotel. Indeed, had I not been told, I should have
taken it for the annexe or overflow room of the
* Whiteley's ' below ; for it contained among other
things— Mr Pelman himself could hardly remember
them all — a huge pile of bedding, a number of books,
one or two tables, a chair, a typewriter, a gramo-
phone, sacks and sacks of tin ore, the clothing of
several ladies, a gun, a rifle, two or three loaves,
some cooking-pots, a mandolin, some flour, a pair
of trousers, a cruet-stand, some dirty plates, a sack
of potatoes, a flute, and a top-hat, and it was
difficult at first to see where we were going to find
room to eat, let alone sleep, except in the posture of
a dog in his basket. However, either the room grew
larger or we grew smaller; for when in the process
of the ages food and drink were brought to us there
flowed in also, like a spring- tide, a crowd of Bolivian
gentlemen and children; who squeezed into every
vacant corner of the room, filled up the doorway,
even competed for the steps outside (which were the
only means of access), and there remained staring,
smiling and whispering to each other till our meal
was finished. I counted eleven in the room —
where one had satisfied our need — and to this day
do not know how they found space to stand, much
less how we managed to breathe. Roger kept
telling us how they enjoyed this, and what nice,
sociable people they were ; also kept talking to
them in their own tongue whenever he was not
otherwise engaged. Cecil and I meanwhile almost
drew sparks from the air with our murmured com-
ments upon their appearance, odour and ancestry ;

THE CHURCH, CHAYANTA

OUR HOTEL AT CHAYANTA

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 177

and if they had had any glimmering of what we
said there would certainly have been business for
the magistrate that day, as also for the coroner and
undertaker, who presumably were the same person
and not different from the principal witness —
namely our host. However, there was no syllable
of English among them, and we could say what we
liked ; which was principally that an earthquake or
Dies Irae would be preferable to sitting another
moment in that room.

At last we managed to escape ; and sought the
streets of Chayanta, which certainly did not prove
much more attractive. The church, alas, was firmly
closed ; so we could not see more than its dilapidated
exterior; and the only thing we could find to do
was to wander out among the corn-fields outside the
village and speculate upon the only two features
of interest there visible. Firstly, the little shrines,
something like ' pepper-pots,' which crowned the
summits of many of the lower hills. (The native
Bolivian, who we must remember is largely of
Indian blood, is full of strange beliefs and supersti-
tions about good and bad spirits, and puts up these
shrines with the hope of attracting the good and
discouraging the bad against attacks on his crops,
person and property.) And secondly, the burrow-
ings which were visible on many of the higher hill-
sides, the work of generation after generation of
miners who have hoped to find Eldorado here.
Whether they were of Spanish date or Inca or pre-
Inca no one can tell. All that is certain is that no
son of man ever dwelt here for long without mining
for something ; and apparently, by the records, he
found a good deal ; but it could not have been on
any of the hills within our sight, for none of the

M

178 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

burrows suggested that they had been carried much
below the surface.

Having seen the sights we concluded arrange-
ments with our magistrate-host to provide us with
mules next day ; purchased from him our final in-
stalments of food and drink ; and besought c what-
ever gods there be ' that our evening meal might be
a little less public. It was not.

The trip from Chayanta to Santa Maria was not
long; but it lay over a very steep range of hills,
and we were told that it would probably take six
hours. It did : and the wonder was that it was
ever accomplished at all, for after riding about
three hours, always climbing, we came apparently
to the wall of a house some three thousand feet
high. That there was a path up it of any kind
seemed a miracle ; but a path there was, and a very
good one for South America. Up and up and up it
zigzagged, most admirably engineered ; and though
we refrained from looking downwards, and felt as
though the blink of one eyelid without the other
might over-balance the mule and send us both top-
pling into the gully below, we did in fact ascend with-
out mishap of any kind, the mules for once seeming
to think that they had got something to do that
was worth doing, and so never putting a foot wrong
from start to finish. Once on the roof of the house
we could gaze down placidly at the wall and wonder
how it had been scaled. And the more placidly
still because on the other side the slope was by
comparison gentle; and further, we could see on a
hill- side in the distance the buildings and slack-heaps
of the haven where we would be — namely, the Santa
Maria gold mine.

XXI

Now the history of our stay at Santa Maria was for
me a history of woe ; for on the afternoon of our
arrival, being exhausted and parched with thirst,
I drank a sea of whisky-and-water — unfortunately
almost all water — and in a few hours was possessed
of the devil, the devil of dysentery. The Italian
gentleman who lived at the mine and acted as its
nurse and caretaker assured me later on that
" Manee who gom here have ze dysentery." But
the satisfaction of doing in Rome as the Romans
did was in this case tempered by the reflection that
he might have spoken sooner. Luckily Roger and
Cecil who really mattered were unaffected; and so
were able to pursue their work.

The mine-buildings, such as they were, stood on
a tiny plateau a little way up a steep hill of some
eighteen hundred feet. Here were the principal
entrance to the mine, the caretaker's house, a few
roofless remains of huts, and a yard surrounded by
a wall. That was all. The mine had been aban-
doned eight years before ; and for most of that
time had had no caretaker, so that any material
such as roofing which had not been taken away by
the owners had long ago vanished into thin air —
though we were reminded by the presence of a small
native village at the foot of the hill of the immutable
law that ' Matter is indestructible.' We soon in-
stalled ourselves in the one hut which possessed
a roof as well as walls, and this for some days
remained our abode— bedroom, boudoir, library,
179

180 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

dining-room, study and also hospital. Luckily I
had my camp-bed with me and so was comparatively
well off; but Roger and Cecil, by the former's
advice, had brought nothing but their blankets and
a cork mattress each; and they had to make the
best they could of some iron roofing- sheets supported
on piles of earth and stones. I shall not easily forget
the rasp of these sheets as we put them in place,
nor the sound they were apt to make whenever the
sleepers moved. But still better shall I remember
the rasp in Cecil's voice when he set to work to
inform Roger of his shortcomings as a traveller, and
desired to know why he had been brought bedless
into the desert. Did he suppose that camp-beds
grew upon the mountains ? Or had he spent so
short a time among human beings that he thought
they slept like animals on the ground ? The retort
was naturally an apology for not having brought
bath-salts, eider-downs, spring mattresses and hot-
water bottles. But I was constrained to think
that the vote of censure was well deserved ; though
at the same time I could not refrain from goading
Cecil to madness now and then as he lay on his iron
sheet by mentioning the ' give,' dryness, cosiness
and warmth of a camp-bed. As it proved, the last-
named quality was badly needed ; for the weather
turned nasty directly we arrived, and remained
so throughout our stay. Snow, sleet, frost and
storms of cold \vind and rain were almost incessant ;
and after the sunshine of Oruro they were not
acceptable, especially as the boudoir let most of
them through.

The hill was covered with old workings, probably
of Spanish origin ; and we came to the conclusion
that of the thousands of ounces which I have

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 181

mentioned a good proportion must have come from
here, for there is no other gold deposit in the pro-
vince of Chayanta so well known as this. We were
puzzled, however, by the magnitude of the figures ;
for the successful extraction of gold is decidedly a
modern accomplishment, and to win so much with
the crude methods then in vogue must have meant
a fabulous amount of mining. Possibly a good
deal came from alluvial beds, which may have been
immensely rich. And no doubt a good deal more
came not directly from nature's treasury, but by
' direct action ' from private hoards which had been
gleaned in the course of years from the rivers, and
by methods that our own century cannot hope to
improve upon. Whatever the truth Santa Maria
was probably one of the chief sources, and there
was no doubt a good deal of honest mining done
here ; for besides the surface burrowings we know
that the Spaniards drove a tunnel into the hill and
did a certain amount of development to right and
left. What they got out of it all we can only guess.
It is worth while perhaps to pause and try to
realise the disabilities under which they had to work.
Needless to say there was no electric drill in those
days, no high explosive and no cyanide process of
extraction. These are but a thing of yesterday,
even for us. So that all mining had to be done with
hammer and chisel, and with black powder probably
of a very inferior kind. Then, far more serious, in
the absence of steam they had no power of any kind,
unless you count the feeble and intermittent water
supply which is sometimes available in Bolivia : and
that meant no stamping mills; all crushing to be
done by hand ; and no engine-driven pumps, which
left them at the mercy of any water in the mine.

182 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

Geology and mineralogy were almost unknown
terms ; there could have been no theory —certainly
no sound theory — in their mining, only practice ;
and when they came to any complexity or serious
impurity in an ore they were beaten in the first
round. Methods of extraction were still probably
those of the Phoenicians ; and if you want proof of
this you have but to go to the famous silver mines
of Potosi in the same province, and see how to this
day men are growing rich on the ' tailings ' left by
the Spaniards — that is, the refuse ore from which
they could not or did not care to extract any more
silver. One advantage and only one they had in
their mining, so far as we can see ; and that was, if
one may dare to whisper it in these days, a plentiful
supply of — er — unexacting labour. It was not till
1780 that we hear of any organised rebellion among
the Indians against the frightful cruelty of their
oppressors, and not till 1824 that their efforts were
crowned with success. All things considered it is a
marvel that even with forced labour they accom-
plished so much as they did ; and if we in these
days can look with pity upon their archaic pro-
ceedings, it is not by any means certain that our
profits show an increase proportionate to that of our
efficiency. We have problems, in fact, of a far more
complex and costly kind to deal with. Cyanide
plant is very expensive and needs a highly -skilled
and highly-paid man to look after it. Labour asks
for much and gives little; and in other countries,
though not so far in Bolivia, is frequently difficult
to handle. Machinery costs a mint of money, and
owing to its weight is not easy to convey. Water
and timber supply are both far more serious ques-
tions in these days, when so much more of both is

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 183

needed. Altogether we have not made the business
quite so much easier as might be imagined. And
the only set of conditions, one supposes, which would
really satisfy the mine-manager of to-day would be
a combination, like the hymn-book, of Ancient and
Modern. Give him the Spanish simplicities of the
sixteenth century— property to be had for the taking
and labour for the cost of a whip and the funeral
expenses of those who ran away. Give him the
engines, plant, and methods of extraction of to-day ;
the scientific knowledge; and the hundred-and-twenty
shillings an ounce to which we have seen gold rise in
our time ; and you will know at any rate one man
who is not looking for a more complete life after
death. But alas, this is but a dream that passeth.
If only slavery— oh Larkin what am I saying ?

