During the course of the afternoon, we wound out of the hills far enough to be able to see far over the plains to the east. Here there was more vegetation and some corn growing. On the left were jagged hills and mountains. The temperature in the car about four o’clock was eighty-five degrees. Our altitude was about twenty-five hundred feet.
As we went north through hot, dusty valleys, climbing up into the foot-hills of the Andes, the faces of the loiterers at the stations lost the cosmopolitan aspect that they have in and about Buenos Aires. We saw more of the typical Gaucho who is descended from the aboriginal Indians of the Pampas and bold Spanish cattle-drivers. Tall in stature, with a robust frame and a swarthy complexion, he possesses great powers of endurance and is a difficult person to handle. His tendencies are much like those of the fast disappearing American “cow puncher,” but he has the disadvantage of having inherited a contempt for manual labor and an excessive vanity which finds expression in silver spurs and brilliantly colored ponchos. His territory is rapidly being invaded by hard-working Italians, more desirable because more dependable.
Near Juramento the country grows more arid and desolate. A few scrubby mimosa trees, sheltering the white tents of railway engineers, offered but little welcome to intending settlers.
Just at dark we reached Guemes, where we were obliged to change cars. The through train from Tucuman goes west to Salta, the most important city of the vicinity. We arrived at Jujuy shortly after nine o’clock. A score of ancient vehicles were waiting to take us a mile up into the town to one of the three hotels. We went to the Bristol and found it quite comfortable according to Spanish-American ideas. That means that the toilet facilities were absent, that the room had a tile floor, and that there were beds and chairs.
In the morning we got up early enough to look at the town for a few minutes before leaving on the semi-weekly train for La Quiaca.
Jujuy was built by Spanish settlers a generation before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and still preserves the white-walled, red-tiled-roof aspect of the old Spanish-American towns. Lying in a pleasant, well-watered plain, a trifle over four thousand feet above the sea, it is attractively surrounded by high hills. Beyond them, we caught glimpses of lofty barren mountains, the summits of the Andes. The near-by valleys were green, and there is some rainfall even in the dry time of the year. Although Jujuy produces a large amount of sub-tropical fruit, it really owes its importance to its strategical position on the old trade route to Bolivia. It is the last important town on the road because it is the last place that enjoys a salubrious situation. For centuries it has been the natural resting-place for overland travellers.
In fact, these northwestern highlands of Argentina, Jujuy, and Tucuman, were first settled by emigrants from the mountains of Upper Peru now called Bolivia, of which they form the southern extension. Their political and commercial relations were with Potosí and Lima rather than Buenos Aires. The great prosperity of the mining regions of the lofty plateau created a demand for provisions that could not be met by the possibilities of agriculture in the semi-arid irrigated valleys of southern Bolivia. Beef and other provisions could most easily be brought from the fertile valleys near Tucuman and Jujuy. The necessity for some better animal than the llama, to carry not only freight but also passengers, caused a demand for the horses and mules which, raised on the Argentine Pampas, were brought here to be put into shape for mountain travel, and were an important item in the early fairs.
When the railroad came, Jujuy was for many years the northern terminus. This only added to the importance of the town, and increased the reputation of its annual fair. But with the building of the continuation to La Quiaca, its importance is bound to decrease. However, it will always be a favorite resort for Bolivians seeking a refuge from the rigors of their Thibetan climate. We met many families in southern Bolivia who had at one time or another passed the winter season here.
Before leaving the Bristol we succeeded in getting eggs and coffee only with considerable difficulty as the train was due to leave at seven o’clock, and the average Spanish-American traveller is quite willing to start off on a long day’s journey without even a cup of coffee if he can be sure of something substantial about ten or eleven o’clock.
When we arrived at the station, we found a scene of great confusion. The line had been running only a few months, and many of the intending passengers were not accustomed to the ways of railroads. An official, and his family of three, had spread himself over one half of the car, with bags, bird-cages, bundles, rolls, and potted plants. He filled so many seats with his impedimenta that several of the passengers had to stand up, although that did not worry him in the least. Had we known how much luggage belonged to him, we should have dumped it on the floor and had a more comfortable ride, but unfortunately we did not discover how greatly he had imposed on everybody until the end of the day.
From Jujuy the train climbs slowly through a valley toward a wonderful vista of great mountains. At 6000 feet the verdure disappeared, the grass became brown, and on the barren mountains a few sheep and goats were trying to pick up a living.
The railway had a hard time overcoming the difficulties of the first part of the way. The grade is so steep that for some distance a cog road was found to be necessary. In the first one hundred and fourteen miles, the line climbs up 8000 feet to an altitude of over 12,000 feet above sea-level.
Notwithstanding the newness of the road and the steepness of the grade, we carried with us an excellent little restaurant car that gave us two very good meals before we reached La Quiaca.
The cog railway begins at Leon at an altitude of 5300 feet and continues to Volcan, rising 1500 feet in a distance of eight miles. At Volcan there is supposed to be a mud volcano, but, as was pointed out some years ago by Mr. O’Driscoll in the “Geographical Journal,” there is no volcano at all. It is simply a mud avalanche, that comes down after unusually heavy rains from the rapidly disintegrating hillside. Although not a volcano, it is nevertheless a difficult problem for the engineers. It has already completely submerged a mile or two of track more than once.
This is on the line of the proposed Pan-American railway from New York to Buenos Aires. With a sufficiently vivid imagination, one can picture a New Yorker of the year 1950 being detained here by a mud-slide which will have put the tracks over which he proposes to travel two or three feet under ground. It is to be hoped that he will not be obliged to stay at the local inn where Edmund Temple stopped on his journey from Buenos Aires to Potosí. Temple was aroused in the middle of the night by a noise under his bed as if of a struggle between two animals. To his astonishment (and to that of the reader of his charming volumes) he “discovered, by the light of the moon, a cat eating the head of a viper which she had just subdued: a common occurrence I was informed, and without any ill consequences to the cat, however venomous the snake!”
Some effort had been made to plant a few trees in the sandy, rocky soil around the station of Volcan, which is not far from the mud-slide. They seemed, however, to be having a hard time of it, although, at a ranch near by, quite a grove of eucalyptus trees had been successfully raised by means of irrigation. The mountains round about are very barren and gave evidence of being rapidly wasted away by erosion, their summits assuming many fantastic forms.
Twenty miles beyond Volcan is Maimará, where there was further evidence of irrigation in the valley, the trees and green fruits being in marked contrast to the barren hillsides.
As the road ascends, the country becomes more and more arid. Cactus is common. Sometimes it is used as a hedge; at other times, by being planted on the top of a mud-fence, it answers the same purpose as a barbed wire.
Great barren mountains on each side continue for mile after mile, making the scenery unspeakably dreary. Judging by the northward inclination of the cactus and the trees, the prevailing wind is from the south.
Some of the valley is irrigated, but there is little sign of life anywhere. Nothing grows without irrigation. In the days before the railway it was absolutely necessary to have alfalfa and other animal fodder grown near the post-houses that supplied travellers and freight-carriers with shelter at night. This business has, of course, fallen off very much in the past few months, yet just before reaching Humahuaca we stopped at Uquia, where enough hay