TOPOGRAPHY OF BOLIVIA. 



381 



COPACABANA CoROCORO. 



The Copacabana peninsula, north of Tiahuanaco, appears to have also been 

 a sacred spot during the primitive period of Aymara civilisation, and its hallowed 

 associations have been preserved in the memory of the natives down to the 

 present day. The local church contains a Virgencita milagrosisima, " a most 

 miraculous little Madonna," to which flock eager votaries, the sick and infirm, 

 those in trouble, and especially gold-seekers praying for some indications to guide 

 them to the rich lodes and placers. This word Copacabana, which is met as far 



Fig. 143. — Copacabana Peninsula. 

 Scale 1 : 1,000,000. 



69°4D' 



West or Green-.viciT 



68 40 



18 Miles. 



north as Colombia, is not due to the old Quichua conquests, but to the widespread 

 fame of the Titicaca Virgin. 



The chief antiquities of the peninsula consist of flights of steps, terraces and 

 seats carved in the live rock. The thermal waters known as the " Incas' Baths " 

 have been well preserved, with their three griffons and fish-tank. But on the 

 neighbouring islet of Titicaca, or of the Sun, nothing now remains except tracks 

 worn in the rock by the steps of pilgrims, and some fragments of walls and 

 other shapeless ruins, nowhere presenting the imposing aspect of the cyclopic 

 Tiahuanaco structures. Here also a thermal spring still feeds other " Incas' 