The mine of to-day, we found, consisted of a main
tunnel about a hundred yards long, a number of
passages branching off it, and a low-level tunnel
some eighty feet below it, which one reached by
clambering down a jagged, steeply sloping rabbit-
hole, inky-dark and just wide enough to admit a
man's body. I say advisedly one ; for I, to tell the
naked truth, never succeeded in reaching it at all.
Even outside the mine I found myself too weak to
do much walking. Directly I got far inside it
along the upper tunnel the bad air, coupled with
the labour of scrambling over heaps of refuse in
semi-darkness, turned me contemptibly faint. And
the idea of climbing down and up that rabbit-hole
eighty feet deep in almost total darkness was out
of the question, even had Roger and Cecil agreed
thereto. As it was, they made up disgusting
statistics as to the number of mules which would be
needed to draw the carcase of a man of my weight

184 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

out of the rabbit- hole —including 'F.' (friction) -
and flatly declined to enter it at all if I did ; so that
was that. I went a little way with them into the
dark dripping tunnel with its jagged sides, its pools
of water and streamlets running among the rusty
tram-lines : with its heaps of shale and refuse, and
its atmosphere of ' Abandon hope all ye who enter
here ' : and I heard Cecil exclaim as he groped his
way towards the mouth of the chimney, lantern in
hand, " Oo, isn't this good ? Good to be under-
ground again. I am sorry you can't come all the
way. It would have been so interesting." Then he
and subsequently Roger squirmed down the rabbit-
hole into the bowels of the earth ; and I crept back
to the blessed daylight, marvelling that there should
be men alive who really considered this * good ' and
yet remained outside an asylum.

With these two lunatics went a couple of Indians
employed by the Italian, who were to show them
the way. He had leave from the owners of the
mine to get what ore he could out of it ; and he kept
these two men always at work blasting away at the
veins on the lower level, and crushing what they
brought up by hammer at the mouth of the mine.
Some weeks he made a tidy profit and other weeks
nothing at all. Granted a streak of luck in the
development of the veins he might have made a good
deal ; for he had a sound knowledge of mining and
would not have missed any chance that came his
way. But the chance had not come as yet, and he
was beginning to think it never would. Such is the
fate of those who woo Fortune out of the earth.

And what was our fate ? We who were going to
woo her in proper style if at all.

Alas, it was no better. For the best part of four

•73

SANTA MARIA: PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE TO THE MINE

I

SANTA MARIA: THE 'BOUDOIR'

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 185

days Roger and Cecil went round and round that
mine, carefully noting what had to be noted, ex-
amining the formation, taking samples, measuring
distances, testing previous accounts, and forming
plans of what might be done in case they found
it possible to recommend any further outlay. But
at the end of that time they had to decide that it
was quite impossible. Of ten or more veins of
gold-bearing rock in the hill only four, according to
previous reports, had anything like enough breadth
to be worth pursuing. During the long abandon-
ment of the mine practically all the gold-bearing
rock within reach had been removed by Indians
who inherited the Spaniards' ideas on the subject of
property. The Italian, quite naturally and within
his rights, had taken any fragments that remained
—not many basketsful. The problem of taking
samples was thus rendered extremely difficult ;
and over a great part of the exposed surface it was
impossible, for there was nothing left to sample.
Without an expenditure of some hundreds or
thousands of pounds to open up veins and test them
properly no one could form a proper idea of the
mine's potentialities. And even that expenditure
they did not feel inclined to recommend. For not
only were the veins too narrow to give any unusual
promise of success, but in their view the quartz was
' cold ' and ' milky ' and did not offer any tempta-
tion to proceed with it. If a man had £10,000 to
play with and spent it on development he might
make the mine succeed and he might not. It was a
toss-up. At all events that sum would have to be
spent on it to give any chance of success. And there
was therefore no alternative but to admit failure on
this venture, and try our luck elsewhere.

XXII

AFTER four days and five nights, then, most of which
were spent by Roger and Cecil in that Avernus to
which they found the descent so easy, we decided
that it was useless to stay longer, and Roger and I
made ready to go back to Oruro, he to make fresh
plans for further expeditions and I to seek a doctor
for repairs. Cecil was to go on some two days'
journey beyond Santa Maria to look at another gold
deposit, of which our Italian friend had heard some
wonderful accounts. With him went an Indian to
show him the way and act as batman ; but as
neither knew a word of the other's language there
were doubts as to his utility in the latter sphere.
We left Cecil our remaining tobacco, provisions,
candles, whisky and a large stock of good advice;
but I am sorry to say he only thanked us for the
whisky and tobacco.

For my part I left Santa Maria without any regret,
having spent most of my time there huddled up in
blankets in our highly ventilated boudoir watching
the snow and sleet drive against the hill. There
was a ten or eleven hours' mule-ride between us and
Uncia, no fiesta in my present condition. How-
ever, we arranged to stop at Chayanta for a couple
of hours in the middle of the day for rest and food,
and so made the best of it. I did not dare attempt
the food, but was only too glad of the rest. And
there was too another delight, or rather a mirage,
dangled for a moment before my eyes — namely,
something that was called ' soda-water.' My ailment

186

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 187

had of course involved incessant thirst ; and the
water at Santa Maria being impossible, I had had
nothing to drink for several days except beer, which
made me thirstier than before. Now at c Whiteley's '
I beheld bottles of soda-water; and thought to
myself, " Good. Here is a really clean drink at last,
with no taste or sweetness in it. I wonder how many
bottles there are." But behold, when I tried it I
found it to be a sweet and cloying mess like very
sweet and rather flat lemonade ; and though I drank
of it because there was nothing else to drink my
thirst increased rather than diminished. That was
not one of the moments when I blessed the land and
liquids of Bolivia.

The afternoon's ride of six hours was carried out
under a blazing sun ; and what with the heat, the
thirst, the contemptible condition of my body, and
the never-ceasing pressure of the letter V, I do not
hanker to repeat it : it seemed as though the earth
had suddenly stretched like the neck of Alice in
Wonderland and the journey become double its
former length. We reached the Uncia hotel about
six in the evening ; and then, thought I, I would
have a drink ; such a drink as man had never had
before and never would enjoy again ; such as people
have dreamed of in fever but never got ; such as
would correspond in rank and dignity with the
desert in my throat. Not mere water, or soda-
water, or beer, or anything ignoble or gummy of that
sort; but something rich and cold and rare, clean
and clear and fizzy, stimulating as well as quenching,
lasting as well as sharp ; something which would
flow steadily but not too swiftly into every corner
of my arid frame. Champagne of course it must be,
champagne the ineffable, champagne at any price

188 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

they liked to ask. Three pounds a bottle was
about what they asked. But I paid it, and gladly :
was not this one of the occasions in life when money
is mere dross beside what it will buy ? I bought it
proudly. I scanned the label — "Pommery 1911 '
like a man in love. I took the bottle in my hands.
(' Love in her eyes sits playing.') I opened it. I
poured. I waited, yes one exquisite moment, with
the glass before me. I raised it and drank. And
then " Ouf — ouf — OUF ! " —I banged it down again
and thrust the stuff away. It was raw, sweet
aerated apple-juice, brewed in Chile and bottled— in
a place where we shall no doubt be exceedingly glad
to get it. I was sold ; my dream shattered ; my
money gone, and my thirst still with me. I handed
the bottle to Roger and told him to finish it if he
could ; in my present condition I dared not take the
risk. Pie made the effort, in instalments, and said
that if you thought of it as adulterated cider and not
as wine at all it was quite fairly easy to keep down.

Bed and a doctor followed ; and for three days
and nights I thought this ' hotel ' at Uncia the
brightest and best place in the world— such is the
effect of contrast. There was a good deal of snow,
with blazing sunshine in between; and the nights
were cold enough to suggest what the winter must
be at this altitude. Here we were in January, the
middle of summer, and it was not too easy even
to keep warm in bed. What must it be in winter
when the cold is far worse and fuel is poor, difficult
to get and ruinous in price ?

My ailment grew no better ; but now I had at
least the clean, safe drink I needed — namely, dis-
tilled water; and on that I rejoiced exceedingly -
has anyone ever rejoiced on distilled water before, I

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 189

wonder ? The manager of the mine was all kind-
ness; and even offered to send me by carriage to
rail- head whenever I wanted to go. But unfortun-
ately his offer was nipped in the bud by an un-
timely incident : for the wife of the cochero had
selected this moment— of all others— to stab him in
the arm during a domestic discussion ; and had done
the job so thoroughly that he would not be able to
drive again for several days. I trust I may be for-
given for hoping that the honours of battle did not
rest exclusively with Madame.

While we were still at Uncia Cecil arrived from
his trip; and I was pleased to note that he like
myself fell rather than dismounted from his mule,
so thoroughly was he cooked and finished. He
had ridden ten hours with very little to eat or
drink, and was hardly able to stand or speak for
weariness ; so we plied him with food and the re-
maining champagne before plying him with ques-
tions, and even let him smoke two or three cigarettes
without molesting him. Then he told us that he
had really not fared badly ; the Indian had been
quite useful and civil, and the journey not unpleasant,
except that there had been too much of it. One
hectic moment he recalled when going round a
corner he suddenly found himself embarked upon
a long and narrow knife- edged ridge between two
precipices of some two thousand feet. It was too
late to stop and go back ; for the mule had already
advanced some yards along the knife, and there
was no room either to turn or dismount. Conse-
quently he had to ride from end to end of the ridge,
silently imploring the gods that the mule might
refrain from stumbling, and wondering, if it did, into
which of the gorges on either side he would fall. As

190 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

it happened the mule did refrain, and they arrived at
the farther end without disaster. But it was touch-
and-go all the way, a place that he should on no
account have been allowed to ride.

When he arrived at his destination he found that
the man to whom he had been recommended was
a pure-bred Indian ; not a word of whose language
he could understand, and vice versa. The Indian,
however, was thoroughly hospitable ; offered him
one of his two rooms to sleep in ; and after supper
produced a pack of cards of historic antiquity and
filth, with which he invited Cecil to play. What
the game was Cecil could form no idea ; however, he
did his best, and as no money passed it did not
matter. The night was less pleasant : for though
the room was supposed to be set apart for him alone
he never woke without being conscious of people
passing in and out of it ; without lights, and always
so softly that he could not help suspecting designs
on his property. So that he lay awake for a con-
siderable time with his revolver ready. However,
he missed nothing next day ; so presumed that his
suspicions had been unworthy.

