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A birthday dance in Santiago de Chiquitos, with one German and an Englishman

WHEN

On Foot across Bolivia

By HARRY A. FRANCK Author of "A Vagabond Journey around the World," etc. Photographs by the author

WHEN I reached Cochabamba 1 nothing was more certain than that I should continue my tramp down the Andes through Sucre and Potosí into the Argentine. But plans do not always keep well in so warm a climate. As I sat musing one afternoon on the "gringo bench" in a shady corner of the main plaza, Sampson, the cockney miner without a mine, cut in:

"Why don't you shoot across Bolivia through Santa Cruz to the Paraguay River, and down that to Asunción and B. A.? Then you 'd really be doing something new."

The idea sprouted. I suddenly discov

1 Cochabamba is almost in the center of Bolivia; Mr. Franck's easterly walk thence to Brazil was of six hundred miles. -THE EDITOR.

ered that I was weary of high altitudes and treeless punas, of the drear sameness of the Andes I had followed from Bogotá, in the far-distant north. The montaña promised a new type of people, a new style of life; and a knowledge of South America would be only half complete without including in the itinerary the immense hot lands and river-webbed wilderness spreading eastward from the Andes. To these arguments there was added another even more potent. When I began to make inquiries I learned that the trip was "impossible." My informants even quoted letters recently received to prove it. The last hundred leagues would be entirely under water, and the Indians of the Monte Grande would take care that I should not get so far; to say noth

ing of miles of chest-deep mud-holes, wild animals, and clouds of even more savage insects, and many days without food or human habitation. That settled it. The impossibility of tramping the Andes had long since faded away, and with it half the charm of the journey. I decided to strike eastward in quest of the Paraguay.

"I would n't mind tackling it myself," said Tommy Cox, when I carried my decision to the "gringo bench" that afternoon. "I'm badly needed in B. A.; but I'm stony broke. Of course if you could carry a steamer-trunk-size man as excess baggage

I concluded I could, though I was not overstocked with bolivianos, and the nearest possible source of supply would be Buenos Aires. Tommy was to carry his proportionate share of such baggage as I could not throw away, including the tin kitchenette and the half-liter of forty per cent. alcohol that went with it, if experience proved I could trust him with that, leaving me a moderate load. We should have bought a donkey or an Andean pony and saved turning ourselves into packanimals but for two reasons: first, because such a purchase would have relieved me. of about all the billetes I had left, and secondly, because no four-footed animal could have endured the journey.

It was mid-December when we swung on our packs in Punata, at the end of the toy railroad that screeches a little way eastward from Cochabamba. Tommy carried his share in the half of a hectic table-cloth tied across his chest, as an Indian woman carries her latest offspring. Though Canadian born, he was a Liverpool dock walloper in accent and appearance, wearing a heavy cap, a kerchief à la Whitechapel about his neck, and could not be induced to be seen publicly without a heavy winter waistcoat,- that is, "w'stco't,"-whatever the tropical temperature. He had given Cochabamba an opportunity to show its gratitude at his departure, but the fourteen bolivianos of his last eleemosynary gleanings would barely keep him in cigarettes during the journey. His only personal possession

was

a large, sharp-pointed, proudly scoured trowel; for Tommy was by profession a bricklayer and mason. This general convenience, weapon, sign of caste, and hope of better days to come, he wore through the band of his trousers, as a Bolivian peon carries his long knife, and the services it performed were without limit. I never was more nearly minded to throw my kodak into a mud-hole than when it failed to catch Tommy solemnly eating soft-boiled eggs with the point of his faithful trowel.

For the next seven or eight days the going was not unlike that down the crest of the Andes, though gradually growing lower as the endless ridges calmed down slowly, like the waves of some tempestuous sea. The meanness of the Bolivian as contrasted with the sometimes kindly rural Peruvian was daily in evidence. At Duraznillo, for instance, a short day beyond Totora, chief city of that region, there was a public "resthouse" that had once been an adobe chapel; but the local "authority" to whom my government papers were addressed successfully kept himself among the missing, as often happened in the towns of the Andes. It was December 21, the longest day of the Bolivian year, and the sun had not yet set when I boiled oatmeal in the water Tommy brought from a stagnant pool not far away. As the shades of night spread at last, the cement, or, more exactly, baked mud divans of the bare adobe room looked ever harder and less inviting, and in nosing about we were astonished to come upon several imported mattresses covering a pile of adobe bricks on the back corredor of the chief, and apparently uninhabited, house of the village. Still, it was possible that the "authority" would come out of his hiding, and we lolled patiently, if road-weary, in the moonlight.

We had waited until perhaps nine, though, without a watch, it seemed hours later, when patience evaporated, and we slipped through a hole in the mud fence, each to embrace a mattress. It may be that a trap had been laid for us. As we

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An impromptu Christmas eve celebration in Pampa Grande

approached the wall again an unusually large half-Indian wrapped in a poncho. loomed up in the darkness on the other side and bellowed in an authoritative voice:

"What are you doing inside that wall?" Now, I do not like any man to address me in that tone, least of all a South American Indian, for it is neither good training for his own primitive character nor advantageous to other gringos who may come in contact with him later. Wherefore I drew up to my full height, which did not overtop this extraordinarily large Indian by more than an inch or two, and shouted back at him:

"Speaking to me, Indio?"

"I am corregidor of Duraznillo, also guardian of this house."

"Indeed! Then you are the very fellow we have been looking for these last five hours. You will kindly lend us two mattresses to sleep on."

