128 THE AMAZON AND .MADEIRA RIVERS. 
eaiTicd by beasts of burden to La Paz ; wbcnee it is sent by the 
Permian seaport, Ariea, to Europe and Nortli Ainorica. 
When one considers tbe immense distances the bark has to travel 
from beside murmuring mountain rivulets, — from the valleys of Apolo- 
bamba, for instance, at the foot of the eastern slope of the C!ordillera, 
over snow-covered passes of 14,000 feet above the sea-lcvcl to La 
Paz and to the Pacific, and round Cape Ilom to Europe, — it is Avondei’fnl 
that the idea of following the course of these mountain streams to the 
Beni and the Madeira, and by the Amazon to Para, has not before 
been taken into earnest consideration. It is time that, in this diirction 
also, the difficulties are not inconsiderable. The middle and the upper 
coiu’se of these rivers are almost totally unknown; one of them, the 
Madre de Dios, till within a few years ago, was believed to bo a 
tributary of the Purus, whereas it is one of the Beni and the Madeira. 
The Indians on their shores are a race of treacherous savages ; and the 
falls and rapids of the Madeira are not, all of them, easy of passage. 
To take a valuable freight, in the charge of a score or two of untrust- 
worthy Indians, down such a venturesome course, rcquii-es not a little 
courage; yet, after all, it seems as if the merchants of La Paz and 
Arica, whose interest, of course, lies the other way, had a great deal to 
do with this neglect. 
During our stay at Exaltacion, however, a mercantile house of La 
Paz (Farfan & Co.) made an attempt (and, as we afterwards leamed, a 
successful one) to take a large and most valuable cargo of casearitha, 
collected in the Siemi of Apolobamba, on light rafts down the Beni 
to the Mission of Beyes ; and thence on ox-carts, over the campos 
on the watershed between the Beni and the Mamore, to the Jaciima, 
a tributary of the latter. At the former Mission of Santa Ana, boats 
were freighted with it : and they got safely through the Mamore, the 
Madeira, and the Amazon to the port of Para. The expenses of this 
route, though by no means an easy one, were about half of those 
incurred by way of Arica ; * and assiu'edly, as soon as the Madeii'a 
* It is strange that even Bolivia, though, named after the “Libertador,” and called 
by him (in the high-flown, soaring style of these nations) “the dearest of his 
daughters,” should have been treated so illiberally in the matter of seaports when the 
boundaries were fixed after the Declaration of Independence. It seems as if the poor 
country is to be cut olf from the rest of the world, or put under the everlasting tutelage 
of Peru. While the latter extends over one hundred geographical miles down the 
jiavigable Solimoes, or Amazon, and has several excellent seaports on the Pacific, 