The gold reef turned out to be a poor specimen of
its kind— more antimony than gold and no great
amount of either. The Indian strongly urged him
to go and inspect yet another gold deposit, far
richer, another two days' journey into the moun-
tains: but Cecil had had enough of gold deposits
by this time; and besides that had no great con-
fidence in this or any Indian's regard for life or
property ; so rejected the proposal and on the
following day rode back to Uncia.

Next morning we were aroused from sleep at
five o'clock; and in the chill dawn outside beheld

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 191

men and mules waiting in that ghoulish and re-
proachful silence which in all countries marks the
creatures who arrive at an unearthly hour of the
morning to claim our luggage for the c early train.'
We had to catch a train this time ; two o'clock
from rail-head ; and to be sure of getting it should
be on the road thither at least by half-past six.
So there could be no turning in bed this morning
for another snooze. Since I was possibly going to
faint on the way, was probably going to be sick,
and was certainly going to need a rest or two, I was
sent off half-an-hour ahead of the others, who re-
mained behind to pack up and pay. I was sick,
and that not once nor twice. I also bore with
me a thirst in which the Amazon river might
easily have dried up. But I managed to leave out
the rest of the programme ; and though in a vastly
contemptible state reached rail-head nearly half-an-
hour in front of the others, which I thought very
creditable. When they did arrive we learned that
there had been a landslip on the line that morning—
the first that had ever happened in its history — and
though there was an engine and truck on our side
of it there was some doubt if anything could or
would be done to get us through to Oruro. If not
we should have no choice but to ride back to Uncia
again, another six hours' ride, wait there another
two days, and then do the journey all over again.
Were we down-hearted ? We were.

After an hour or two, however, a telegram came
through to say that the engine and truck were
coming up to fetch us, and we were to go on foot
over the landslip and there join a train waiting on
the other side. In the course of another hour or
two the engine and truck arrived ; and after several

192 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

more hours as it seemed we started packed like
sardines in the truck, and duly reached the land-
slip. Over this we clambered carrying our bags,
and got into the train on the other side of it. And
there, thank heaven, there was a restaurant car in
which the others could eat and I could drink.
This time— I am sure you are anxious to know— it
was Ross's dry ginger ale, at three-and-six a bottle ;
and it was the real thing, something real at last.
We reached Oruro late in the evening; and I sent
without delay for a Chilean doctor, who certainly
seemed to know his business. He announced that
there was only one cure for dysentery in these days —
chlorodyne is but a palliative — namely injections of
essence of ipecacuanha, a remedy discovered during
the campaign in Mesopotamia and now universally
used. It was rather striking to find a man so up-
to-date in his knowledge at a place like Oruro, or
indeed anywhere in South America ; but I am told
that this is by no means unusual among the Chileans ;
for all their budding doctors, engineers and others
needing a scientific training go to Europe to get it,
and return there too from time to time to keep
themselves in touch. (So I believe do some of the
Bolivians.) My doctor had been trained in Paris,
and was shortly going to England for yet another
eighteen months' training. Meanwhile he assured
me I should be cured within a fortnight ; but must
live on milk for nearly half that time, avoid meat
like the poison it was, and keep as quiet as I could.
A disgusting sentence, for it meant that I could not
leave Oruro again for a week or ten days. How-
ever, there was no help for it, and I had to do what
I was told.

XXIII

WHILE I remained at Oruro being punctured and
replenished with ipecacuanha —the result, I hasten
to add, is not that which comes from using it as
a beverage —Roger and Cecil went different ways ;
the former to inspect the Widow's Cruse, the latter
to visit an ancient Spanish silver mine which had
always been reputed very rich, but had been left
derelict for many years. The former returned
after some days pleased with what he had seen, but
feeling that he needed three or four weeks on the
mine to make up his mind about it. The latter
found the tunnels and passages cut by the Spaniards
so fallen in and so full of debris that he could not
form any opinion on it ; half-a-dozen men would be
needed for a fortnight or more to clear away the
rubbish. This applies, of course, to almost every
derelict mine, and it is always a question whether
the results of the clearing will justify the cost.
In this case we felt that there were many other
properties on our list which would better repay the
same outlay of time and money, and so we decided
to leave it alone and try elsewhere.

We did try elsewhere ; and the Recording Angel
will, I hope, have noted where we tried and give us
due credit for our efforts: so many miles covered,
so many mules whacked, so many inches of skin lost,
so many days spent in the ' V,' and so many nights
in rest-houses— ^.£. mud huts with raised slabs of
earth to sleep on. It was all very much the same ;
and as one journey in Bolivia is very like another I
N 193

104 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

do not propose to give details of any more. Suffice
it that in the course of some weeks we had formed a
good idea of the properties which were worth having
and those which were not ; and it remained for
Roger and Cecil to inspect them more closely and
take samples and drawings of those with which we
hoped to deal. Five or six of these seemed exceed-
ingly promising ; and when we had secured full
plans and details of these we felt that we should
have a dish sufficiently attractive to tempt any
enterprising investor, and ought to have no difficulty
in raising sufficient capital for their development.

Having reached this stage, we had done all that
the three of us together intended to do, and as a
trio we came to an end. Roger and Cecil were to
spend the necessary time in inspecting the prop-
erties and securing full details. Then Roger was
to remain in the country and secure employment,
either temporary or permanent, this being the
country he knew best ; and Cecil was to go home
and help me to bait the hook for the shy and
shrinking capitalist. (Please do not conclude from
this that our transactions were necessarily ' fishy ' :
as a matter of fact none of us have ever been able
to see how it can pay a mining engineer to be any-
thing but honest ; his whole success seems to depend
on his being absolutely reliable in character and
capacity.) As for me there was nothing left for
me to do now in Bolivia, and I set about making
arrangements to leave it — without tears.

But how and which way ?

Not the way I had come by, that was quite
certain. Might I not be kept waiting a whole month
perhaps at Tupiza ? A week in the company of
the comb ? Or even several weeks at La Quiaca,

LA PAZ

AMONG THE MOUNTAINS

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 195

attending the convenience of strikers ? No, no.
Putting aside all thought of the c V ' torture that
route was far too full of hazard and uncertainty to
to be faced again. The sea and the Transandine
Railway must be my way this time. And to get to
the sea I could go by rail either to Antofogasta or
else to La Paz and Arica. Everyone advised me to
take the latter route, since no one could be said
to have seen Bolivia who had not seen La Paz and
the ruins of the Inca or Aztec buildings. I have no
doubt they were right and I ought to have obeyed.
But there was Time with a big scythe on my right
hand, counting up the number of weeks I had been
away from the Half ; and Mammon with a bailiff on
my left, threatening writs and proceedings if I spent
a boliviano more than was necessary ; so I had to
give up all thought of taking the more attractive
route and set my face for Antofogasta.

In ordinary times and with ordinary luck I ought
apparently to be in Buenos Aires within ten days ;
namely two nights and a day to the coast, four days
and five nights along the coast to Valparaiso, and
three days and two nights thence to Buenos Aires.
But I was not surprised to hear— nor I think will
you be — that this was not an ordinary time, and I
must not look for ordinary luck. Reports from the
coast said that the coasting boats were crammed with
American tourists, seeking Nirvana in the bars and
restaurants of a country better governed than their
own ; and I might be kept for days or even weeks at
Antofogasta waiting for a vacant berth. Reports
also said that the Transandine Railway was closed
owing to landslips and floods following the melting
of the snow ; and even if I got to Valparaiso I
might have to wait there yet further days or weeks

196 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

till the trains began to run again. Altogether the
hazards and difficulties of this route seemed almost
as great as those of the other ; and I began to think,
as I had often thought before since entering Bolivia,
that I really never should get out of it alive again
nor revel in those lovely and pleasant things-
English management, English efficiency and Eng-
lish ideas of Time.

However, the attempt must obviously be made,
and by the Transandine route. So expecting no-
thing but kicks at the boot of Fate I took leave one
evening, with real regret, of the other two Asses-
sketching for them with no little detail the excel-
lent meals I should be having within a few days -
and without any regret whatever of Oruro and its
smells. During the night and much of the following
day the line took us over flat, arid and uninteresting
plains with hills in the distance and mirages on the
flat, but hardly any vegetation. Then we began
to climb ; and climbed for hours up into the Andes,
I do not know how high, probably six thousand
feet or so, anyhow a most wearisome distance.
You will probably assume that we saw some verv
wonderful scenery, and that having had the luck to
see this I shall spend the remainder of my life
exclaiming: "Mountains? Scenery? Oh, but
you should just see the Andes ! " But therein you
will be mistaken. For in the first place my friends
are for the most part powerful men ; and in the
second, even if they were not, I should not feel in-
clined to exclaim anything of the sort. Beyond
some three or four snow-capped peaks of conical
shape which were certainly very impressive, and
occasionally a gorge or a jagged rock or a great
valley which one would not like to have missed,

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 197

there was nothing that struck me as particularly
grand. Whatever their aggregate height, it must
be remembered these mountains spring from a
plain which is already ten or twelve thousand feet
above the sea, so that much of the effect is bound
to be lost. Then the railway naturally approaches
them very gradually; so that there is seldom or
never a moment when you can look up suddenly
and say, "There are ten or fifteen thousand feet
of mountain." And when you are among them the
climb is so slow and tedious that you are soon apt
to feel you have had enough of them. For hours
you creep almost at walking pace up one side of a
precipitous valley. Then perhaps you cross it and
for other hours creep back along the other side,
always climbing. Repeat this three or four times
a day; add that you never see any vegetation,
nothing but bare grey-brown stone and sand; and
you have the ingredients of a very promising bore-
dom. For my part, I do not hesitate to own that
I did and do regard the Andes as a bore. I had
looked upon them and lived with them and ridden
up them and slithered down them and been baked
iand frozen and sick and sore in them for so long
that I did not want to look at them any more ; and
would have put a bomb under them if I had thought
that that would quicken my journey to Antofogasta.
Certainly I never saw on this journey-— or any
other in South America — anything approaching the
grandeur and beauty of the mountains at La Corona,
where they rise sixteen or seventeen thousand feet
sheer from the plain and are aflame with colour and
vegetation.

At last we reached the summit ; and the train
crept slowly down the opposite side ; almost as

198 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

slowly as it had crept up, for the gradient is very
steep and it is never safe to let the engine have its
head. The steepest part was covered at night, so
that we missed seeing the engineering of the line,
which is said to be very remarkable ; and we also
passed —though whether we missed much I do not
know — the various sights which Chile has here to
offer— namely, the water supply of Antofogasta,
which lies a hundred and ninety-five miles from
the town ; a lake of borax at Cebollar, and a large
number of nitrate- fields. Here we were in the
rainless belt, the land where for half- a- century at
a time you do not need an umbrella ; then only
for ten minutes, and then can put it away again
for another half-century. Perhaps you will not be
there all that time, but your heirs may ; and if you
train them carefully they will know quite well what
to do with the thing if it should rain during their
lifetime, as it very likely may.