"I will not lend you one mattress to sleep on. What are you doing-"

His belligerent attitude showed his blood was Aymará rather than that of the meek Quichua; but to have bowed to his will would have been proportionately as fatal as for a lion-tamer to quail before

his pets. I thrust my chin in his face and echoed his own tone:

"And where have you been hiding yourself ever since we got here? I have a letter for you from the Government, my man."

"Huh!" he snorted, with a crude attempt at sarcasm. "Let's see that letter from the Government." "It is in my pack in the chapel any time you want to come for it."

"Bring it over here."

"Since when have caballeros run after Indians to show them government orders? Are you going to lend us two mattresses?" "Nor one!"

"Tommy, chuck over those mattresses." He did so with trembling hands, for something had given him an unwholesome respect for "authorities." The corregidor followed at our heels, bellowing occasionally, as we carried our finds into the ex-chapel and spread one on each of the adobe couches. Not long after a stocky youth and a woman with a flickering candle appeared in the doorway, and the Indian again demanded my papers.

"Can you read?" I asked, sending another shiver of rage down his spine. "I can," he snarled, which he could, to

the extent of spelling out the order from the prefect of Cochabamba at about a line a minute.

"Very well," he growled at last; "but you are to ask for things, not take them." "From a corregidor that hides himself?"

"And the prefect orders that we furnish what you need at a just price," he added triumphantly.

"Exactly."

"Then you will pay two bolivianos

each for the use of the mattresses."

"Very well; but you will first make out a receipt for that amount that I can send back to the prefect."

It was not the first time I had played this unfailing card against an Andean "authority" attempting extortion. He knew he was beaten; for though he could read, after a Bolivian fashion, he probably could not write, and moreover would not dare let such a paper reach the prefect. He faded away into the night and was heard no more, though I was not so certain of his Aymará blood as not to prop against the half-open door a heavy beam that would have seemed of lead to any one attempting to sneak in upon us asleep.

But I was disturbed only once. Some time in the darkest hours I was for a long while half aware of some hubbub, and at last woke entirely. The tropical sun seemed to have gone to Tommy's head, for he was tossing back and forth on his couch, beating the wall with his precious trowel and shouting at the top of his voice:

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annoy us. For hours only the mournful note of the jungle dove broke the silence. But as scrub trees thickened, bird life became more numerous; bands of parrakeets screamed by overhead, and now and then appeared a parrot and his mate, forerunners of many to come.

But the Andes did not subside so easily. Next morning the trail shook off the river and struck upward through dry hills, only to drop again headlong into another. cañon, with a muddy, lukewarm brook snaking through it. Rarely among the spiny scrub trees we came upon a miserable hut of poles and sticks, in each of which lounged a dozen or more of the mongrel people of the region. Rancho was being cooked in one such, and though the natives showed no joy or any other species of activity at our presence, when the meal was ready, a tin wash-basin of rice, charqui, and pepper stew was set on the ground before us, and a wooden spoon was silently handed to each of us. There was of course no bread, but a gourd bowl of mote, or shelled ripe corn boiled soft, was added for our friendly competition. This was one contest in which Tommy was easily my superior. The languid yellow woman would not accept payment for the food, though she did readily enough for the chicha we had drunk, recalling to my companion far-off memories of "free lunch," so that several times during the blazing afternoon I heard his sheet-iron voice torturing the wilderness behind me. with his own version of a one-time Broadway favorite:

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An alcalde of the lower eastern Andes, and his family and home

bare table, a lighted candle on each side of its head, its nostrils stuffed with cotton, while in and about the premises rolled maudlin, fishy-eyed half-breeds only too glad of any excuse for consuming gallons of overripe chicha. The priest's assurance that baptized infants go directly to heaven makes such a death almost cause for rejoicing among the ignorant population of Bolivia, even if it leads to nothing worse than passive infanticide.

One morning not long afterward we came out on the wonderful vista of tropical South America, a world of dense-wooded hills spreading out in every direction to the purple haze of distance, the unbroken green sea of the montaña, rolling and more nearly hilly than I had expected, stretching endlessly away as far as the world was to be seen. We had come to the edge of the Andes at last.

Bananas and palms appeared, and insects bit us from hair to ankles. Dense woods crowded the trail, heavy in sand, close on each hand. That care-free attitude of the tropics came upon us, for the first time bringing full realization of the strain on the system of living and tramping two or three miles up in the air. Night now had no terrors, for we could

lie down anywhere; and if food was scarce and tasteless, complaint was too troublesome to be indulged in in so apathetic a climate. Fruit of all kinds grew,

plantains, bananas, melons, oranges green in color, papayas-and eggs, but could rarely be had. A warlike attitude. might have obtained more, but that is indigenous to the bleak highlands rather than to the lazy tropics. Anyway, through it all Tommy would have hung on my coat-tail, had I worn one, shuddering in his English laboring-class voice: "Don't! Oh, don't tyke it! The police!" But once anything had been obtained, he would have made way with it so rapidly that I should have caught little more than the vagrant aroma. The craving for sweets was alarming. We ate great chunks of the crude first product of the crushed. sugar-cane, here called empanisado, and fifteen minutes after the best meal of the journey we would have jumped to accept an invitation to a fifteen-course dinner, had any such been imminent.

Beyond La Guardia the country was more open, and the deep sand trail in which the constant slap of our feet sounded monotonously led across halfopen meadows, with single trees and graz

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