Across South America. Hiram Bingham

1052 miles from Buenos Aires, we reached our highest elevation, something over 12,000 feet. It was a dreary spot with scarcely anything in sight except barren mountains, the two wire fences that everlastingly line the railroad tracks, and the mud-walled railroad station. The little “hotel” looked like an abandoned adobe dwelling in Arizona, and the region bore a striking resemblance to the unirrigated part of our new southwest. Erosion has cut the hillsides into interesting sections of shallow gulches and semi-cylindrical slopes. The only green things to be seen are occasional clumps of bushes like sage-brush.

      From here to La Quiaca, sixty miles, we maintained about the same altitude, although La Quiaca itself is 500 feet lower than Tres Cruces. We had, in fact, surmounted the great plateau of the Andes. South of us lay the desert of Atacama; to the north the arid valleys of southern Bolivia and the Bolivian tableland. East of us, beyond many intervening ranges and the steep slopes of the eastern Andes, lay the Gran Chaco of Bolivia and the valley of the lower Pilcomayo with its wild Indian tribes and its tropical forests. To the west lay the still higher Andes of the great Cordillera, some of whose peaks rise at this point to an altitude of twenty thousand feet. Notwithstanding these interesting surroundings, the extreme bareness of this desolate region reacts on one’s enthusiasm.

      We reached La Quiaca just before nine o’clock. The railroad offices were still incomplete, as the line had only been opened to traffic for a month or two. The old town of La Quiaca, a small mud-walled affair two miles away from the railroad station, is destined soon to be deserted for the thriving young settlement that is springing up near the terminus of the railway. There are two “hotels.” Ours, the 25 de Mayo, had only just been opened. In fact, its exterior walls had not yet received their proper coat of whitewash and stucco.

      All day long we had been travelling through an extremely sparsely populated region, so dry, high, and inhospitable as to dispel any idea that this railroad can rely upon it for much traffic. In fact, the line was built by the Argentine Government, not so much to open up this part of the Republic as to tap the mining region of southern Bolivia, with the idea of developing Argentina’s foreign commerce by securing in Bolivia a good market for her food-stuffs and bringing back in return ore to be shipped to Europe from the ports of the Paraná.

      An agreement was entered into between Argentina and Bolivia whereby Bolivia was to extend her system of national railways southeast from Oruro to Potosí and thence due south to Tupiza, fifty miles north of the Argentine boundary. The Argentinos on their part agreed to continue their railway north from Jujuy to Tupiza. By the time they reached La Quiaca, however, the English Company that owns the rich Oruro-Antofagasta line became alarmed lest such an arrangement as was proposed would interfere with their profits. By some means or other, the Bolivian government was persuaded to change its plans and decide to build the national railways so as to connect with the Antofagasta line rather than with the Argentine lines. This breach of faith on the part of the Bolivianos was naturally resented not only in Argentina but also by the southern Bolivianos themselves who would be much more benefited by having good connections with Buenos Aires than with the Chilean seaboard.

      As a result of this difficulty, the Argentinos, at the time of my visit, had not carried their railway beyond the frontier. This makes La Quiaca the outfitting point for mule-trains that now start here with merchandise destined for the cities of southern Bolivia.

      A stage-line has been opened, running once a week to Tupiza, where it connects with stages for Uyuni on the Antofagasta line and Potosí. This stage-line was owned and operated by that same energetic Scotchman, Don Santiago Hutcheon, who used to run stages between La Paz and Oruro before the completion of the Bolivia Railway. By great good fortune, we found him in La Quiaca where he had arrived that day on one of his own stages.