Antofogasta is a place of commerce pure and
simple, existing only to export ore and nitrates, and
to import such things as Bolivia and the north of Chile
need; nor does it offer any attraction to the eye, except
perhaps as you look out to the sea with its brilliant
blue and its island rocks a little way out. The town
itself lies on a narrow barren slope between the sea
and a range of precipitous hills — painted here and
there with gigantic advertisements. It is arranged
on the American plan, the streets all straight
and at right angles to each other ; houses, shops,
warehouses, kinemas, churches and offices huddled
together without discrimination ; and many of them
made of, or roofed with, corrugated iron, most
horrible to see. Behind it lie the barren brown
hills ; and on either side of it lie miles and miles of

A LAKE IN THK ANDES AT ABOUT TEN THOUSAND FEET

*?v

^"FW V

I MY >

• ,- »•-'•-: --sj»**«i<te* ''^* '

LA Pl.AZA, COCHABAMHA

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 199

barren sea-coast, where rain never falls and vege-
tation is not, but where by contrast the precious
nitrates have never been solved and washed into
the earth and so remain solid for English companies
to take. I like to think of the generosity which
Nature here displays in compensating one man for
the misfortunes of another. For if you ask the
dago who works in these nitrate-fields what he
thinks of life in the barren desert, where amusement
is not, rain never falls, and even a garden presum-
ably is impossible, you will perhaps be answered
with a knife between your ribs. But if you watch
the English shareholder fingering his dividend
warrant and thanking the gods that his company
has done so well, you will soon see Nature's system
of balance, recompense, constant equilibrium. You
don't see it ? Well, perhaps it is easier if you are a
shareholder. I am.

Tons and tons of nitrate are shipped from Anto-
fogasta every year ; so also are tons and tons of ore
from Bolivia, which has no sea-coast of her own and
can only import or export here or at Arica. Herein
is a terrible and lasting grievance, and a very natural
one too. For up to about 1880 this port and a great
tract of the coast, as much as thirty thousand square
miles, including many of the nitrate- fields, belonged
to Bolivia. Then Chile which has been called,
whether rightly or wrongly, the Germany of South
America beheld — as in a vision — that so weak a
nation had no real right to possess such a valuable
piece of territory, and was inspired by its con-
science to take it and add it to her own. Bolivia
was thus deprived of her one harbour, as well as of
a strip of land of inestimable wealth ; and now has
to pay Chile (indirectly) for the privilege of using

200 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

ports which she has every right to regard as her own.
No wonder she appeals now and then to the Great
Powers for assistance. She has certainly been
badly treated. At the same time one cannot help
feeling that the present state of things is best for
the world in general. For it is certain that she
would never have displayed the vigour and effici-
ency in opening up the nitrate-fields which Chile has
shown. One Chileno, to put the thing in a nut-
shell, is apt to be worth a good many Bolivianos —
and one Englishman a round dozen of either.

XXIV

WITH all its drawbacks Antofogasta is for me a
place of shining memories ; for here first, almost
since leaving the Argentine, did I sleep in a bed-
room that did not wound the nose on entry, and
ate food which anyone could recognise at sight to be
human. It was true that this bedroom lay deep in
the belly of a huge wooden hotel ; had light and air
only of a minute skylight ; and suggested nothing
so much as a hot packing-case or c hay-box ' con-
structed by an amateur carpenter. But at least it
was clean, bare and free from smell and vermin ;
and to one coming from the dug-outs of Bolivia it
was as though ' Innisf ree ' had grown from dreams
into reality, and mine eyes had seen that which
Mr Yeats could only imagine. Moreover there was
a restaurant there with great meat and drink. A
' block ' or two away there was an English club
with plenty of papers and soft chairs— I was still
glad of the latter. There was a plaza, a vivid patch
of green with trees, shrubs and flowers all kept
aflame by constant watering. And above all there
was the sea, with ships on it coming and going, and
assuring me of that which I had almost ceased to
believe — namely that means did still exist of getting
out of South America, and that some day I should
be able to return chastened, but oh so infinitely
wiser, to the heaven which is called England.

Whether it would be granted to me to do so this
week or next, or next month, or next year— the
terms are synonymous in South America — I could
201

202 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

not tell : and I had unfortunately only too much
time to speculate ; for I had arrived at six o'clock
on a Sunday morning, and for twenty-four hours
had nothing to do but wander about and wish that
the Sabbath won even less recognition of the in-
habitants than it appeared to. On Monday morning
I was at a shipping-office before most of the com-
munity were awake ; and when at last it opened I
learned to my delight that there was quite a reason-
able chance of getting away this week. All the
ordinary boats, it was true, were full to bursting ;
but there was a small trading vessel coming south
next day on which there might be a spare berth, and
they would let me know c mafiana ' if I could have
it. Until ' maftana ' arrived my experience was
the reverse of that of Mary Rose in the play : I
lived, that is, for at least twenty-five years fully
conscious of the passage of every minute, and at
the end of that time was astonished to find that no
one seemed a day older. When the twenty- sixth
at last arrived I went back to the shipping office
—it was still there — and was told that the berth
was mine : would I please be on the quay with my
baggage not later than four o'clock ? I would, you
may be sure. And was. But was the boat there
too ? If you have come with me thus far you will
hardly expect that. In point of fact four o'clock,
five, six and seven had struck before there was any
sign of smoke on the offing ; and all this time, being
afraid to go away, it was my lot to stand in the
scorching sun on the tiny wooden quay, in the com-
pany of one or two fellow-passengers in the same
plight as myself, and also in that of a multitude
of native gentlemen whose staple industries seemed
to be expectancy and expectoration. Soon after

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 203

eight the boat really did arrive ; we went on board,
and I began to feel that I really was on the way to
Valparaiso. But what would happen when I got
there— that was the next worry. Would there be a
train running over the Andes ? If there were, would
there be any room in it for me ? If there were not,
how long should I have to wait ? In vain had I
tried to find out. People only knew that there had
been a great deal of trouble on the line of late —
floods, landslips and embankments giving way—
and sometimes the train got through and sometimes
it fell into the river. Trains being so few candi-
dates for places were naturally too many ; and I
might have to wait a week or even a month before
I succeeded in getting a seat. I must hope for
the best and expect— well, I knew by now what
to expect in South America, and so do you.

The steamer was diminutive— German- owned, I
fear, and partly German-manned. It reeked from
end to end of cooking ; and the result was not more
delectable in taste than in smell, though both were
preferable to the company. The charge for all
this— eleven pounds for three days and four nights -
was also preposterous : and I was not comforted by
the information that this was the regular fare on all
the boats covering this route ; what may be justifi-
able on a big liner is sheer robbery on a cockle-shell.
However, the trip was not unpleasant on the whole.
The sun blazed ; the sea remained flat and ex-
quisitely blue ; and we had some grand views of
the Chilean coast here and there, wooded hills
and occasionally tremendous cliffs. Moreover I was
fortunate enough to be endowed with a marvellous
gift of sleep— the result, I suppose, of descending to
sea-level after some weeks at ten thousand feet —

204 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

and quite half the time, day as well as night, was
blissfully unconscious of smells, Germans and
scenery alike. If only one could prepare like that
for every sea voyage !

Valparaiso harbour, which we reached early on
Friday morning, has all the beauty of a huge sheet of
water backed by steep hills. The hills are low and
do not quite come to the water's edge, leaving a
narrow strip of flat ground on which the railway
station and the big business offices and warehouses
are built. But they are so steep as to be practically
cliffs ; and though houses manage to cling to them
here and there, the way from the lower to the upper
part of the town is for most people by lift (ascenseur),
of which there are about a dozen scattered along
the hill- side — and a good deal more than a dozen
complaints per day. Both town and harbour are on
a tremendous scale. The town creeps up and up
the hill till you wonder if it will ever stop, and also
for miles round the coast in either direction. To
the north, some two miles away, lies Vina del Mar,
the Brighton of Valparaiso, where most of the
English colony have their houses—those, that is,
who are lucky enough to get them; but here as
in England houses are very scarce and fantastically
expensive. Here, or even in Valparaiso itself, if
you are making money you can live as pleasantly
as anywhere in the world outside England ; for
the climate is absolutely ideal, never too hot and
never cold ; there is acceptable society, both Chilean
and English ; clubs provide you with cricket, polo
and tennis ; and if you can do without sport, of
which there is practically none on this coast, you
have every ingredient for a healthy and happy
existence. Money, however, you must have or

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 205

make ; and plenty of it too, for expenses are much
higher here than in England. At ordinary times
everyone seems to make it ; some in mines and
nitrates, some in regular trade. But business in
Chile is all very speculative ; and a slump such as
1921 has seen is a far more serious thing there than
in England ; for the fluctuations of trade are far
higher and lower, and partly as a cause, partly as
a consequence, the Chilean c dollar ' has the most
violent ebb and flow of any currency in the world.
When I was there everyone seemed extraordinarily
prosperous. Now in 1922 I am told commercial
life is just a series of * crashes.'

My instinct on arrival at this town being of the
usual kind, I was in the office of the Transandine
Railway very soon after landing, and to my delight
and surprise was told that the route was actually
open — after being more or less interrumpido for
several weeks — and I could have one of the last
remaining seats in the next train, starting two
days later. I rejoiced, presented one or two intro-
ductions, was most kindly given the run of two
English clubs, and saw the sights of Valparaiso.
These, I found, might be counted on the fingers of
one hand, and that by a man who had lost two
fingers. Firstly the harbour, and secondly, the
Stock Exchange. The former is always beautiful
and interesting, with its waste of flashing water and
crowd of ships of all nations ; and the latter— well,
I suppose there are stockbrokers in the world who
can make the lily feel ashamed, but if so they do not
live at Valparaiso. No, the Stock Exchange is not
scenery— I wonder if it is in London. Anyhow,
being debarred like all men of ordinary clay from
visiting our own landscape, I took the opportunity

206 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

of visiting this one, and found it not uninteresting.
With a permit I could take my place in a gallery
overlooking the hall and there watch the process of
buying and selling, which reminded me very much
of an auction. On a sort of rostrum in the middle
stood a clerk just like an auctioneer and constantly
quoted prices. In front of him and to either side
sat about a couple of hundred men listening ; and
occasionally a hand shot up and a voice barked out
a word or two, followed perhaps by a dozen others
and frantic excitement. No doubt there was some
big dealing going on ; for the Chileans are among
the wildest gamblers in the world ; and just then
the huge price of tin had sent the principal mining
shares soaring to heaven— or elsewhere— at any rate
far above their real value, so that speculation was
if possible more frantic than ever. But unfortun-
ately I had not enough Spanish to know what was
going on ; and was only aware of shouting, excite-
ment, and boys hurrying in and out with telegrams
— altogether a thing interesting to have seen, but
not a lasting delight.

