DEPARTMENT OF THE BENT. 



233 



Indians and Creoles, of which 6,732 Indian men, between the ages of 

 eighteen and fifty years, and only 325 Creoles, pay contribution to the 

 government of two dollars each a year. There are 985 men in this de- 

 partment over fifty years of age, and they are excused from paying this 

 tax, as well as the women and children. 



The government of Bolivia settles .accounts with the church for the 

 Indians out of the annual income of $13,464. The Indians pay this 

 tax in cotton table cloths, sheets, hamacs, towels, ponchos, and pieces 

 of cotton goods made by their own hands. They cultivate maize and 

 coffee, tobacco, yuca, oranges, plantains, lemons, and papayos ; cocoa 

 grows wild along the rivers ; rice is raised in small quantities. 



A homemade table-cloth is worth three dollars; there were over 

 seven hundred exported last year from this department. A pair of sheets 

 costs five dollars and fifty cents ; a hamac, five ; a towel, two. Over 

 three thousand yards of Indian domestic cotton cloth were also exported 

 last year, at thirty-one and a quarter cents a yard ; dry hides are valued 

 at twelve and a half cents ; tiger skins, two dollars ; straw hats, from 

 fifty cents to one dollar,; coffee, three dollars; tamarinds, two dollars ; 

 tobacco, one dollar and twenty-five cents ; and cocoa, two dollars the 

 arroba of twenty-five pounds ; prepared chocolate is worth eighteen and 

 three-quarter cents a pound. 



It is difficult to estimate the annual yield of cacao — last year over 

 eight thousand arrobas were sent to the people on the Andes. Horned 

 cattle on the pampa are worth two dollars a head. A few Brazil nuts 

 are brought into the market of Trinidad, where they sell at one dollar 

 the arroba. 



This is a list of the exports from the very bottom of the Madeira 

 Plate — all of which are sent out against the current and up the sides of 

 the Andes. There are a few Indians in Yuracares who pay contribu- 

 tion in cinchona bark; it has to be entered at the sub-treasury here ; 

 forty arrobas have come down in a year. The Indian is allowed eight 

 dollars and seventy five cents the arroba when it is forwarded to the 

 Pacific ocean. 



While the door of this interior is at the head of the Madeira river, 

 the people go back up-stairs, and pass their goods and chattels over the 

 roof, down through the chimney, to the Pacific ; stemming the current, 

 and struggling against difficulties among the clouds, through storms 

 and dangers, passing through cold, frozen regions, on the way to market ; 

 leaving a most productive country road, and passing through one less 

 and less valuable, until they get into a desert, the oft'-side of which may 

 be approached by a ship ; while Don Antonio has brought his vessels 



