BOLIVIA. 



463 



8 or 10 miles, are the lagunas, or ponds for supplying the Ingenios and the towns with water. 

 They are 37 in number, and were constructed 200 years since, at an enormous and needless 

 expense. There is a considerable consumption of French and English manufactures in Potosi. 



La Paz is a bishop's see, containing, besides the cathedral, 4 churches, 5 convents, and 3 

 nunneries. In respect of situation, this place is one of the most remarkable in all South Amer- 

 ica. It lies in a ravine, so deep, narrow, and steep, that it is quite concealed from the view 

 of the traveler, till he suddenly arrives at the very brink of this quebrada. Suppose yourself, 

 says Temple, traveling leisurely along a high table, or any other place you may like better. 

 This is bounded by a huge mountainous rampart, in which, be it remembered, is one of the 

 greatest, grandest mountains on the globe, and far surpassing those wonders of the world chron- 

 icled by fame. Ilimani, the giant of the Cordilleras de los Andes, cannot be considered in 

 any less character. These mountains appear to rise out of the plain on which you are riding, 

 and your expectation is that you must actually arrive at them, for no obstacle is to be seen be- 

 twixt you and them. Whilst you are musing on the hoio and ichen your journey is to end, you 

 arrive unexpectedly at the edge of the plain, and behold a vast gulf at your feet, in the bottom 

 of which appears a town, very regularly built with packs of cards. The coup cVceU of La 

 Paz conveys precisely this idea, the red-tiled roofs and white fronts of the houses answering 

 admirably for hearts and diamonds, whilst the smoked roofs and dingy-mud walls of the Indian 

 ranchos answer equally well for spades and clubs. Through this fairy town may be faintly seen, 

 winding with occasional interruptions, a silver thread, marked with specks of frothy white, 

 which, upon approaching, proves to be a mountain torrent, leaping from rock to rock, and 

 sweeping through the valley. In casting an eye further round, you perceive squares and patch- 

 es of every shade of green and yellow ; fruit, and vegetables, and crops of every kind in all 

 their stages, from the act of sowing to that of gathering in, trees bearing fruit, and at the same 

 time putting forth buds and blossoms, and the whole scene teeming with luxuriance and beauty. 

 Yet on raising the eyes from the lap of this fruitful Eden, they rest on the widest contrast in 

 the realms of nature. Naked and arid rocks rise in mural precipices around ; high above these, 

 mountams beaten by furious tempests, frown in all the bleakness of sterility ; higher still, the 

 tops of others, reposing in the regions of eternal snow, glisten with undiminished splendor \r> 

 the presence of a tropical sun. After a descent of 3 miles, you reach the bottom of the ra 

 vine ; and instead of finding La Paz built on a flat, as you supposed from the summit over 

 hanging the abyss, you find it really built on hills, with some of its streets extremely steep 

 The torrent which waters the rgvine is a head branch of the mighty Beni, or main stream ot 

 the Maranon ; and in falls of rain forces along huge masses of rock, with large grains of gold. 

 It is the great emporium of Peru, as all the merchandise from the Pacific is conveyed thither, 

 then carried ofF by merchants, great and small, to the towns and villages of the interior. Ac- 

 cording to Helms, La Paz contains above 20,000 inhabitants, and is distant 350 miles by the 

 road from Potosi. 



Oropeza^ or Cochabamba is the capital of the rich and fertile district of Cochabamba, and is 

 so called from the gold found in its vicinity. It lies in a fertile valley, near the source of the 

 Rio Grande, the head branch of the Madeira. The district being the very granary of Bolivia, 

 this city drives a great trade in grain, fruits, and vegetables, and contains 30,000 inhabitants, 

 among which are many rich and noble families. 



Oruro was once a place of note, with 8,000 inhabitants, but now reduced to less than one 

 half from the destruction of the tin and silver mines in its vicinity, which formerly sup- 

 ported a brisk and extensive commerce, but now nearly extinct from want of those resources 

 which were absorbed in the all-consuming evils of civil war. The tin mines were long famous, 

 and those of silver were once among the most productive in Peru. But, of late years, being 

 abandoned, they have filled with water, which they have neither machinery to employ, nor 

 money for applying any other method to carry it off. Here were many families of enormous 

 wealth. Rodriguez, the late head of one of these, was proprietor of a famous silver mine in 

 the vicinity, so productive, that he discarded from his house all articles of glass, delft or crock- 

 ery ware, and replaced them by others made from the silver of his mine. Utensils of the 

 most common use, as well as those of luxury and ornament, such as pier tables in the principal 

 apartments, frames of pictures and of mirrors, footstools, pots, and pans, were all of silver. 

 Said a native to Temple, who was there in 1S27, " Do you see that trough in the court-yard ? " 

 (pointing to a very large stoi e trough for watering nujles and other animals), — "I do assure 

 you, that Rodriguez had 2 ot much larger size for the same purpose, of pure and solid silver ; 