I left Valparaiso two days later, feeling that
despite its plainness and its noise and its lack of
interesting features it was much the best town I had
seen in South America as a place of residence. No
doubt it lacks many of the advantages of Buenos
Aires ; but all these are to my mind made up for by
the absence of extreme heat from its climate. In
South America you have to resign yourself in any
case to certain drawbacks — the heat, for example.
But at Valparaiso there is no cause even to com-
plain of this ; and still less at Santiago, a few hours'
journey inland, which is said by all who have seen
it to be one of the most beautiful towns in South

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 207

America, and quite the most attractive to live in.
There is too another advantage about residence in
these Chilean towns ; and that is that according to
all the English opinion I met with it is far more
possible to associate and even intermarry with the
Chilenos than with any other people in South
America, They are nearer to us in cleanliness,
courtesy, honesty, efficiency, vigour, breeding than
any other Latin -American race ; and though it
would be absurd to pass judgment on a nation after
two days' experience of it, I feel that this account is
probably correct, and that one may fairly accept it
as final. At any rate there is far more social inter-
course between the English and the Chileans than
between English and Argentines, and therefore
residence in Chile is for that reason alone pleasanter
than elsewhere. In Brazil and Peru, I gather, this
intercourse hardly exists ; and in the other countries
it is even more rare.

The efficiency of the race was at any rate apparent
on the railway, which contrasted very favourably
with anything of the kind in Bolivia. We had two
engines, and despite an unrelenting series of
I gradients went at a splendid pace throughout our
| six hours' journey. The line wormed for a little
J way round the coast; then rose gradually among
I low hills, eucalyptus-trees and conifers to a country
| backed by mountains and very irregular, but culti-
vated wherever the hills and rocks allowed, and
full of farms, houses, corn-fields, vineyards, mines
here and there, now and then a small town, and
all the signs of a thriving and prosperous com-
i munity. Apropos of these vineyards, Chilean wine
< is very largely drunk in its own country, though not
much outside it because there is hardly any to spare,

208 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

and if somewhat crude in flavour as compared with
that of France and Germany, it is by no means to be
despised. (Still less so are the liqueurs, which are
all copies, to the very labels, of the European pro-
ducts, but owing to Government laxity can be
forged ad libitum with impunity.) After leaving
the vine-growing district we travelled for the re-
mainder of the afternoon up a broad flat river valley
whose formation had plainly been that of the valleys
of Bolivia ; but here the river had been kept in
its place, comparatively speaking, for some gen-
erations, and almost every inch of the valley was
cultivated. (' Comparatively ' one must say, because
the whole of this country west of the Andes is sub-
ject to tremendous floods in years of excessive snow.)
There were huge fields of maize and corn ; there
were orange- trees, vines, peaches, figs, apples, all th<
fruits— and all Chilean fruits are for some reason
of beautiful flavour, far better than anything ii
the Argentine. The sun blazed; the river roare<
beside us, very full still from the melting snow.
Now and then we had a glimpse of dim blue moun-
tains in the distance. Everywhere about us was th<
rich, tremendous foliage of the valley ; and every-
where the impression of fertility, plenty and effici-
ency, a very pleasant change after the hills an<
deserts of Bolivia. Here certainly was one of th(
best things I had seen in South America, altogethe]
a most stirring and exhilarating journey.

The end of it came at San Juan, a small town at
the foot of the Andes, where passengers sleep before
starting next day to cross the mountains. The
mountain railway is a narrow-gauge affair, running
from here to the point on the other side of the range
to which the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway has

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 209

been extended. And nominally there are two
trains a week each way. But during the season of
snow and for some time afterwards when it is
melting the number is apt to be two a month or
even less ; for there are not only constant difficulties
from snowdrifts, ice, landslips and collapsing em-
bankments, but also the difficulties that come of
dual control. The line is run by a joint-committee
of the two nations concerned, Chile and the Argen-
tine. These at the best of times have about as
much love for each other as France and Germany ;
and the line is naturally a perpetual bone of jealousy
and contention. Were it managed by either alone
the natural difficulties might be overcome with
comparative ease ; but of course this cannot be
thought of in a country like South America where
the convenience of passengers is as nothing beside
the dignity of nations ; and so the dignity goes on
and the trains do not. For my part I was lucky
to be travelling when I was, just at the end of the
melting season. For two or three weeks past the
trains had been stopped or only got through with
great difficulty, and only now were they beginning
to run with any semblance of regularity. I was
lucky too in another respect — namely, that I had
been warned to come up from Valparaiso not by the
ordinary ' International ' train, which arrives at San
Juan well after midnight, but by the afternoon train
which allows plenty of time to dine and sleep before
going on next day. I did dine and sleep excellently
well ; and when I saw the number of my fellow-
passengers in the tiny hotel I was profoundly glad
that I had had the warning. What became of
those who came later I do not know. I suppose
they slept on the floor,
o

210 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

There cannot be many places in the world where
your train is brought to your door like a carriage
and you have only to step in. But San Juan is
one of them. At six o'clock next morning we all
assembled in the garden at the back of the hotel ;
and presently along a line of rails which I had
thought on the previous evening to be merely a relic
of antiquity there appeared a miniature train of
four carriages, upon which we advanced in mass
formation. I was not the last of that mass;
but on getting into one of the carriages found to
my disgust that all the seats were numbered anc
already booked, that I ought to have booked one
the night before, and that in view of the crowd o:
passengers I should be very lucky if I did not have
to stand all the way. I searched that train in
double-quick time, you may be sure. But it was
only in the last compartment that I discovered a
place, the last that was vacant ; and even that ]
only secured by a short head. ' Runner-up,' I am
pleased to add, was a German, who really did have
to stand almost all the way.

From the moment we left that garden the gradient
was of course perpetually against us, and with the
exception of a few stops at stations the train was
perpetually climbing till we left it seven hour
later. Through semi-tropical scenery we went —
trees, flowers, gardens, masses of foliage— to a rive
valley. This we followed, always rising higher anc
higher, till the foliage ceased and there was nothing
but bare brown hills. The valley became a gorge ;
and our speed sank to about six miles an hour. We
crossed the gorge at last and struggled up the other
side of it, slower and yet slower, till we could hardly
be said to move at all. We reached, or seemed to

NEAR THE SUMMIT, TRANS-ANDINE RAILWAY

OF A CKMETERY IN ARGENTINA

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 211

reach, the top of the world ; and it looked as if we
must begin to go down ; but behold, we dived into a
tunnel, and when we came out the other side we were
still climbing. More than once this happened, and
more than once too I thought to myself, " Now we
shall see one of the really magnificent views we have
been promised." But more than once, to tell the
plain truth, I was disappointed in this. The railway
naturally chooses the tamest route it can find ; the
mountains visible, though not actually tame, are
never anything extraordinary ; the snow when I
passed through had all gone ; and the rivers were
torrents of red mud. I do not know if it is because
I have no soul or because I had been among moun-
tains for some time past, but certain it is that I
never experienced the thrill of seeing really big
things which I had been led to expect. Nor do I
think that anyone however new to it will find the
way ' over the Andes ' so exciting in fact as in idea.
About one o'clock mid-day we did at last struggle
to the top ; and after going a little way down on
the other side arrived at the point where the Buenos
Aires and Pacific train was waiting for us. There
ensued a scramble, I cannot honestly call it a pro-
cession, to the comedor, in which I was not last :
indeed, though I blush to confess it, I was one of
those 'placed ' : but though I blush now I was proud
and delighted then ; and so perhaps will you be if you
go that way and have had nothing to eat between
'rolls and coffee' at six A.M. and half -past one.
Before long the train started : and we began to creep
down the eastern side of the range, again not much
quicker than we had come up. This for two reasons
apparently : firstly the very steep gradient, and
secondly the fact that the track clings almost all

212 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

the way to the bank of a river, and the embank-
ments when that river is in flood are by no means
too dependable. Time after time we had to go
slower than a man's walk lest the strain should prove
too much for them ; and out of the windows we
could see the earth crumbling away far beneath us
into the roaring torrent below, and speculate what
would happen to us if the bank did fail and the train
toppled over. In one place a train had gone over
a week or two before, and there were still a couple
of carriages in the river. I am told they are still
there (1922) — and presumably will be till the river
disposes of them.

We steamed into Mendoza about eight o'clock
that night, thus missing in the darkness a piece oJ
country, mostly vineyards, which is said to be one
of the most beautiful in the Argentine — it may
easily be that. We changed once more, now into a
main-line train of sleeping and restaurant carriages ;
and after that there was nothing more to do but
to sleep that night and gaze all next day at
the endless Argentine plain. We reached Buenos
Aires about eight o'clock in the evening : and there
once more I rejoined, not without relief on both
sides, what had once been a Half; though, owing to
the frightful heat in which she had been living, there
appeared now to be no known fraction which would
adequately describe her.

XXV

Now it befell, as it is apt to befall in and about
South America, that the boat by which we were
proposing to travel to England was not running
precisely in accordance with its time-table. It was,
in fact, so we were told at the shipping-office, at
least a fortnight late and might be more. But when
we expressed surprise and perhaps a little annoyance
at this infection of an English line by a South
American habit we found that our surprise was as
nothing to that of the gentleman who gave us the
information. Plainly in all his experience of South
America he had never before known anyone notice
the loss of a fortnight, much less make a fuss about
it ; and he made us feel indeed that apologies were
due from us to him rather than from him to us. He
did not get them. But then neither did we.

