Vol. XIX, No. 9 



WASHINGTON 



September, 1908 



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Or 



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AT»NAIL 



©(SMAIFIHIffiD 



ASAEE 







SOME WONDERFUL SIGHTS IN THE 

 ANDEAN HIGHLANDS 



The Oldest City in America. Sailing on the Lake of 

 the Clouds: The Yosemite of Peru 



By Harriet Chalmers Adams 



With photographs by the author 



AS the train steamed away, leaving 

 us in the little Andean village 

 of thatched mud huts, I pinched 

 myself to make sure I was awake. We 

 were in Tiahuanaco, an Indian hamlet, 

 situated on that bleak upland plain of 

 Bolivia which the traveler must cross to 

 reach La Paz, the capital. From Lake 

 Titicaca we had journeyed in a modern 

 railway coach, but with the departure of 

 the train seemed to have dropped back 

 five hundred years. "No trace here of 

 Spanish invasion," I said; but just then 

 we came upon a street shrine and a stone 

 cross, and were reminded that these high- 

 land Indians are no longer sun-wor- 

 shipers. 



Passing through the village, we 

 reached the ruins of Tiahuanaco, pre- 

 Incasic — "beyond the reach of history 

 and tradition" even in those days when 

 the ancient Inca Fortress of Sacsahuaman 

 was erected on a hill overlooking Cuzco. 

 "These ruins mark the site of the oldest 



city in the New World, and from under 

 the drifting sand of centuries a civiliza- 

 tion still more remote than that of Tia- 

 huanaco may yet be brought to light on 

 the Andean plateau. 



Tiahuanaco is in the very heart of the 

 region known as the Tibet of the West- 

 ern World. It lies on a plain which is 

 over twelve thousand feet above the level 

 of the sea, a plain from which rises the 

 lofty Cordillera, the third and great 

 range of the Andes. Journeying east- 

 ward from Lake Titicaca, we crossed an 

 open, unprotected country, wind-swept, 

 barren. The thatched villages and adobe- 

 walled corrals looked as dreary and col- 

 orless as the desolate Puna itself. Yet 

 here, archaeologists tell us, flourished the 

 most advanced of the ancient American 

 civilizations. 



In the Tiahuanaco of today beautifully 

 cut stones brought from the near-by ruins 

 form a part of the church built by the 

 early Spaniards. To neighboring vil- 



