THE BOLIVIAN PLATEAU.* IF ever country were " High and
Dry " that country is the High Plateau of Bolivia, where ten to seventeen thousand feet above the sea the soil is so poor that it can only be cropped every five years, and where man appears to be little better than a parasite upon the llama. Alive, this improbable beast is his means of transportation and his provider of fuel in the form of dung ; dead, it is his meat and raiment. In this outlandish country Mr. Guise has spent six adventurous years as an engineer, apparently with satisfaction.
A barren land, a cruel and uncivilized population of squalid Indians and degenerate half-castes, drought, dust and flies— it is not an alluring picture, though the author will have it that " Bolivia is well worth visiting." Certainly it was well worth writing about, but Mr. Guise's robust narrative will probably make most of us feel that he has made our personal exploration of Bolivia mercifully unnecessary :-
" The Bolivian Indian of the High Plateau is not a prepossessing specimen of humanity. He belongs to the Aymara., race, whose ancestors were the inhabitants of the table-land previous to the invasion of the armies of the Peruvian Incas, who annexed the territories which now form Bolivia to their powerful empire. The Indian, as a rule, is a dirty, mean-looking individual. His skin is of the colour of an old copper coin ; his face is square, with high cheek-bones and a low, sharply receding forehead ; his chest is extraordinarily well-developed, due to unusually large lungs which enable him to breathe freely in the rarefied air of those altitudes. . . . The Indian is accustomed to abuse, and expects it, but to be robbed unduly of his hard-won goods makes him angry."
This reminds one of the classic : " Cet animal est tris michant ; quand on l'attaque it se defend."
If the Indians of Bolivia are lacking in charm, so, too, are most of the Europeans :—
" Stories of cruelty on other isolated rubber estates reached one from time to time. There was one act of savagery, which, it was reported, had been committed a short while previous to my arrival in the region, by the administrador (superintendent) of a gomal. The man in question possessed a cow, an animal which is practically non-existent between the Cordillera and the great pampas district of Reyes, there being no grass in the hilly jungle region to support any cattle. In this up-river gomal, however, there was a certain amount of open country, producing fodder enough for this cow, which, being unique, was the pride of its owner. One night, the animal got loose, and broke into the little garden of a peon belonging to the estate. The noise made by the beast as it blundered about aroused the peon, who grasped his rifle, and seeing, in the dim light, the form of what he took to be a deer, fired. The animal stumbled and fell, and, with a shout of glee, the peon ran to view the provider of many a hearty meal to come. His amazement and horror when he discovered that he had shot his patron's cow may easily be imagined. Terror-stricken by the thought of the conse- quences which would assuredly follow, he fled into the jungle, leaving behind him his wife and children. On the following morn- ing a search for the missing cow resulted in the discovery of its carcase and of the bullet wound. The dreadful news speedily reached the ears of the administrador who, consumed with anger, went to investigate the matter himself. From the trembling wife of the perpetrator of this outrage he wrung the story of the fatal shot. When he learned that the peon had sought refuge in the jungle, he vented his fury on the unfortunate Indian woman. First he set fire to the little cabin • then, with a cutlass, he hacked off her breasts, and caused her to be thrown, screaming, into the river, where she drowned. Cusi-canqui was no longer Intendente in the land, and this barbarity went unpunished."
The pleasures of the Bolivian are simple if degenerate, the chief being apparently intoxication, drugging (cocaine in the form. of coca leaf), and being themselves chased and tossed by bulls to the sound of slow music.
Mr. Guise tells stories of treachery, murder and sudden death with engaging detachment and occasional humour, whilst he gives an admirable picture of the terrain of the country, which on his showing is still an El Dorado :-
" It is, however, not only to the globe-trotter that the country is of interest, for it is a vast region endowed with fabulous riches which are lying dormant awaiting the hand that will stir them into activity. Great mineral wealth lies hidden in the moun- tains—tin, copper, silver, gold and wolfram—and in the low country there is petroleum. The sub-tropical Yungas and valleys and the fertile regions that lie between Cochabamba, Santa Cruz and the Argentine frontier could be made to yield all manner of produce— coffee, coca, sugar, cocoa, grain ; and there are tracts of country that could provide pasture for huge herds of cattle. The principal handicap under which the country struggles is the shortage of labour. Faltan Brazos (hands are lacking) is the cry that is perpetually on the lips of every employer. In a territory of which the area is not definitely known, but which may be taken as roughly 600,000 square miles, there is, it is estimated, a population of less than 3,000,000, including the savage tribes that people the forests of the interior. Politically, Bolivia is peaceful—there has been no revolution since 1899. The foreigner is well-received, more especially
• Sir Yea■ In Belisle. Be A. V. L. Guise. London : T. Fisher Unwin. [21s.]
the Britisher, who, though deemed to be even madder than other gringos, has earned a reputation for straight dealing which has inspired confidence and respect. Palabra de Inglis (word of an Englishman) is equivalent to ' word of honour' in the local idiom. Yet, in spite of this great commercial advantage, much trade that British firms could have had for the asking and held, has fallen into the hands of more pushful and enterprising competitors, who study and cater for the peculiar requirements and tastes of the people."
There is one statement so improbable and yet so well supported that we must quote it in the hopes of eliciting an explanation :- " The trees of the jungle were of almost countless species— monster cotton-wood trees, whose trunks, in some instances, six men with outstretched arms could not encircle ; trees of wood so hard that it could not be sawn ; cedar, mahogany, many-hued acaranda, and other valuable timber. There was one curious point to be observed when felling a tree of which the wood was required for constructional purposes, viz., that it should be done only during the first quarter of the moon. If cut when the moon was full, the timber would, within a few months, be riddled by a tiny wood-borer, known locally as polillo. Timber into which polillo has entered, no matter how strong originally, will, within the space of a year or less, be rendered useless. When this was first told me, I regarded it as one of the many native superstitions, but eventually I was convinced of its truth. To test it, I cut two branches off the same tree—the one during the new moon, and the other a fortnight later—which I marked, to distinguish them, and suspended, under cover, from the same beam. In a month or so there was evidence of polillo in the full-moon stick, and, at the end of another six months, it had become friable and easily broken ; the other stick, however, remained sound and free from polillo. This test, and many other instances which came under my observa- tion during the next three years, all tended to confirm the accuracy of this bit of native lore."
Can the Department of Forestry, or the Astronomer-Royal, or the Society for Psychical Research explain ?
Previous page