As usual we appealed to 'T.C.B.A.' for advice;
and as usual— but I need not repeat the formula.
Without a moment's hesitation he decided that we
were to go to Mar del Plata, a sea-side place some
eight hours' journey south of Buenos Aires, which is
the Brighton, or rather the Trouville of the Argen-
tine ; and where we should at least be considerably
cooler than we were at present, Buenos Aires being
still most unpleasantly hot. With no more hesita-
tion we obeyed ; and then discovered that the
Squeeze of all Squeezes was due there, if not already
begun— namely, 'Carnaval,' the biggest fiesta of the
year. The whole of the Argentine nation would
be staying there, and most of the English colony,
213

214 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

and we should be lucky to get even a sofa to sleep
on ; the rail way -company, for example, left whole
trains of sleeping-carriages on the sidings during
the great week, and every berth was always taken
up. We did manage at length to get a tiny single
room with two beds in it in a small English-
managed hotel, price thirty-five shillings a head
per day, board and lodging ; a sufficient figure,
you will probably think, and so did we ; but
we were told it was very moderate for Carnaval,
most people paying two or three times as much,
and we were very fortunate to find anything so
reasonable. Reasonable or no we had to go; for
the Half was still terribly limp after her roasting
and I, according to her, in a condition even more
contemptible.

Before going there perhaps you may like to hear
how the Half had fared in my absence. The kind-
ness of those who preside at La Corona is as invari-
able and all-pervading as the sun in a tropic land.
But the control of that sun and of the elements
generally is one of the things which they have not
yet been able to achieve ; and though during the
greater part of the year the climate and the con-
ditions of life there are as pleasant as anyone could
wish, they are the first to acknowledge that during
the summer months —December, January, February
— the heat is apt to be terribly trying, and they to
wish themselves anywhere but where they are. The
Half unfortunately had struck the worst months in
a very hot year. During the greater part of her
time the conditions had not only been Plutonic —
over 100° F. night and day for several weeks— but
to my mind far worse than Plutonic ; because when
we meet, you and I, we may at least expect to find

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 215

the climate dry— 5000° to 6000° F. could hardly be
anything else —but here it was a damp, steamy, re-
laxing heat, in which plant life, insects, germs and
microbes could flourish and multiply, but practically
nothing else. The insects were indeed a terrible
affliction ; and the combination of the two became
at times almost unendurable. Yet despite all this
the Half had enjoyed her stay with a zest previously
recorded only of little hills and young sheep ; and
she was indeed so good as to inform me that never
in all her life had she enjoyed anything so much— a
statement conveying no unctuous flattery to me,
whose society she had been privileged to enjoy for
the past fifteen years. Upon my entering a mild
protest on this score I was told that neither the
absence of a husband, nor his presence, nor any
other drawback nor delight in the world can enter
into the calculations of a woman who is permitted
by Providence to spend nearly six months of her
life without once ordering dinner. You may believe
that or not as you please. I shan't. What is
beyond doubt is that she was enormously better in
spirits and outlook for her stay ; the thorough change
and the kindness of her hosts and hostesses more
than making up for the tropical conditions, and
giving her exactly what she needed after six years
of war and post-war anxieties.

Nor had she remained throughout this time in
the habitations of Pluto. For she had been asked
by a most charming married couple, Mr and Mrs C.,
who had an estancia some few miles away on the
Aconquija Hills, to stay with them as long as she
pleased ; and this meant, at this time of year,
picnicking in a little house which they had built on
their mesada (high plateau) as a place of escape

216 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

from the heat and flies. So kind an invitation she
had naturally accepted with delight; and in the
course of a two days' ride found herself free from
all these discomforts, with keen, brisk air, majestic
views, snow mountains above her, wooded slopes
and the plains below, and all around the wild life
and gigantic spaces of the estancia, many thousand
acres of down and woodland.

Among these mountains the animal life was
almost as plentiful as it had been scarce in the parts
that I had visited ; and some of it indeed might
have been less plentiful with advantage. Now and
then, for example, you might meet the peccary (wild
pig), who introduces himself by ripping you up with
his tusk ; or the jaguar, locally called tigre, who
appreciates a sirloin of beef quite as much as you
do, and will take it without asking leave if he can
get it without risk. There were very few of these ;
and as Mr C. had only cleared the trees on a small
part of his estancia — for he had only recently come
there — he could not as yet render them fewer still,
for he hardly ever saw them, and only knew of their
presence by their tracks and the occasional loss of
one of his beasts. Besides these two there were also
puma, called lions by the natives ; these preferred
veal as a rule to beef. There were guanaco, an
animal somewhat resembling the llama ; Peruvian
buck; a kind of deer something like our roe-deer;
tiger-cats, wild cat (gato di monte), tapir, boa-
constrictor and crab-eating foxes. Among birds
there were condors, eagles, parrots, humming-birds
in profusion, and innumerable others. There was
also a profusion of trout in the rivers, which have
been well stocked both here and elsewhere by the
Argentine Government -can you ever account for

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 217

what it will or will not do ? There were clouds
of butterflies of dazzling colour and bewildering
variety. There were seas of flowers, for none of
which could the natives, though fond of them, ever
produce a name. And not only were there the
snow mountains to look at, a private range of Alps
as it were; but on one of these mountains, easily
within sight on a clear day, there were the remnants
of an ancient village or fortress which had aroused
a great deal of interest among antiquarians. To
what race this village is to be attributed no one can
tell at present. Mr C. and others had frequently
visited it, but no one had as yet been able to
spare the time, some two or three weeks, needed
for a proper investigation of the site ; and until a
properly organised expedition can be sent it is un-
likely that any definite theories will be formed on
the subject.

If and when such an expedition goes, it will, we
gathered, have to expect a good deal of siroche ; for
this is one of the places which are reckoned to be
bad in that respect : and the inference is that the
Indians who built there must have used it rather
as a strategic position than a regular habitation ; for
though they do not often own to it they are almost
if not quite as subject to mountain- sickness as any-
one else; and it is very unlikely that they would
have made their permanent abode at such an
altitude unless they were forced to. Probably, like
the Ancient Britons, they needed now and then a
comparatively fortified village to retire to when their
enemies were about, and there took their families
and beasts till the danger was over.

Even the animals in a case like this had to be
considered, for they are by no means unaffected by

218 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

altitude. In his admirable work, Climbing and
Exploration in the Bolivian Andes, Sir Martin
Con way speaks at some length of its effects on
horses and mules. The former, especially race-
horses, seem to be exceedingly sensitive to lack of
oxygen. And the latter, in his experience, felt it
at little more than 12,000 feet. For when climbing
the lower slopes of Slimani he says, " The mules soon
gave evidence of suffering from the thinness of the
air ; they halted at frequent intervals, and all be-
haved alike, taking several short, quick breaths in
rapid succession, then three or four slow, deep ones ;
after which they were ready to go on again." (This
was up a steep slope.) And elsewhere he observes :
4 1 have not myself seen horse or mule capable of
carrying a man over easy ground at a higher altitude
than about 16,500 feet, where they almost uniformly
break down. ' ' Personally, I never saw a mule affected
in any way in Bolivia, and I was at ] 0,000 to 12,000
feet all the time, and at 15,000 for a good part of it.
But I heard of their failing more than once from
people who knew the country well, and particularly
of places called by the natives tembladera, where
without warning or any obvious reason (even that
of annoying you) your mule will suddenly throw up
his arms as it were, fall on his side, and collapse
without effort or explanation stone dead. If this
happens on a mountain path the effects are apt to
be inconvenient. But no one can tell when or where
it will happen. As in the case of siroche, there are
places which are held to be bad in this respect and
others which are not ; and though there are one or
two theories about it, as for example that it may be
due to poisonous grass or herbs which the beasts
find in some places but not in others, or to gaseous

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 219

emanations from the ground affecting their breathing,
no one has yet produced a satisfactory explanation.
Human beings are not affected by it ; nor is there
any evidence of siroche in the same places ; so
there is nothing to help us. Why it should not
be ordinary heart-failure one does not quite see.

Amid these enchanting conditions then the Half
remained for some time, picnicking most joyfully
with her host and hostess. On the way back to
Buenos Aires she spent a few more days at La
Corona : and there awaiting her she found three
or four telegrams from me ; all of which she knew
must be important, relating as they would be to our
arrangements for sailing, but from none of which,
owing to their mutilation by the operators, could
she extract a word of sense. The entire intellect of
the English colony was directed singly or in heated
debate to solving these problems, but in hardly
any instance could they provide even a plausible
solution. In one case, for example, I had tele-
graphed : " The Andes sails on such-and-such a date.
Arrange if possible for us both to stay with the B.'s
before we go." But all were agreed — for once—
that the delivered message must mean, " Before
leaving the factory wait for Gibson, who will come
there from Antofogasta," and a little more. In
vain did the Half protest that I should never use
the word ' factory ' ; that she had never heard of
anyone called Gibson in South America, and that
even if she had it was quite incredible that at that
date I should ask her to wait for anyone. That,
said everybody, was what the Spanish words con-
veyed ; and they could not be construed into any-
thing else. (It was not my Spanish, I hasten to
add, but Roger's which is as good as anyone's.)

220 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

There was no time to get the messages repeated, for
they took three days each way even when marked
' Urgente '—what is a c Non-urgente,' one wonders ?
And even if there had been they would probably
have come back quite as mutilated as before, but in
a different way. All that the Half could do was to
assume that I intended, as I had once suggested in a
letter, to go back to Buenos Aires by Antofogasta
and the Transandine ; and to act according to this
theory, which was fortunately correct.

To Buenos Aires then she repaired, with only the
dimmest idea when I should get there and, as it
proved, with more luck than at one time seemed to
be in store for her. For there was trouble on the
railway as usual. Twenty- four hours before she was
due to start an entire carriage was wrecked by a
bomb ; there were various 6 incidents ' like loosening
rails on the track ; and a good deal of uncertainty
as to whether trains would run or not. As it
happened they did. She hit on another lady
travelling by the same train ; which was again
great luck, for as you may remember it is not too
pleasant for an English lady to travel alone in the
Argentine; and got through the journey without
incident. Also, by more luck than management,
she did not have to remain at Buenos Aires more
than three days before I arrived.

XXVI

MAR DEL PLATA we found to be about the equal
in beauty of such places in England as Folkestone,
Seaford or Ramsgate — a mass of hideous houses,
that is, scattered over a bald stretch of coast, some
cliff, some flat, all very plain, but relieved here
and there as you went inland by a profusion of trees ;
more trees indeed than we had seen throughout the
Argentine, except in the sugar belt.

The town consists mainly of villas and hotels :
every rich Argentine regards it as a point of honour
to have a villa here, though he may very seldom
use it ; and the hotels are of great size and great
number. All along the flat part of the shore there
is a sort of esplanade or terrace known as the
Rambla (del Sud), backed by a big colonnade which,
following the curve of the bay, is certainly rather
effective — as rows of pillars always are, whatever
their age and substance. This colonnade consists
of clubs, bathing-places, restaurants and shops, the
latter offering the choicest clothes, jewellery and
fancy goods that Paris and London can produce.
It is partly under cover, partly open; and it is of
course the centre of the place's life. Near it is a
gigantic and florescent club-house, where the flores-
cent Argentine lunches and dines, and gambles and
listens to the band. A little farther north there is
a long pier used mainly as a depository for fishing-
boats ; for owing to the heavy seas and the absence
of any shelter these when not in use have to be
hoisted out of the water by crane. And farther
221

222 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

north still there is another Rambla (del Norte), a much
more humble affair of wood and glass, where the poor
and unflorescent presume to meet each other, bathe
and dine. (It is only a person of brazen courage
who would dare to whisper that such people exist at
Mar del Plata.) Some two miles to the south there
is a golf-links, of excellent quality, though rather
short, to which you go by horse-drawn tram. And
that is about all there is to say of the place as a
whole.

Our hotel proved to be near this humbler Rambla ;
and a very great advantage we found this to be
when we had taken our bearings. For apart from
the absence of the florescent— in itself a boon— this
proved to be the only part of the town where one
could escape easily from streets and people and get to
comparatively unfrequented spots on cliff and shore.
At the seaside, to my mind, one wants to live like
an animal, eating, sleeping, basking and bathing
and little else. We did this with the more delight
for being quite unfit for anything else on our arrival ;
and we came to the conclusion that nowhere in the
world just then could we have found more perfect
conditions for the purpose. The sun gave us all the
heat we wanted and seldom too much. The air
seemed to dance as we breathed it. The sea shone,
blue and beckoning, to the limit of our sight. We
had nothing to do or think about but bathe and
stroll and eat and sleep. And we did sleep, and we
did eat, I should be afraid to say how much, princi-
pally of the majestic prawns which swarm into this
noble bay. Prawns in fact such as you, my dear
sir or madam, hardly ever see or hear of in the dull
waters of England. Even the smallest were as big
as those which in our fishmongers' shops are set

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

223

apart like royalty on a dais to themselves. And the
larger— but I fear almost to tell you of the larger.
They were large as sprats ; yea, their dear bodies
alone, apart from any side-trappings of claws and
feelers. And their flavour— oh the pride and the
joy of life that a prawn must know before he can
taste like that ! Perhaps the parents were not
quite so sprightly to the tongue as their children,
for ' whom the gods love die young.' But whatever
their age both were perfect of their kind ; and they
must certainly be reckoned among the things that
make men believe in a Benevolent Creator.

Bathing at Mar del Plata, when you knew the
ropes, was a luscious experience. I do not mean
the real ropes ; which stretched on stakes ran some
forty yards out into the sea at intervals all along the
shore, and on calm days were the refuge of hundreds
of non- swimmers, while on rough even the skilled
were glad of them so big was the surf. No, it is
the ropes of metaphor that I refer to ; things of
far more importance, at any rate to me. On the
morning of our arrival, thinking no evil, I plunged
into the South Atlantic clad in a strange garment of
pink and red stripes which I had had by me for some
time, and had brought all the way from England on
the chance that it might be needed or— still better
—mislaid. Perhaps it fitted a little closely— most
* bathing-rags ' do — but certainly it covered almost
every inch of my person from neck to knee ; and it
was in my opinion the last possible concession to
Mrs Grundy, and beyond the cavil even of her dis-
gusting mind. No sooner, however, was I in the
water than a roar went up from the Rambla beside
which the roar of the waves was as nothing ; and
looking back I beheld as though the whole sea-front

224 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

were one angry face and bellow, the faces and the
bellows in reality of half-a-dozen swarthy bathing-
men whose attitude suggested that I had robbed a
bank, murdered the Prime Minister or, still worse,
defrauded one of them of a peso. Of course I took
no notice, merely smiled at them, waved my hand
and went on swimming : for plainly whatever
their wrath the shallowest stretch of cold water
would hinder them from following me, and whatever
the nature of my offence I should be a great fool
not to finish my bathe. I did ; then returned to
my hut ; and there, assailed by a flow of Spanish
which I did not understand and a whirl of gestures
and bathing-costumes which I did, I gathered that
my costume was such a stain upon public decency
as had never before been witnessed at Mar del Plata
and could not possibly be allowed to happen again.
From them and later from our English-speaking
landlady I learned that in the Argentine the human
frame is considered so foul a thing that for mixed
bathing even a man must drape it loosely and
plentifully with black or dark blue before he appears
in public ; a great loose tunic, that is, reaching from
the shoulder nearly to the knees, in addition to that
other garment— not a kilt— which in my young
days was — or were — considered sufficient for all
purposes. My garment, with its pinkish hue, was
evidently regarded as the most serious outbreak of
Sin which had happened at this place for many
years ; and it was, I gathered, only because I was
English and therefore mad that I had escaped being
hauled oft to a magistrate and possibly condemned
to many years of solitary confinement.

This was a grave blow ; for bathing in clothes is
to my mind worse than not bathing at all. Here

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 225

we had everything that could make a bathe perfect :
a grilling sun ; a cool rough sea ; a sandy beach, so
hot where it was dry that you had to run, could not
stand on it for a moment ; and besides a warm,
gentle wind the joy of being at Mar del Plata instead
of in 'England now that April's there.' But of
what use was all this if both in and out of the sea
one must be clothed and hooded like a monk in
folds of clammy serge, which clung leech-like to the
frame and prevented all that play of sun and wind
which is perhaps the best part of a bathe ? As
well be a woman at once — poor, hapless creatures !
However, there was a way round, and I soon found
it. The regulation hours for bathing seemed to
be between ten and twelve. After that the entire
community betook itself to almuezo (breakfast) ;
and then, or often earlier, I would emerge from my
hut in all the panoply of tunic and etceteras ; walk
two or three hundred yards along the shore till I
felt that no Grundies, male or female, were likely to
pursue me with their evil eyes ; and then throw
to the winds that which the Law so strenuously
demanded. During the fortnight we were there I
doubt if my tunic was wet more than twice. And
yet the Argentine Republic is still a going concern !
There was no such escape for the wicked at the
Rambla del Sud. There if you bathed at all you
must bathe in full view of everybody, in full
funereal garb, and amidst such throngs of men,
women and children as made it well-nigh impossible
to see the sea at all. The entire nation seemed to
take the water between ten and twelve ; and there-
after strolled up and down the esplanade in full
panoply of dress, displaying itself to the admiration
of all beholders. Certainly from a woman's point

226 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

of view this was a very wonderful sight. Here at the
height of the season you saw the very best that
the wealth of the country, the genius of Paris and
the faultless taste of the people could produce.
Every woman was wonderfully clad ; every woman
seemed to make the most of her appearance and
figure — though, as has been said, the latter would
have to be divided by two to suit our English ideas
— and every one of them, however portly, seemed
to carry herself with a grace and dignity which we
hardly know in England. Backwards and forwards
they strolled, a lovely parade of master-pieces ; and
the Half would spend morning after morning sitting
there and gazing at the pageant. One morning was
enough for me. But it is a spectacle which, being
in the Argentine at the moment, one should not
miss ; their standard of dress, taking the nation as
a whole, being certainly a good deal higher than
ours, and probably the highest in the world.

On the two or three days of Carnaval itself the
nation seemed to return to the mental condition of
infancy and did not impress. Not only children
but grown-up people of all classes strolled about,
squirting each other with water and scent, or shy-
ing at each other little rolls of paper which unwound
as they flew through the air and enveloped every-
one in bonds of flimsy colour. It mattered little
whether you were a stranger or not, you were apt
to be bombarded just the same. Going along
calmly in a tram, you would suddenly see something
hurtle through the air and find yourself soaked to
the skin with a paper bag full of water. The
children naturally were accorded full licence ; and
clad in fancy costumes and armed with squirts and
other offensive implements, did not fail to make

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

227

the most of it. But it was a little disconcerting to
the English mind to see, for example, at the rooms
of the principal yacht club of the place a serried
army of grey-headed gentlemen, all garbed as
though to sail upon the sea, spending their entire
morning throwing little missiles of paper at their
friends as they passed up and down the Rambla.
One could not help transferring the scene in im-
agination to the R.Y.S. at Cowes in the days of
King Edward VII. and wondering — exactly — what
he would have said.

Mar del Plata soon began to pall ; but the effect
of its air — or prawns — on our bodily condition
was such that we could easily have put up with a
little more of it ; for it was here first, practically
since leaving England, that we regained real fitness
and were free of the effects of either illness, tropical
heat or disgusting food. The Argentine in summer
is not to be recommended as a health resort. No
doubt it does very well for men who are leading
active lives, though even they did not look the
better for the heat ; but it seems to be very trying
for women and children. At any rate, except at
Mar del Plata, we seldom saw any of the latter look-
ing as fit as they ought to, and the women appear
to grow faded and worn very much sooner than
they would in England. This place must be the
salvation and re-creation of hundreds of people who
are never otherwise at their best.

XXVII

THIS is the last lap.

Even the process of getting out of South America,
we found, was not without its worries. The whole
scheme of the R.M.S.P. Co.'s sailings had just been
upset by the fact that on her outward voyage one
of their two biggest boats had been put in quaran-
tine at Rio Janeiro for more than a fortnight. The
ostensible reason for this was, I believe, the presence
of a mild case of influenza on board : but the real
reason, so far as I could gather, was that one of
the line's officials was said to have affronted the
Brazilian Government's doctor : anyhow the result
was that three passengers died from the heat while
the ship was in quarantine, and so ^Brazilian honour
was satisfied.

The second of the two big boats, undetained,
thus reached Buenos Aires only two days later than
the first ; and a rather smaller one arriving next day
there were thus three big steamers in the dock at
the same time. The agitators chose this moment
for a dock strike, which threatened to stop the
movement of these as of all other ships. And there
was at the same time a strike of taxi-drivers, which,
though a trifle in itself, was not without its terrors
for strangers like ourselves, who knew no other
means of getting to our ship. The nation thus
managed to combine a threat of indefinite delay to
our departure with a powerful discouragement of
our return. And as though even this were not
enough it gave us finally, by its pride of purse, a

228

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 229

kick which kept us sore and resentful long after we
had left its shores. In London or Liverpool the
cost of our two passages would have been about
£220. In Argentina it was £325, a calamity due
entirely to the odious prosperity of that country
and the chaotic weakness of our own sovereign.
' Exchange is no robbery ? ' I do not think.

As a matter of fact the dock strike was the only
obstacle likely to prove serious. You never know
in Buenos Aires how that will turn out. It may
lead to a general strike of all labour throughout
the country, which is the nightly dream of every
agitator as he lays his weary head upon the pillow ;
or it may lead to murder, arson, loot and general
rebellion, which even in his dreams he hardly dares
to hope for. As a rule it smoulders for a while,
keeping the country on pins and needles as to the
outcome; then either sputters out unsuccessful, or
continues for weeks together, bringing almost all
shipping traffic to an end. In this case the move-
ment smouldered half- successful for some days
before our departure and duly provided us with our
share of pins and needles ; but fortunately it did
not burst into full flame till a day or two after we
had gone, and it was only at Rio some days later
that we heard of its success and of the general
paralysis of shipping which it had caused.

I am afraid that no tears bedimmed my eyes as
we crept down the estuary on our way home. In-
deed I incline to think that in the eyes of any well-
regulated Briton one of the best moments in a trip
to South America is that in which he leaves the
uncertainties of that chaotic land, with its strikes,
floods and utter indifference to time, for the well-
scrubbed decks of an English liner and the certainty

230 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

that but for ' act of God ' he will be deposited in Eng-
land within the time appointed. If anyone tells me
that this is a very insular point of view, and further,
that my whole account of our journey is the most
insular thing that has ever been put on paper, then
I say I most cordially agree with him. Insular I am
and propose to remain. For the longer I live and the
more I see of other nations the more I am persuaded
that England is the only country in the world arid
the English and Scotch the only people. Time after
time, both in war and in peace, the thing is proved.
Loathsome as we are in many respects, and easily
as other nations may beat us in some, I defy the
world to produce anything like our combination of
character and capacity. For generosity, courage,
readiness, business honesty, treatment of women,
charity, sense of duty, honour, humour, cleanliness,
cheerfulness, capability, the high mind and level
head, all the tests by which a nation can be judged,
where in the world will you find men like ours, or
still more emphatically women ? One must go
abroad a good deal to become really insular. That
is the conclusion which travel inevitably drives
home.

The ship was enormous; and very empty, both
of cargo and passengers. The almost simultaneous
departure of three boats had of course divided the
goods awaiting shipment: like Gaul, into three parts;
and the crowd of rich Argentines who usually flock
to Europe at this time of year had been almost
stopped for once by rumours of serious influenza in
England and France, a risk they could not bring
themselves to face. In itself the sparsity of popula-
tion on ship is a sweet and pleasant thing ; and
this time it was rendered sweeter to us, who had

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 231

paid so huge a sum for our berths, by the news that
the trip would certainly be a ' loser ' for the Com-
pany ; indeed the big two ships on this route
hardly ever pay their way. After having so much
money dragged out of us by the combined machina-
tions of the Argentine Republic and the Company,
this did something to heal the wound, though not
enough. Those who told us, as many did, " Ah, in
the old days we used to pay £30 each way, or some-
thing like £50 for the round trip," never knew how
near they came to death.

Santos, at which we called and stayed for half-a-
day, is the port of San Paulo ; a very big, busy and
prosperous town a few miles inland, and the centre
of an immense trade in coffee all of which is ex-
ported here. As our boat crept slowly up the
estuary at dawn we thought it by far the most
lovely place we had seen in South America, more
effective even than Rio, though not on so grand a
scale. On either side of us were great flats of
dazzling green, backed by a few small hills. There
in front of us was the white town splashed with the
deeper green of trees ; and immediately behind that
a great range of pink and purple shapes that might
be cloud and might be mountain, and which, as the
light grew clearer, revealed themselves as moun-
tains. Far into the distance we could see them,
powerful, jagged, dramatic forms: and never shall
we forget how they looked that morning, the blush
of colour on their sides, the wisps of cloud that
lingered about them, the rosy, hectic dimness of the
dawn, and then the blaze of the swiftly rising sun.

Santos provides a wonderful instance of the con-
quest of fever. In old days, so powerful was ' Yellow
Jack,' a voyage to this port meant almost certainly

232 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

a voyage to another. Ships would arrive and begin
unloading; in a few days every man on board
would be dead. Perhaps the owners would try to
find a relief crew to send out and bring their vessel
back ; perhaps fail, for hardly anyone who knew
the risk would face it ; or perhaps succeed — and if
they succeeded lose the new crew at once like the
old, and have to leave the ship and cargo to rot to
pieces on the river bank. Year after year this went
on. Men died as natives die in a hot country from
cholera, Sierra Leone was a health resort in com-
parison. And then at last the place became so
important that the question had to be tackled in
earnest ; and it was, and solved without the least
difficulty. All through the flats and marshes in
and about the town great trenches were dug and
concreted, through which the sea could flow with
each incoming tide. The mosquitoes, unable to
face salt water, had to evacuate ; and the town be-
came and is as healthy as in such a baking climate
any town is ever likely to be.

After Santos, Rio again. This time we stopped
for two days owing to coaling difficulties, and that
in grilling heat. We ascended Corcovado once
more ; and had the luck to be at the top during the
only ten minutes of the day when it was not en-
veloped in cloud. We went a motor journey among
the hills to a place named Tijuca and saw some very
wonderful tropical scenery. We melted, and were
told for once that this really was hot — Rio was
seldom worse. But alas, when we left it it was
no longer on an empty ship. About a hundred
Brazilians had come on board ; all first-class in their
possession of this world's goods, but not alas in
their regard for that which comes next to godliness.

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 238

Portentously rich, unloved of any — least of all by
their Argentine neighbours— they filled our hitherto
uncrowded decks; possessed our favourite corners;
let loose a swarm of noisy, dirty children who ran
uncontrolled about the ship ; and failed in any way
to kindle enthusiasm for the cause of Universal
Brotherhood. I have always maintained that you
have only to bring any two nations of the world into
really close and continuous contact to breed in them
an ineradicable hostility ; and certainly if England
and Brazil took many sea-voyages together they
would very soon be at war. In this case I am sorry
to say that they had quite as good reason to dislike
us as we them. For amongst the small and, for
the most part, very pleasant English-speaking con-
tingent on board was a set of rowdies — not only
male — whose drunkenness and whose behaviour
generally must have given them the worst possible
impression of our national tone and manners.
The British ' bounder,' in fact, in all his glory.
And this too before Latin-Americans, who what-
ever their faults are before all things dignified and
courteous. The decent English on board could
hardly have had a more humiliating experience.

Cape Verde Islands, Madeira, Lisbon— what is
there to be said of these ? Nothing new, certainly.
At Madeira one is struck, especially after visiting
South America, by the relative cheapness of living
there —fifteen shillings a day at a good English hotel
—as also by the amazing beauty of the flowers.
The cheapness and good construction of the local
basket-work are also a notable feature. And it is
here, if a man possesses a wife, that he may see her
in a basket-shop making up her mind —probably
with the aid of her fingers— how many baskets she

284 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

is likely to want per annum in the course of an aver-
age life ; and for the rest of that voyage he may
make up his mind that his dressing will have to be
done in the bathroom, for there certainly will be no
room for him in his cabin.

Lisbon very nearly proved the end of our voyage ;
for going ashore there we made a mistake as to the
difference between European and ship's time, and
when we came to the quay to go off by launch to
our ship — which was, as usual, anchored far out in
the middle of the Tagus— we found no launch, and
realised that the ship must be on the point of de-
parture. That was the moment for the local boat-
man to teach Shylock how to conduct his business ;
and he did not fail to make some brilliant experi-
ments, especially when he discovered that his
victims knew little about Portuguese currency and
still less about the language. Even then, however,
we were struck by the absence of any real competi-
tion. On our refusing the more outrageous offers,
for example, we found that they merely shrugged
their shoulders and abandoned the contest ; and
we were driven to the conclusion that their Latin
minds were simply incapable of realising the im-
portance an Englishman might attach to getting
to a place within a certain time, say a month or a
year. At any rate they showed no disposition to
bid against each other : and we were very lucky to
hit almost at once on two comparatively honest
ruffians, who did not suggest more than treble the
ordinary figures and were soon persuaded to accept
double. In a moment they had their boat launched
and sail up ; they rowed hard as well as sailed ;
and till we had covered a third of our journey there
seemed to be some hope of success. Then, however,

THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA 235

our ship actually began to move ; and black despair
descended upon us, for if it did not stop there was
little chance of our leaving Lisbon for some days.
Not only were the railways closed owing to a strike,
but the Civil Service (including postal and telegraph
employees) were also taking a holiday of the same
kind ; and to the best of my belief all the banks as
well. We stood up and yelled, and waved con-
spicuous garments; but the ship kept on gliding
away from us slowly but only too steadily : and as
a matter of fact, so we afterwards heard, no one on
board ever saw or heard us at this stage ; we did
not exist. What did exist fortunately, though we
did not know it, was another party of laggards who
were in the same boat as ourselves, figuratively
speaking though not actually. They had left the
quay a little before we did; and being nearer the
ship their yells and apparel did at length attract
the attention of the officer in charge, and he slowed
down to give them a chance, though it was impossible
in that racing tide to stop the ship altogether. As
we drew nearer and beheld the decks black with
people we knew that we too must have been observed
and had a chance if anyone had ; but it was still
touch-and-go whether we should manage to get on
board ; and we were told afterwards that the crowd
were almost delirious with excitement —should we
or should we not be ' left ' ? Even when we drew
alongside the chances seemed to be against us ; for
the only way of getting aboard was for our men to
row faster than the ship was going till we were well
forward of the companion-ladder, then stop, and as
the steamer rushed past us — or seemed to — clutch
at the ladder with a boat-hook. Twice they failed
at this— it was by no means easy— and twice we

236 THREE ASSES IN BOLIVIA

flew back into the wash of the screw, which despite
the slow speed was very c popply.' Each time
there was desperate work rowing us back again to
the companion-ladder ; and we began to think that
after all we should never get aboard. However,
at the third try one of the men managed to snatch
a hold upon something, and with a great effort to
keep it; and we hurried aboard, ladling out all the
Portuguese money we could find for our boatmen,
because to their eternal honour — and our eternal
surprise —they had never even suggested our giving
them anything extra. How many half-crowns
changed hands over us on the first-class deck I
should be sorry to say. One expression from a
lady of Ecuador who had made great friends with
the Half was quite the biggest compliment that
she— or her long-suffering husband —had ever
received or ever expects to : " When I hear it was
you I tink 1 fall down dead " !

That is all. We reached Southampton without
incident ; and you will be glad to hear that the Half
is now ordering dinners quite contentedly; and I
—am eating them.

FINIS

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